Fascinating Internship at a Korean Hotel - Essay Example

HOTEL INTERNSHIP Introduction I recently completed a fascinating internship at a Korean hotel. During my time of employment I worked in a range of different positions and learned a lot about different aspects of the hotel's management and corporate culture. I also got to see the delivery of services in person (and indeed participate in them). I had a ground level view of the delivery of services and the expression of the hotel's management culture. In this report I will provide specific elements and examples of my experience. Part I: Background of the Organization I'm a big believer that management is a complex art. I think it involves a lot of angles relating to competition, performance and commitment. Certainly, in my experience at the hotel I discovered that managers had to deal with a lot of competition. We were hardly the only hotel on the beach and we were constantly monitoring our competition to see how they were performing. Our prices and services would change depending on the successes and failures of our competition. I really think that the quality of the hotel's services and its reputation reflect the type of management a company has. Good managers have to be committed to the success of their company or hotel. They have to come to work with a sense of pride in the work they do. If they don't, then everything will simply fall apart. And the "troops," people like my self on the frontlines simply won't be loyal. This is an important point. In the case of my hotel, my managers knew that the loyalty and morale of employees was key to the success of the whole operation. If people felt they weren't treated with a basic sense of respect, they would pass that on to the customers. That would be disastrous. In order to establish a sense of family and reward, employees were given big discounts at the restaurant and at other hotels at the same chain. Managers were open and honest with employees about how things were going in a business sense. Voices were rarely raised and people were told when they were doing a good job. There was even an employee of the month program that gave rewards to people who had done an exception job that month. These things kept people motivated and moral high. Our customers appreciated the high morale of the employees and the work managers did to maintain this. Our clientele was mostly young Korean couples on their honeymoons. They enjoyed getting a good deal on packaged activities and socializing with people like themselves. They wanted to go on vacation but they didn't want something too remote or alien. They still wanted to eat kimchee in the restaurant, for example. And who can blame them? Kimchee is a nutritious and delicious meal. The clientele was young, professional, but not especially wealthy. They also were not too demanding and rarely complained. Most would come in the summer to stay for five or six days. On average they would spend about $500. They received many discounts and most of the deals were arranged through travel agencies. Part II: Management, Training and Employee Information When I first arrived at the hotel there was a substantial employee orientation program. It last about four days long and involved a lot of training and role playing. The managers stressed polite and friendly interaction with customers in order to make the stay as pleasant as possible. They also emphasized the cleanliness of the hotel ground and the rooms themselves. We were shown how to pick up garbage if we ever saw it anywhere on the grounds. We were also trained to deal with difficult customers who complained a lot. Friendliness was emphasized. We should never lose our temper with a customer, no matter how irritating they were. For the managers the keyword was respect and we had this instilled in us from the very beginning of our term of employment. Another important thing focused on during the training was communication. Nothing is more important then keeping open the lines of communication, for when they are closed trouble begins. People have to know what others are doing and thinking or else many mistakes will be made and tempers will flare. If employees are left in the dark about significant decisions being taken by management than they feel they are not an important part of the organization. Also, this is when rumours begin and rumours are very bad for any organization. People use these kinds of opportunities to settle scores. Discipline begins to fall apart very quickly in these situation. Throughout the course of my internship I was very impressed by how well management kept the lines of communication open. There daily updates by email of what was happening and what needed to be done and there were weekly meetings that kept everyone in the loop. This is what was promised and this is what was delivered. The quality of the training was overall very high. The trainers were highly motivated and enthusiastic. We practiced a lot of fun role playing where one person would pretend to be a customer with a problem and other would practice being the employee. We would go over a whole list of scenarios and what if such situations. Some would be more difficult than others but all of them were valuable learning experiences that I will cherish. We were also taught how to improve our manners. There were several hours of cultural sensitivity training to keep us knowledgeable about the different types of people who would visit our hotel and the different expectations they would have. Part III: Specific Job Information During my time at the hotel I worked in three particular divisions. The first was at the coffee shop. The shop was in the foyer of the hotel and was usually quite busy. I worked six hours a day, five days a week making coffee for customers. There was one other employee, an older lady who smoked a lot. She often didn't work very hard, so unfortunately I had to pick up her slack quite frequently. This aspect of the job was especially pleasant. We were permitted a 10 minute break every three hours. There were a lot less customers in the late afternoon. At this time I was known as a coffee shop employee. Later, as I had been fairly successful in the position I was promoted to work as a Front Desk Officer. This was because I was told I had good people skills. This work was longer—eight hours a day—but a bit more pleasant. There were more opportunities to do problem solving which is something I enjoy and hadn't really experienced while working at the coffee shop. I worked usually besides three other employees. For this job I was given two new suits which I was to wear. I was also trained to perform some personal hygiene activities which I hadn't known about before. This not only improved my confidence but led to better job performance in the long run. This I felt was my most productive time in the hotel. Following a stint at the front desk I asked to be moved to the banquet hall where there was a girl I liked. The banquet hall was a step down from the front desk, but a step up from the coffee shop. The hotel occasionally catered to conferences by Japanese dentists and during the conferences food had to be provided. In this capacity I worked as a waiter for the hotel. Once again my uniform changed; however, I was still on point and had to be very friendly and respectful towards all the customers. Since I am generally this kind of person it came pretty naturally to me. During all three of these jobs I had the same supervisor who was responsible for interns. His name was Damien Altwist and he was about 34 years old. He was generally an engaging and generous person and won the respect of employees by being reasonable instead of being unnecessarily strict. He strongly believed in keeping open the lines of communication and often told employees, "My door is always open." He was a friendly person who it was easy to respect and I generally liked him. He wasn’t trying to do anything and everything simply to get ahead. You could tell that he had a sense of dignity and also a sense of pride in the work he was doing which is very important for anyone who wishes to succeed in the hospitality industry. To many people simply working in the industry as a way to pay the bills but have no real appreciation for the pleasures of the business. I often think about it this way: what kind of job is better than one in which you help happy people make good memories. Our hotel in particular catered to honeymooners. A honeymoon is a very important and memorable moment in many people lives—it’s not just another vacation. If we do a bad job, it is almost the same as the marriage getting off on the wrong foot. This is definitely something to avoid. As for the question about the ins and outs of each of the departments I worked in, this is important to understanding the operations of the hotel. All three of the sections I worked in were adequately staffed, with the exception of the coffee shop. As I wrote above, there was an older lady who worked with me who spent most of her time on her smoke breaks. She didn’t contribute very much so I wouldn’t say the coffee shop was well-staffed. It would have been better to have a younger more ambitious person working there. Also someone who didn’t constantly reek of cigar smoke. The employment hires for each of these sections were done by a recruiting firm. Overall, I would say that this recruiting firm did a pretty good job. Most of the employees however were on the young side and some even had tattoos. The employees tended to stay for about one year. There were the occasional employee who had been there four or five years, but that was somewhat rare. Part of the problem in this aspect was that the employees were young and wanted to sow their wild oats a bit; they didn’t want to be stuck in one place. I think this is an important issue for employers to look at when considering hiring. Young people often don’t stick around as long as people who are married and looking to settle down. The only thing the hotel was looking for in the beginning of the hiring process was a good and respectful attitude. They didn’t want people who were mouthy or maladjusted. The most important thing for the hotel managers was service. If you were a generally well-mannered and respectful person you could get a job with them. If this was just an act you would probably be found out pretty quickly and fired. Part IV: Evaluation and Critique Overall the hotel was a well run business. The management philosophy of the managers was one that most employees got behind. The business was not run with too much of an eye on the bottom line (it helped that things were generally quite profitable) and so there was not a lot of cost cutting. Excessive cost cutting can seriously affect not only employees morale but the morale of paying guests. It is very easy to see where there has been a dime saved and it immediately discourages clients from returning. That’s how hotels get a bad reputation. Because things were fairly easy going from a management perspective, the workplace was relaxed and fairly enjoyable. Supervisors were not people who were constantly breathing down you neck or treating you like an object. They tried to be understanding. It helped that most of the employees were reasonable people too and did not come to work with a lot of problems and issues that then had to be dealt with on the floor. The company was clearly looking for people who knew what they were doing and knew how to be honest and work well with customers. The hotel also had a very successful ad campaign which featured a number of employees and gave them a real sense of investment in the company. The ad’s slogan was “Hotel Denki—Have the time of your life!” and it featured a lot of pictures of people windsurfing, flying kites and sunbathing. Some of the better looking employees were paid extra to play themselves in the ad and show of their excellent service skills. I chose not to participate in this ad because I was very busy that day but it would have been fun to be on camera and following a funny script. The hotel had a few weaknesses I will mention briefly. One, there were a few hangers-on among the employees, people who had been there for too long and no longer enjoyed their job or participated properly in the workplace. Also some of the cook staff in the kitchen were rather surly and there were rumours that some of them used illicit substances. I know working in a kitchen can be a stressful job, but there is really no excuse for that sort of behaviour. The fact that this rumours were going about is an indication that were a few problems relating to this and there should probably have been better supervision. There were occasionally problems relating to the food taking too long in the hotel bar. Similar to this there was a kind of discotheque located in the bar and this too was not strongly supervised. There were rumours that underage people would sometimes sneak into the discotheque and more than once someone mentioned that there were women in the bar who would sometimes do things for money. It is very hard for me to judge the truth of these rumours, but they came from credible people. Because of the hotels location, on a somewhat unprotected beach, the business aspect was highly dependant on the weather. In the future, if I were to open my own hotel I would be sure to put it in a place where if there was high winds many people would cancel their reservations. Other than these minor issues, however, I think the hotel was a fine place to work and well situated in the business world to make money in the future. As I said before, the key thing to its success was its management philosophy. How do I feel, looking back, about the value of this internship. I feel fairly tired. The work was certainly interesting for the first few weeks, but even though I worked at three different sectors of the job I have to say that it became less and less challenging. There are only so many formulas of social interaction that occur in a hotel and only a certain variety of issues that have to be worked through. Making coffee every day is something that a robot could easily do, for example. However, I did get a chance to really think about how a hotel should be run and how it should provide services. This I credit to the fact that I got to see a lot of different parts of the hotel and work with a good supervisor and many different types of employees. This helped provide a well-rounded vision of the operations of the hotel as a whole. I also could see how the hotel worked as a business and this was a key lesson for me. I am generally very interested in business and had the opportunity through this internship of working in a competitive business environment for the first time. I got to see what works and what doesn’t work. Another very good thing about this internship was the level of responsibility that came with. I was treated like a normal employee and found I was often the work of any other person hired at the hotel. The supervisors treated me as an employee and didn’t use kid gloves. I felt a good level of respect because of this. When I first started at the hotel I was concerned I would be treated simply as a copy boy or made to sit in the corner the whole time and do nothing. The level of responsibility though was of an appropriate level I felt in the end. If I were change anything relating to this internship it would be the length. It was a little too long. Many of the key lessons I learned during my work at the hotel could have been learned in only a few weeks. There is certainly something to be said for drilling lessons into you head, but in this case I didn’t think that was necessary. I would also ask to be paid more. Read More