Marriott Hotels and Resorts - Performance Excellence - Case Study Example

Reflective Essay on Marriott Hotels and Resorts Student’s name: Institution: Instructor: Subject: Reflective Essay on Marriott Hotels and Resorts Marriott consists of group of hotels and resorts that are situated in different parts of the world. In each of its branches, the group of hotels is able to facilitate different form of events that include business meetings, weddings and vocational events. Marriott has therefore a very wide range of customers from different parts of the world. This essay seeks to investigate on whether performance excellence is being achieved by the Marriott. The essay shall further seek to find the various alternatives through which this group of hotels and resort could improve its quality outcome. I will also discuss the learning experience that I gained from my visit to the Marriott Hotels and Resorts. An organization is said to have achieved performance excellence when it is able to generate maximum level of profit with the resources, capital and financial resources it possess (Heesup Ki-Joon & Betsy 2009). Achievement of performance excellence results from good services to the customers who would in turn attract more customers (Chong, Jung. & Sang 2009). Therefore, one of the strongest measures of how successful an organization has achieved performance excellence is by the number of customers that would want to associate themselves with that company. This is very applicable in hotel and resort industry like Marriott. Marriott has been able to achieve performance excellence to a certain extent through two major ways. First, it ensures that all its services are customer centered. The services of the company in all its branches are maintained at certain minimum level that is of quality standards. Furthermore, the company has a system that periodically identifies the needs of the customers and organizes the internal structure to ensure that these needs are catered for. Secondly, the company has established the hotel and resort at different parts of the world. Through this, the business is able to gather wide knowledge on the needs of the customer and finding ways of satisfying these needs. Performance excellence is also achieved when the company is able offers similar services in different parts of the world. Most of the people who frequently travel would want to have high standard services offered at whatever part of the world they visit. Customers who have enjoyed the operations of the hotels in one part of the world would definitely want to have similar services when they visit another part of the world which makes them want to stay in same hotel situated another area. Marriott has been able to achieve all this through a comprehensive management system that ensures that all its hotels and resorts offers quality services. To achieve performance excellence, any company should have as enough knowledge and experience in its field of operation. Out of this, it could be able to come up with organizational goals that are achievable. The system of acquiring knowledge adopted by Marriott fully optimized. Staffs are periodically trained which ensures their operations are fully optimized in terms of business performance and customer satisfaction. In course of their duties, the staff collects data on customer’s satisfactions and provides real time feedback. Any complains by the customers are not just promptly attended to, but also serves as a survey of ensuring better services are provided in future. The technique of listening, responding and teaching adopted by the organization in their operation makes it to achieve a very high level of performance excellence. Leadership is one of the greatest ingredients of performance excellence (Baker, & Fisher, 2008). Proper coordination is required in all levels of management to ensure that use of resources is optimized in a manner that is going to give produce highest income. With Marriott, leadership is natured through continuous training of the staff. The leaders have effectively been able to coordinate their employees to ensure that they offer the best services to highest level of customer satisfaction. It is due to this leadership that the company has been able to achieve 70 percent occupancy level while the industry was only achieving about 65 percent. Even though Marriott has been able to achieve a high level of excellence, there are certain aspects that it would need to improve on in order to achieve better results. The company seems to have invested too much on employee training and refresher training. The management not only needs to train its employees but also need to motivate them. Narangajavana &, Hu (2008) observes that ensuring that staffs that have shown outstanding performance are rewarded or recognized would go a long way toward motivating the staffs to give better results. Some of the resources used for training should be allocated to creating means of motivating the staffs through rewards and recognition. Periodic training the staff on a certain issue may become repetitive and boring if not properly organized. However, motivation makes the staff to discover their own unique ways through which they can give better results. Another great way to motivate and promote leaning is making the staff of Marriott in one branch to visit other branches as customers. In this case the staff would be treated as customers in the host branch by being offered accommodation facilities like the rest of the visitors. Out of this, the visitors would feel motivated and they would be able to easily point out the weaknesses in the host Hotels and Resorts and probably offer a better solutions than the rest of the customers would. The staff should also be offered opportunities to visit other hotels and resorts to identify new market demands. Staffs are better acquitted to offering better services when they are fully aware of the market environment (Narangajavana &, Hu (2008). Unless the staffs are aware what their competitors are doing better than they are, they may not be able to fully come up with ways of improving their services. In order to ensure that they are always updated about the market status, some of the staffs should visit other hotels and resorts as customers and find out what is being done better than they are so that they can make improvements. Maintaining and attracting new customers should be the main agenda that the Marriot should focus on. The organization need to come up with a way of identifying itself with the regions that the hotels are. Marriott enjoys having different hotels and resorts in different part of the world all of which offers similar services. In the regions where these hotels are built, they should find a way of identifying themselves with the community and the activities that such community engages in. Narangajavana &, Hu (2008) observe that whenever visitor visits a given area, they have a tendency of willing to get as much information about the society or the community they visit. They would also want to interact in a way with the host community. Furthermore, this interaction would also be a good way of advertising itself to the citizens of the host community. Since hotels and resorts are the main means through which visitors are accommodated, they are the easiest facilities that can be able to offer this kind of service. Whenever visitors goes to a hotel or resort in a certain part of the globe, they should have a feeling of the kind of life that the host community engages with. This kind of integration will make the group of hotels be way ahead of their competitors. Furthermore, members of the society may further be able to give their inputs on ways of improving the services of Marriott. According to Hokey, Hyesung (2000), maintaining customers can also be achieved through reward programs. In this case, a way should be developed that recognizes the customers who any time they visit any of the groups of hotels and resorts. Depending on frequency and amount spend on the hotels; the customer may be given a certain percentage discount to encourage him or her to frequently use the services of Marriott. This kind of reward program would maintain frequent travellers such as businesspersons that would be a positive move in performance of the group of hotels. From the visit I made to branches of Marriott, the most striking thing is the level at which Marriott goes toward ensuring that the needs of the customers are identified and acted on. This is achieved through a self-regulating system that listens, responds and takes appropriate actions to rectify or improve the system. In course of the stay in the hotel, every customer has variety of ways of giving opinion on the services offered to him or her. Customers contribute to improving service quality through filling of questionnaires in course of their stays. From data gathered through the questionnaires, prompt measures to match up these needs and expectations are deployed by the management. Therefore, the higher the number of customers Marriott gets, the higher the number of opinions which in turn translates to better and more refined customers’ needs hence better service quality. This is further supported with a comprehensive continuous training program to the staff, which is expertly conducted by a quality management team. The entire operations of the group of hotels and resorts are in continuous learning on the needs of the customers and prompt actions taken soonest time possible. Indeed, high level of service quality is achieved whenever all the operations of this organization are geared towards achieving a common goal (Lars Michael & Anders, 2001). Definitely, with this kind of system, all the operations are directed in a manner that they put the needs of the customers first. This in turn translates to higher number of customers and therefore more income to the business. In conclusion, the level of performance excellence achieved by Marriott is high enough to sustain the company with the current level of competition. Performance excellence is achieved through customer-centered services, high level of staff training and properly organized leadership system. In order to further improve the quality of its services to the customers, Marriott needs to motivate its staff, offer reward programs to frequent visitors and identify itself with all the communities that it has established its business. The major learning experience I got from the visit I made to the Marriott is the structure of organization that engages customers, staff and the management that collectively enables the company to achieve high level of service quality. References Baker, E., & Fisher, M. (2008). Organizing for Quality Management - Handbook of Software Quality Assurance, Artech House Inc., pp. 1-34. Chong, P., Jung, L. & Sang, C. (2009). Decision support system for service quality management using customer knowledge in public service organization’, Expert Systems with Applications, 36 (1), pp. 8227–8238. Heesup, H., Ki-Joon, B.& Betsy, B. (2009). Influencing factors on restaurant customers’ revisit intention: The roles of emotions and switching barriers’, International Journal of Hospitality Management, 28 (1) 563–572. Hokey, M., Hyesung, M. (2000). Benchmarking the quality of hotel services: managerial perspectives, International Journal of Quality & Reliability Management, 14 (6) 582-597. Lars, N., Michael, D. & Anders, G. (2001).The impact of quality practices on customer satisfaction and business results: product versus service organizations, Journal of Quality Management. 6(2) pp. 5–27. Narangajavana, Y. & Hu, B. (2008). The Relationship between the Hotel Rating Systems, Service Quality Improvement, and Hotel Performance Changes: A Canonical Analysis of Hotels in Thailand, Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 9 (1), 34 -56. Read More