Analysis of Operations of San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel - Case Study Example

Analysis of Operations of San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel TABLE OF CONTENTS TABLE OF CONTENTS 2 OVERVIEW OF MARRIOTT MARQUIS HOTEL 4 Brief Background of Marriott Marquis 4 Products and Services 4 Target Market 5 Competitive Analysis 6 Key Service Process of the Front Office 7 Operational Service Components 8 RECOMMENDATIONS AND STRATEGIC MESSAGE 10 Solutions Necessary for the Most Pressing Service Operation Issues 10 Justification and Importance 10 Underlying Causes of the Service Issues 11 Recommendations 12 Improving front office area as a Physical Evidence 12 Training Of Front Office Executives 13 Strategic Training Plan for Marriott Marquis Hotel’s Front Office Executives 15 APPENDIX 17 Appendix 1: Charts 17 Appendix 2: Fishbone Analysis 20 Appendix 3: Blue Print for the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel 21 21 21 REFERENCES 22 San Francisco Marriott Marquis is a thirty nine story trendy building equipped with advanced technologies. It is located in the neighborhood of Union Square in the south market in San Francisco. This report presents an analysis of San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel’s front office operations including: an evaluation of the current operations, target market, services and products as well as its competitive analysis. This paper has also analyzed San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel’s key service processes and operational components through service blue print and identified manners and knowledge as the two problems facing the business at the front office. In the second section, this paper has presented strategic direction for the hotel with specific reference to implementing training and improving front office appearance as physical evidence. Training of front office executives has been identified as the most important strategy to solve the manner and knowledge challenges facing San Francisco Marriott Marquis and help them remain competitive and face their major competitor San Francisco W-Hotel. OVERVIEW OF MARRIOTT MARQUIS HOTEL Brief Background of Marriott Marquis San Francisco Marriott Marquis, the second tallest hotel in San Francisco, is one of the chains of eight Marriott International Hotels. The 39-story skyscraper is located within the city in the financial district of San Francisco in California. The hotel is built-in with modern luxury amenities which are availed by upper-class customers as well as business clients. Marriott Marquis hotel is divided into four sections, which are hotel service, events and meetings, local area and groups, deal and promotions. As the second largest hotel in San Francisco by counting rooms, it has 1362 guest rooms, 138 suites, and 59 meeting rooms. It has 59 meeting rooms which also consist of Yerba Buena Ballroom that has a capacity of 5500 people. Products and Services Marriott Marquis offers various services and supports in front desk. The hotel also provides business clients with flexible meeting space of117000 square feet along with modernized meeting facilities to meet the values of business clients. Clients who are interested in sport may also visit at AT&T Park, to enjoy a live game. Since the hotel is located at the heart of San Francisco, clients are offered with opportunities to enjoy shopping and movies at the San Francisco Union Square. The hotel is also frequently involved in providing discounts and offers particularly during the non-peak season to diverse group of clients including business and leisure guests (Marriott International, INC, 2014). Each guest room is equipped with plug and play technology supported 32” LCD HD TV’s and granite countertops, and luxurious bedding. Marriott Marquis also has large spaces to conduct group meetings, events and conferences. The dining section of the hotel comprises restaurant cum bar, view lounge, breakfast buffet and cafeteria which provide enjoyment and refreshment to the clients and visitors. The hotel delivers continental and full American breakfast at reasonable costs. The daily newspapers are available for the clients along with gift offers on special occasions. The hotel also delivers daily housekeeping service, mobility accessible rooms, toll-free calls and room services. In addition, fitness and spa centers are always available to customers. San Francisco Marriot Marquis provides Air, car and vacation packages and hotel staying reward points (Marriott International, INC, 2014). Target Market Analysis of data from customer’s feedbacks from Revinate website, including Yelp, Tripsadvisor, booking.com, hotel.com shows that Business people are the main target customers for San Francisco Marriott Hotel (see appendix1). For customers from different areas, San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel reported 33.33% customers are local traveler, 37.14% customers are business clients, and 29.52% customers are international traveler (see appendix 1, figure 1). From these data, business customers occupy the largest portion of overall customers The business customers would be the main target market for San Francisco Marriott Marquis. This could be attributed to its services that are ideal for customers who travel for conventions, business meetings among other events. In addition, within the feedbacks from different kinds of customers, there are 71.43% positives for local travels, 82.05 positives for business travels and 77.42 positives for international travels (See appendix 1 fig 4). These data shows that San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel is most preferred by the business customers compared to the local and international customers since gave highest positive comment on the service of front desk agents. Competitive Analysis San Francisco Marriott Marquis has a various competitive advantages that differentiate it from its competitors. It is luxurious four-star hotel delivers excellent services to its clients such as luminous service and valet parking. It also delivers massage services, family rooms and meeting rooms for large families on vacations. The hotel employs well trained professional staffs that are qualified and competent enough to deliver superior quality of services to the clients. According to Franchise Hotel, Marriott Marquis hotel has an estimated annual revenue of $50-100 million, and it has approximately about 1,000-4,999 employees (Marriott-San Francisco).The multilingual and diverse staffs assist to ensure that all the requirements of the clients are duly catered without any problem being faced by the clients. The hotel rooms are large and spacious comprising mini bar, flat-screen TV and an extra resting area. It has varied menu in drinks available at bar where guests can select their favorite one (Marriott International, INC, 2014). It can be affirmed that the hotel provides diverse range of services and products to the clients but at the same time, it is essential for the hotel to make constant improvements in order to meet the growing demands of the clients. The convenience of the location, more comfort of the accommodation, and the detail-oriented comprehension of the clients services of the hotel make San Francisco Marriott Marquis become one of top rated and historic hotels in the city. All of these competitive advantages allow the hotel to achieve their business goal, which is to provide good food and service at a fair price (Marriott International, INC, 2014. The hotel also provides unique and memorable experience to the clients on all minute aspects. Major attention is laid on recreation and quality of services delivered to them (Digital Luxury Group, 2013). Key Service Process of the Front Office In the blueprint for the Marriott Marquis Hotel, front office is physical evidence. Physical evidence in this case is the environment and people within the front office area. For every moment of truth and each action taken by the customers, the physical evidence that customers come into contact with is critical (Baum & Odgers, 2001). Front office consists of tangibles, that customer come into contact with such as the arrangement of the front office, newspapers, waiting seats that are likely to convey and influence opinion about the hotel. Being a front office desk agent in San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel, it is important to be responsible to deliver diverse range of services in an efficient manner to create a positive and enjoyable experience to guests. Onstage employee action is the second area on the blueprint that is important for front office executives. Front office are onstage employees and are actively involved in making reservations, giving suggestions, phone calls receiving, manage registration process, fulfilling guest needs/delivering bags, solve their problems, and process the registrations of their business customers (See appendix 3). Since front desk agents should give the best solution or suggestion to the guest if the guest has any problems in any parts of the service process, lack of knowledge will leave guest with a sense of unprofessional and dissatisfied the needs of the guest. In this regard, the front desk agent is assigned with the tasks of selling room, taking, altering and cancelling reservation, handling the concerns of guests, processing information pertaining to the guest arrival and departure (see appendix 3). What front office agents provide to customers would impact their decision whether to come back in the future (Yeh et al, 2013). In this respect, personnel attributes such as poor training, attitude, poor communication etiquette, bad customer relations and lack of motivation of front office agents could be potential root cause of poor manners. All this would affect how the front office agents interact with business customers as shown in the blueprint (appendix 3). Inadequate policies to direct the actions standardize discipline, review competencies, appraisals and recommend training for front office agents also causes weaknesses at the onstage employee action on the blue print. These attributes result into poor services leading to loss of target customers to competitors. Therefore, front desk services would be the first line helper for the guests in the hotel and will not be perishable. Operational Service Components Data collected from hundreds of customer’s feedbacks from Revinate website, including Yelp, Tripsadvisor, booking.com, hotel.com, provide obvious data to analyze different aspects of front desk services and estimate the level of service performance. Feedbacks and comments from different customers, including local travel, international travel and business, were analyzed and can be applied to several aspects of front desk services. For check-in and check-out services, the speed of service was the main focus aspect. For manner area, polite greeting and smiling were the main analysis aspect. For the knowledgeable area, being able to use different resources to solve client’s problem was the main analysis aspect. Customer feedback data for front desk of San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel show that 79% of customers were satisfied with Check-in service, 79.1% with Check-out service, 22% with Manner while only 15% were satisfied with knowledgeable (see appendix 1 figure 2). These findings shows that the strengths of San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel’s front desk lies on check in and checkout areas. However, mannerism recording 42 positives and 12 negatives should worry the management of this hotel. It is important to note that mannerism plays a vital role in customer relations, and as the first people making contact with the customer at the hotel, they plays key role in attracting guests. Therefore, manner training has to be provided to the front desk to improve their manner and give kindly impression to the customers to retain and attract customers. The negatives in terms of percentages standing at 20% for check in, 13 out of 62 feedbacks; 20% for check-out, 22% for manner and 10% for Knowledge (appendix 1, figure 3). This can be interpreted to mean the percentages of guests who visited but would not come back. In this regard, the hotel should organize training for the front desk team not only to improve their individual weakness performance, but also to improve the overall service performance of the hotel. The high satisfaction rate of business customers’ feedback 80%, 17 out of 21 feedbacks (Reference chart 3), reporting a positive experience, in Check-in, Check-out service and manner areas show that front desk services in these area are their strength areas. This also imply that front desk agents are able to help the clients to get in and out of the hotel in a timely manner which is very convenient for those business clients who are always busy. Ability of greeting business customers with smile delivers a comfortable and polite sense to business customers. This comfortable sense might lower the stress level of business customers since business workloads are always heavy and business clients are easily to develop emotional distress. Even though front desk service in check in, check out and manner areas have received high positive feedback, negative feedbacks have been received from few customers. Therefore, speed and manner training programs are needed to improve service to minimize the negative response of customers. Compare to check in, check out and manner areas, 15 out of 18 positive feedbacks have received on knowledgeable area of service, which is relatively lower than other areas. This implies that front desks are not professional enough and have lower ability to use other resource to help clients out. This does not match the desires of business clients who always require professional and knowledgeable appearances. Therefore, an improvement in knowledgeable area is priority mission for front desk agents. RECOMMENDATIONS AND STRATEGIC MESSAGE Solutions Necessary for the Most Pressing Service Operation Issues Taking actions to improve knowledge and manners at the front office is very important since it will result into positive customer experience (Yeh et al, 2013). Interactions between guests and the front office agents should be carefully planned and managed by employees and their supervisors thus they are able to ensure that professional and satisfactory interaction can be delivered to business clients as can be seen on the blueprint. Business clients are often faced with different levels of stress and would want to get the best experience from hotels. Taking actions on mannerism and knowledge will improve professional appearance and knowledge to the business client who are always seeking for professional features for their works. In addition, by improving the knowledge of staffs, they are able to refer the business clients to appropriate department in a timely manner to solve problems. By doing this, the hotel gives sense of professional, convenience and free problem to business clients. The employees’ job competencies, motivation attitude as well as organization’s policies will be improved which will in turn improve efficiency in service delivery. Justification and Importance It is very important for San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel to improve knowledge and manner because they are likely to lose their customers to their major competitor San Francisco W-Hotel. According to the data derived from San Francisco W-Hotel’s front desk: For Check-in service positive feedback is 76.19%, Check-out service, positive feedback is 76%, for Manner positive feedback is 90% and for Knowledgeable positive feedback is 82% (see appendix 1 chart 3). San Francisco W-Hotel exhibit strengths in the mannerism and knowledge ability more than check-in and check-out areas. This has been demonstrated by the highest positives for manner 90%, 64 out of 71, reporting a positive experience, and knowledge 82%, 57 out of 69, reporting a positive experience, and highest negatives for check-in ,23%, 15 out of 63, reporting a negative experience, and Check-out 23%, 15 out of 63, reporting a negative experience. These data compared to Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel’s score 22% positive for manner and 15% positive for Knowledge show that San Francisco Marriott hotel exhibit weaknesses in mannerism and knowledge (see appendix 1, chart 3). This is because customers always form opinion from the first contact with a service or product. Therefore, manner and knowledge are the main impact of attracting and retaining customers. These findings show that the overall services offered by the hotel at the front desk provided an average experience to the customers. The hotel risks losing customers and exhibitors which may affect the company’s profitability because both hotels’ target customers are business clients. Underlying Causes of the Service Issues The root cause of negative mannerism and knowledge at the San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotels front desk services can be categorized as inadequacies in personnel, procedures, policies and equipment and materials as outlined in fishbone analysis (see appendix 2). The weaknesses on the blueprint are on the physical evidence and the onstage employee action areas since they affect customers’ actions. Front office is physical evidence. Physical evidence in this case is the environment and people within the front office area. That shows physical evidence has relation with manner since front desk agents are the first person contract with guest. Front office consists of tangibles, that customer come into contact with that are likely to influence how business customers perceive quality at the Marriott Marquis Hotel’s front desk. Poorly arranged or manner front office will deter business customers from booking the hotel. Onstage employee action is the second area on the blueprint that is affected by the weaknesses mentioned above. It is also shows a poor knowledgeable of front desk agent. There is high degree of interaction with business customers in the blueprint thus the type of interaction influences their actions. Poor manners and knowledge by front office agents will definitely results into poor guest experience and impression of the hotel. As stated by Dalci & Kosan (2012), anybody who approaches the front desk office should get the same treatments a guest would get in a house. Since the bigger percentages of their customers are business people, the front office agents should be knowledgeable and charming enough about the hotel in order to warmly welcome the guests. According to Baum & Devine (2007) Individuals who dress and communicate well is an indication of power and status thus is a way of creating positive relationship between the hotel and its employees. As onstage employees, the front office executives should therefore have positive attitude, right knowledge and skills necessary for their Recommendations Improving front office area as a Physical Evidence We noted that weaknesses on the blueprint of Marriott Marquis Hotel are physical evidence and onstage employee actions that affects knowledge and manners. Physical evidence in this case is the environment and people within the front office area. Physical appearance of the front office plays a vital role in canvassing the overall perception of the business by customers (). Studies have suggested that creating a good first impression for product, person or place sets the bar for any other relationship in the business process. In this regard the hotel should improve the presentation of the people as well as the physical appearance of the front office itself. Making front office more presentable includes ensuring the front office has pleasant atmosphere throughout by making sure it is tidy and well light especially at night (Rayport et al, 2005). Presentable front office should also have magazines, newspapers, pamphlets which are properly arranged and should always have vacant seats to accommodate any new visitor and guests coming. Since the target customers for San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel are business people, they would want to get more information about the business opportunities available in San Francisco hence availing business magazines is important. Improving presentation of the front office should also ensure the front office executives or agents are presentable by ensuring that they formally dress up and tie up their hair neatly. This should include having a dress code that is acceptable by the management of the hotel. Making front office highly presentable is important in creating positive impression of the hotel and help in canvassing positive impression for Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel. Training Of Front Office Executives The second recommendation for San Francisco Marriott Marquis hotel is to offer training for the front office executives. The hotel currently does not have a clearly defined training policy for its front office executives. Even though the management recognizes the importance of training and offers training occasionally, the training offered is not structured according to the needs identified. The hotel should begin by developing a training policy both for the new front office executives and for the existing executives to ensure continual improvement in skills. The hotel also need to develop training program for the whole year as a strategy to ensure their front office staff are always at par with respect to technology just like their competitors. This is necessary improve service delivery and ensure customer satisfaction. Training is important in improving manner and knowledge because it improves ability of the employee to acquire relevant skills cope with pressure and challenges. As the first people making contact with customers, front office executives should be able to handle multiple activities with ease, poise and professionalism (Varnavas & Soteriou, 2002). For instance, they should be able to handle situations when coworkers are asking questions, several telephone lines are ringing coworkers are asking questions and guests are waiting for their attention. Training is therefore crucial in addressing the needs of the front office executives and makes them good ambassadors to Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel thus solve manner problem. Business activities and tasks will also be efficient and effective thus reducing costs and improving performance. In this regard, training of front office executives improves profitability in the long run and ensures business control a number of loyal customers. As stated by Baum & Devine (2007), training front office executives is crucial in improving their communication skills, listening skills, change their personal behaviors and habits and improve their level of professionalism in dealing with demanding, discourteous and dissatisfied guests at the front office. In this regard, training front office executives will go hand in hand in improving satisfaction, experience and meeting the expectation of customers. This will increase the number of Marriott Marquis Hotel’s customers. Training should be implemented as the most important solution to the problem of manner and knowledge at San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel front office. This is because training can be implemented immediately before considering presentation of the front office. It is important to make sure that front office executives understand the nature of their work and how to execute it before implementing other changes. Marriott Marquis Hotel management should implement training for the front office executives. This is because continuous training is the key to improvement of all aspects of hotel’s front office executives’ activities (Baum & Devine, 2007). In order to manage attitude, improve employees’ job competencies, motivations, confidence and performance. Moreover other aspects of presentations solutions can be covered during training thus will enable its smooth implementation and improvement in knowledge and manners. Strategic Training Plan for Marriott Marquis Hotel’s Front Office Executives San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel currently do not have training policy and program to guide process of training new and existing staff. The following is a table showing the proposed training plan for the front office executives. It outlines the areas of training that are important for front office executives and the number of days that it will take to train. The proposed training program may be amended as necessary to fit the organization’s daily operations. Areas of Training Proposed Time Period Cost per person Presentation, Neatness and Importance of front office image 6 hours $30 Components of Professional image 3 hours $15 Attitudes, Behaviors and Habits that ruin Professionalism 6 hours $30 Body Language and How to be a Gracious host 6 hours $30 Enhancing Verbal and Listening Skills 1 day $30 Enhancing Telephone and Professional email Communication 1 day $40 Handling Difficult People with Diplomacy 6 hours $30 The implementation of training plan listed above will be done in 2 phases for all the front office executives. Trainings will be internal and shall be conducted within one of the hotel’s conference halls by their respective supervisors and junior managers who had previously trained or have more advanced knowledge on the management of front office activities hence will be implemented immediately. In this regard, the proposed costs of training will vary depending on the training materials required only but not the cost of trainers. Training will then culminated by the development of training and development policy to improve and maintain performance. APPENDIX Appendix 1: Charts Figure 1: San Francisco Marriott Hotel’s Target Customers Figure 3: Comparison of Positive Feedbacks from Marriott Marquis hotel and competitor Figure 4: Analysis of Customers’ feedbacks from different areas Appendix 2: Fishbone Analysis Appendix 3: Blue Print for the San Francisco Marriott Marquis Hotel REFERENCES Baum, T., & Devine, F. (2007). Skills and training in the hotel sector: The case of front office employment in Northern Ireland. Tourism & Hospitality Research, 7(4), 269-280 Baum, T., & Odgers, P. (2001). Benchmarking Best Practice in Hotel Front Office: The Western European Experience. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 2(3/4), 93-109. Dalci, I., & Kosan, L. (2012). Theory of Constraints Thinking-Process Tools Facilitate Goal Achievement for Hotel Management: A Case Study of Improving Customer Satisfaction. Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, 21(5), 541-568. Digital Luxury Group. (2013). The world luxury index hotels. The Most Sought-After Luxury Hotels, 22(12)1-44. Marriott International, INC. (2014). San Francisco Marriott Marquis. Retrieved from http://www.marriott.com/hotels/hotel-deals/sfodt-san-francisco-marriott-marquis/ Rayport, J. F., Jaworski, B. J., & Kyung, E. J. (2005). Best face forward: Improving companies service interfaces with customers. Journal of Interactive Marketing (John Wiley & Sons), 19(4), 67-80. Sheinman, A. J. (2013). San Francisco Marriott Marquis.Meetings & Conventions, 8(11) 124-137. Varnavas, A. P., & Soteriou, A. C. (2002). Towards customer-driven management in hospitality education: A case study of the higher hotel institute, Cyprus. The International Journal of Educational Management, 16(2), 66-74. Yeh, R., Tu, Y., Chuang, N., Lin, M. J., & Lin, H. T. (2013). Hotel employees uniform and their self-perceptions in Southern California. Tourism Management Perspectives, 679-81 Read More