The Principles of Total Quality Management - Report Example

EXECUTIVE SUMMARY This report is written as a part of the work Total Quality Management. It offers the reader information regarding the Total Quality Management functions that exist in the Front Office department of Rotana Hotel in Al Ain. The information for the study was gathered using both primary and secondary methods of data collection including books, websites and personal interviews. The report will provide a brief description of the products and services offered by Rotana Hotel in general. Later, the Front Office department’s functions will be highlighted. It will also give detailed illustrations related to the standards and expectations of a typical five stars hotel front office, descriptions of Rotana’s Front Office standards, an analysis of Rotana’s front office standards will also be provided. The report will also include the survey about the performance standards of the Front Office department of Rotana Hotel. Finally, the report will also offer its readers with recommendations and total quality management tools that would be implemented in the Front Office department of Rotana Hotel. Introduction Short History of the Organization The Rotana Hotels Management Corporation known as the Rotana Hotels, one of the leading hotel management companies in Middle East, was established in 1992, by a partnership between Nasser Al Nowais and Selim El Zyr, who were joined three years later by Nael Hashweh and Imad Elias. The Rotana Hotels Management Corporation started its operation as Rotana hotel in 1993 in Abu Dhabi. Description of the Product and Services Rotana Hotel offers traditional Arabic hospitality and embraced by the grandeur of modern luxuries. It offers luxury accommodation and delicious food and beverage along with outdoor swimming pools, fitness center, sauna and Jacuzzi to its guests. Due to its location in the commercial center with major tourist attractions surrounding it, Rotana Hotel provides its guests with an extremely pleasurable experience. It also offers a business center and a ballroom that accommodates 1,000 people along with to quality audio-visual facility. Vision “Our vision is to be the Leading and Preferred Hospitality Management Company within the Middle East, operating Hotels, Suites and Resorts. We have the expertise, the passion and the competitive strength to achieve this goal”. Mission Statement “We will identify and exceed the expectations of our Guests, Staff and Owners through innovative and creative solutions, combined with personalized care to gain their loyalty. We will constantly maintain International quality standards complemented with traditional Arabic Hospitality”. Description of the Front Office Department The responsibility of the Front Office of a Hotel is to represent the hotel to the public. This role is carried out by the personnel by welcoming the customers and offering them the required services. This Front Office department generally consists of the following five sections; the front desk, the reservation section, the telephone operator, the guest relations and the concierge. All these sections have certain duties assigned which they have to fulfill to provide their customers with the required services. (See Appendix 1 for the organizational Chart) Role of the Department The basic role of the department is to offer the guests with the best possible services available. It is the responsibility of the front office manager to supervise the work of the receptionists, information clerk, reservation clerk and other service personnel like bell captain, bell boy and doorman. In order to make sure that the guests consider returning to the hotel in the future, Rotana Hotel offers its guests the best possible and the most effective services available. The customers can even reserve rooms using the technology of future overnight accommodations in which the reservation department, using real time, can check the availability of the rooms and the customers’ preferences. Furthermore, to ensure that the staff at the personnel at Rotana Hotel is performing efficiently, they are molded and developed through a complete training programmne. The skills and ability of each staff member are strained and cultivated through proper trainings to prepare them before their actual responsibilities. The management values each of the staff members and provides them with follow-up training sessions on regular basis to update and refresh these skills. The typical standards and expectations of a Front Office Al Ain Rotana Hotel is considered as a five stars hotel and possesses extremely high quality standards in all the departments and specially Front Office Department. Front Office Department is the only department that contacts directly with customers. There are 22 typical standards that have to be met by the Front Office Department at the Al Ain Rotana Hotel (see Appendix 2). In order to check, whether these standards are being fulfilled or not, a survey was conducted asking the customer at the Rotana Hotel regarding their experience. (see Appendix 3). The results of the survey were diverse due to Al Ain Rotana Hotel customers information. It was discovered that most of the standards at the Front Office in Al Ain Rotana Hotel were achieved, while others were not. The standards that received high scoring were that of employee answering the phone with appropriate greeting, identifying the department, thanking the guest and wishing them a pleasant journey, employee knocking lightly on the door, offering assistance in opening car doors and hotel entrance door for guest, and the employee having a good knowledge of the English language. On the other hand, standards which scored low on the survey were the employee automatically offering to make any dinner reservations on the guests behalf, employee engaging in polite conversation on the way to the room, employee pointing out heating or air-conditioning controls, and how to operate the telephone and the porters desk answering the phone within three rings. One of the standards that will be scoped over the customers visiting Al Ain Rotana Hotel were dissatisfied was that the front office employee should automatically offer to make any dinner reservations on the guests behalf. This standard scores 71.4% of the customers who agreed on not being offered this option by Al Ain Rotana Hotel employees. In this case, the benchmark standard of employee automatically offering to make dinner reservations on the guest’s behalf should reach 80%, rather than the low percentage of 71.4%. Are those standards and expectations being met? As mentioned in the previous section that some of the standards at the front desk were met by the employees and scored more than 70% in the opinion of guests staying at Rotana Hotel. For example, the standard of the employee answering the phone with appropriate greeting and identifying the department scored 100% suggesting that the standard was being met appropriately. Another standard that scored high is the employee knocking lightly on the door with a score of 92.8% also suggesting that the standard was being met. The standard of thanking the guest and wishing them a safe journey also scored high with a percentage of 71.9%. Moreover, the employee offering assistance in opening car doors on arrival scored 71.4% and the standard of employee opening hotel entrance door for guest scored 78.5%. Also, the standard of employee having a good working knowledge of the English language scored 78.5%. However, some standards scored very low as mentioned in the previous section. These low scoring standards included employee automatically offering to make any dinner reservations on the guests behalf, employee engaging in polite modest conversation on the way to the room, employee pointing out heating or air-conditioning controls, employee point out how to operate the telephone, porters desk answer the phone within three rings. The standards with the lowest scores would be described further. The standard which received the lowest result on the survey was that the employee should automatically offer to make any dinner reservations on the guests behalf. Due to this specific standard, there were complaints regarding dinner reservations (see Appendix 4). Based on the complaint report, it can be deduced that the specific standard is not met as numerous complaints had been filed by the guests and the survey results also showed a low percentage. The reason for the standard not being met was that the customers were already guests at Rotana Hotel and the guest services of the Front Office Department were responsible for the problem. Rotana’s Front Office Standards Analysis As it is known that Front Office department is the public face of the hotel; therefore, the personnel at the Front Desk need to work hard, in order to fulfill the required standards. Offering automatic dinner reservations on the guests behalf is a difficult task as the service is not provided in every hotel. Therefore, if the employees offered the service of automatic dinner reservations, it would save customers a lot of time as they would be free from the decision of deciding the appropriate dinner place. The survey also illustrated that the standard did not possess enough leadership quality as the employees in the reception area generally forgot to offer automatic dinner reservations on the guest’s behalf. Furthermore, the front desk manager is also not aware of the standard not being met because if the manger had lead his employees on the right path then all the standards would have been met appropriately, which would have resulted in exceeding the guest’s expectations. One of the obstacles faced by Rotana Hotel is the lack of management commitment and for an organization to succeed and fulfill its organizational goals; the management should be completely committed to the organization. From the problem, it can be deduced that the manager is not always present for the employees and the guests. Furthermore, there is no communication between the Front Desk and the Food and Beverage department. If any sort of communication had existed, the Food and Beverage department would have immediately reported the problem to the Front Desk as most of the diners were from outside the hotel. Thus, suggesting that dinner reservations for the guests staying in the hotel were not being made. Another factor that must be analyzed is the standard of services provided to the internal and external customer. This indicates that the Front Office is facing the problem in providing adequate training and job description to their employees. Furthermore, the Front Office does not share information regarding other services being offered by the hotel with any other department. In addition, the Front Office mainly emphasizes on pulling the customer towards their department and achieving departmental goals rather than providing quality to its guests on the whole and fulfilling the organizational objectives. Also, some of the employees at the hotel do not possess complete information regarding their concerned department because if this had been the case then the results of the survey would not have showed such low percentages. Finally, no efforts are being made by the management to provide regular training and follow-up programmes in order to enhance the existing skills of the employees. In the end, it can be concluded from the analysis that the department’s main objective is to fulfill its departmental goals and not provide customers with complete information regarding other services and facilities being offered by the hotel. Also, Front Office department is not involved in the production process of the hotel, as suggested in the survey, due to its lack of communication with the Food and Beverage department. Furthermore, no steps were taken by the Front Office department to collect feedback from the customers regarding their services in order to improve the existing standards. Another obstacle faced by the management is that the Front Office department is not involved in continuous improvement of its employees. This indicates that the employees stop improving on their skills after a certain period and do not upgrade themselves with the innovations taking place in the hotel industry. This ultimately effects the reputation and the productivity of the hotel as stagnant employees are a liability for an organization rather than an asset. Recommendations This can be done by the implementation process of Total Quality Management which would begin with the identification of the problem by the top management. This would not only enhance their commitment to the organization but also assist in implementing the required changes in order to overcome the problem and reach a benchmark. The implementation process would include appropriate training of the employees of the Front Office department and help them focus on the customers’ needs. The training would include offering dinner reservations for the guests and providing the guest with a dinner reservation brochure which would include the list of restaurants in the hotel. Secondly, the department would be encouraged to communicate effectively with other departments and establish virtual teams which would connect the departments through a system. Finally, the implementation process would include the training of employees to become customer-focused. If the customer chooses not to fill the dinner reservation form at that moment, then the employees should be trained to explain for the customer that s/he can made a dinner reservation any day by filling the same form that will be available in their room. Due to the implementation process, the customers would be extremely satisfied as it would become easier for them to make dinner reservations. Furthermore, there would be significant increase in the revenue as the guests would eat in the restaurant. The implementation process would be supported with an action plan which would be helpful in managing and organizing the process of having a TQM department. Following is a table that illustrates a recommended action plan to improve the quality of the front office department especially in the dinner reservation standard: Area Training focus Training methods tools Trainees Trainer Dead line Reservation Review of the dinner reservation procedures and customer focus One-to-one training on dinner reservation Following the hotel’s standards and check list All the reservation team especially the Receptionists Reservation Supervisor 9 January 2010 As the Front Office department of the Al Ain Rotana Hotel needs to be changed into a TQM department, therefore the six principles of TQM would be applied. 1. Leadership: The management and the office manager of the Front Office should commit to the organization completely. In order to do this, the management needs to offer the best and high quality service by following the organization vision and mission to achieve its objectives and goals. 2. Customer Focus: The goal of any organization should be the fulfillment of the customers’ needs because only customers determine the level of quality. Therefore, the Front Office department should focus on both internal and external customers since the quality of the services being offered is evaluated through customer satisfaction. 3. Ensure Total Employee Involvement: The employees at an organization should be empowered so that they perform to the best of their capabilities. Therefore, the Front Office department should encourage the total involvement of the entire work force and the connection with other department to form virtual team. 4. Continuous Improvement: TQM is mainly concerned with continuous improvement in all aspects of the work therefore; the Front Office department should seek for continuous improvement by improving capabilities to produce better results in the future. 5. Satisfy the Suppliers: This is another principle of TQM in which the organization should satisfy the person or organization that provides them with the services they offer. Thus, the hotel management should treat suppliers as partners. 6. Mutually Beneficial Relationships/Partnerships Process Approach: In this TQM principle, the management should work together with the partners, employees and the customers for achieving the organizational goals. In order to do this, the Front Office department should establish different performance measures for their process and this can be measured using different TQM tools. Different total quality management tools were employed to evaluate the performance of the Front Office of Al Ain Rotana Hotel. These included: Customer’s Survey: By employing the survey method, prompt feedback can be gathered regarding the services being offered at the hotel. It is advised to the Front Desk department that they carry out such surveys on regular basis as it would assist then in evaluating their performance, improving employee efficiency and overcome any deficiency they might have. Benchmarking: Another tool used in the performance improvement of the Front Office at Rotana Hotel is making use of benchmarking. After the survey results, the standard which had the lowest score was benchmarked to have at least 80% of its customers satisfied by automatically offering them dinner reservations at the hotel. Input-output process: Another tool to measure the performance of the dinner reservation standard is the input-output tool. Following is an illustration on an input-output process in order to measure the performance of the dinner reservation after the plan was implemented. Information Technology: In addition to the traditional tools to evaluate the performance of the Front Office department, it is recommended that they make use of information technology programs that offer features of tracking and evaluating the department’s performance and generate statistical and graphical analysis graphs that would help in achieving continuous improvement in the department. As it has already been mentioned, a number of changes are recommended to enhance the existing status of the organization in general and the Front Office department in specific. The most important recommendation was implementation the six principles of total quality management because it is only through this method that a Total Quality Management organization can be achieved. After the implementation of all the processes, it should be made certain that the aims and objective of the plan were achieved, that is, the problem was reduced and a benchmark was established. In order to evaluate the result of the plan, several techniques can be employed in which customer survey is the first and foremost method. A survey would be carried out based on the customer satisfaction regarding the services being offered and the results of the survey would be compared with those of the previous survey. Another technique that could be used is the sending of a guest, working for the management, to experience the quality of the Front Office department and reports the observations made to the management. Conclusion In conclusion, the principles of Total Quality Management seeks to satisfy both the external and internal customer with quality goods and services, and to continuously improve processes by working smarter and using special quality methods. Even though it is an expensive and time consuming process, but the advantages that it offers overcomes any problems that it might have. In our opinion, through this project we gained knowledge reading different TQM tools, how they improve the existing organizational performance. But more importantly, it offered us knowledge to implement the TQM tools in real life situations. BIBLIOGRAPHY Besterfield, Dale, H., et al. Total Quality Management – 3rd ed. New Jersey: Pearson Education, 2003 Dafenso. Analen. 18th Nov. 2009, Reservation Manager, Al Ain Rotana Hotel. El Haj, Joseph. Personal Interview. 25th Nov. 2009. Front Office Manager, Al Ai Rotana Hotel Saleeba, Ghassan. Personal Interview. 22nd Nov. 2009, Assistant Front Office Manager, Al Ain Rotana Hotel. Rotana. 3 Mar. 2004. 30 Nov. 2009 www.rotana.com. Read More