Rooms Division Management: RDM Profit to the HR Department during Recession - Coursework Example

Rooms division Management: RDM Profit to the HR Department during Recession 4 April Rooms division Management: RDM Profit to the HR Department during Recession Introduction Room Division Management henceforth referred to as RDM is one of the most significant management position in hotels and related fields providing similar services as a hotel would provide. Room Division (RD) refers to a department in a hotel, comprising of many other small sub-departments that cater for the services that guests expect to receive while under the custody of the given facility. The prominently referred sub-departments are the front office and the housekeeping department; two departments that are fundamental in determining the efficiency of such a facility. The front office plays a vital role in creating the initial and conclusive impression in the eyes of the customer while the latter sub-department ensures comfort, indicating just how much RD, and thus RDM is a vital practice that could cripple business in case any negligence could be experienced by the involved staff (Miller, 2003). This paper is aimed at identifying some current RDM and RD aspects as per the present situation in the field and relates the same to the profitability it could have to the Human Resource (HR) department during recession period. It will specifically identify the factors of RDM that could profit an organization and justify the HR department of the employee practice at hand. The research methodology involved will be based on the descriptive research methodology, also called ex post facto, given the objective of finding the current situations and also the limitation of primary data usage given the time limitation. This methodology was preferred given its focus on surveys based on strictly detail seeking in alignment to a given project or report objective. To further reinforce the focus of the paper, we shall have a case study of Delta Chelsea Hotel located in Toronto, Canada, with an overview of some of its Room Division management especially in the recession period in order to see the effects this department has over the overall performance of a hotel facility. Room Division Management is the main hotel department that determines the entire performance that includes finance, marketing, and customer satisfaction given its proximal operation with the customer. Literature Review: Current RDM Scenario in the Field Service-oriented business sector, compared to product-based businesses, is one extremely challenging sector in the business world. All that product-based businesses require is an efficient and effective means of marketing and advertising and the state of its sales could be sealed. On the contrary, service-oriented businesses need to show service and provide commitment to the latter to ensure satisfaction. This is of course besides the somehow compulsory marketing that should still be performed. The main reason of this might be the tricky inclusion of human skills to satisfy the needs of customers given the character and attitude complexity that a diverse range of customers own. One such service as described in the above scenario is in the hotel industry. RD and RDM are fundamental aspects in a hotel environment. The front desk is located at the entrance point of many hotels. This is the strategic area aimed at giving the potential customers a perfect first impression the first time they visit the premises of the hotel. Such work, usually under the jurisdiction of the RDM requires personal relation skills of the highest quality. The front desk attendant could be liable for either adding that extra customer the hotel needs or losing many patrons amounting to enormous losses to the hotel facility. Room Division Management with liaise to Human Resource should thus have very high standards of the process to chose an employee that would fit the description to match the qualities required at this location. Any slackness in the process could result in poor service that could compromise the effectiveness of the Room Division department (Rivera and Casado, 1998). Aligning the above sentiments to the focus of this paper, many service industry players, including in the hotel industry in this context have upped their stance in order to remain relevant and competitive in recession period. The recession period is usually accompanied by a certain laxity in the economic growth of a company thus the overall slow growth experienced in many businesses, especially in the service sector. Facilities containing near-to-perfect services at the front desk are highly likely to put an edge over competitors thus adding profit in a given facility. This adds up to customer retention in the long run, indicating how Room Division, the department that oversees this section, as one imperative section in the existence of any hotel. Another significant duty falling under RDM concerns room availability and allocation. Many hotels have witnessed the loss of customers given the miscommunication of room availability and allocation. No customer would want to be psychologically misdirected after an assurance of being given a certain room in a certain hotel only to arrive at the said facility and miss the initially communicated rooms. To avoid this scenario, close observance should be focused on data relating to room availability and condition. Such an operation is usually referred to as room forecasting. The data that is involved includes expected arrivals, stay-overs, cancellations, check-outs, overstays, and surprise walk-ins. These data, synchronized in an orderly manner, could set it all right for the Room Division manager to determine the rooms that are available for booking and those that are not. Furthermore, plans for the future relating to future admissions and amenity equipping are well planned for and a budget developed (Hussain, 2012). During recession, many hotels fall below their targets in admitting the number of patrons they aim. This is explained by the inflated standards of living that the modern economic globe is experiencing. The irresponsibility that could be exhibited by poor communication and the unreliability could be a great liability to the involved company. On the contrary, exception data management for accurate, reliable communication to customers could reward the facility an enormous consumer base that has a more likelihood of retention. This tremendously increases the profits of the hotel in uncertain recession periods. Room forecast is thus an important segment and one of the main duties that the Room Division Management team supervises. However, information technology has enabled the possibility of easy data management using software that are referred to as Information Management Systems. This has greatly stepped in to save the embarrassment of double booking and all the related unnecessary mistakes that would be encountered. Well-developed Information Management Systems ensure that once a room is booked or occupied it is immediately removed from the list indicating the available rooms. After checkout, the room is indicated as available. This avoids double booking, increasing the stakes of quality of service by the Room Division department. The other segment of RD from studies is the one concerning housekeeping. Housekeeping has been previously dismissed as work for the illiterate or rather the lowly educated individuals in the society. This assumption may have sources that relate this work description with laundry, ironing, and other household chore, which, in fact, it does mean. This assumption is farfetched as this duty incorporates the direct interaction between the customer and the employees involved, making it a delicate work description given the humility and etiquette involved. This segment of RD could prove very essential in this service industry as customers always desire to be treated with importance. Moreover, it would be absurd to think that one would waste his or her money in recession period to pay for poorly delivered services. This makes a lot of economic sense relating to the title of discussion in the paper (Casado, 1999). The last segment realized from the study that entails RD is room service. Many hotel facilities lose their customers on the virtue of small mistakes that regard room service. This is given the speed, preciseness, and etiquette that this job description carries along. A split minute delay or delivery of wrong items initially requested could go as far as a customer suing the facility blaming it for cause of certain undesired actions. Most RD departments in conjunction with HR for hotels, as reported in some studies, attached so much meaning to this duty that a minor complain raised by a customer could absolutely lead to dismissal of duty given the risk of such negligence costing the company customers and hence business. This aspect points to the essence of RDM to the organization’s profits and also the role that HR plays to ensure staff in such department is sufficiently qualified (Rebecca, and Francis, 2009). Case Study: RDM Situation at Delta Chelsea Hotel Delta Chelsea Hotel is attributed as one of the best hotels in Canada given the quality services it provides, in addition to its location advantage. The hotel is located in downtown areas of Toronto, and it boasts of being a stone throw away from various interesting sites that any customer would relish to visit. This has acted as one of its major marketing strategy and significantly added to its fame. These sites include Canon Theatre, a historical site, and the College Subway Station (Rodgers, 2009). The rationale for picking this hotel for a case study was its success on the Canadian competitive hotel environment and satisfaction and recommendation attributing commitment to the RDM. The hotel has put many considerations in place to remain relevant even in cases of recession that most organizations usually lose business. The hotel has an overall Room Division Manager who in turn supervises assistant managers that are in charge of the various segments falling under Room Division. These sub-segments include guest room allocation, accommodation room allocation, dining, front desk, room service and housekeeping. This delegation of duties to various supervisors ensures that the work is efficiently done even in the absence of the overall Room Division Manager. The diversification of duty ensures that each assistant has several workers under him or her that are allocated various duties within the hotel. The front desk employees have adequate personal relation skills and the etiquette that befits the level of the hotel. At first impression, many clients have been happy with the reception they received and automatically longed for their stay at the hotel. Rooms allocated are effectively reserved by the room allocation segment, ensuring no double reservation. This has been enhanced by the hotels information management system that includes online reservation functionality. This IT implementation has taken this hotel a niche higher than most of its competitors. In addition, the room segment has had high priority on ensuring that the rooms were in perfect condition. Evidence is their recent $6 million worth of renovation that covered more than 250 rooms with their corresponding corridors. Housekeeping is a huge priority of RD management in Delta Chelsea. The hotel’s rooms are in exquisite condition that provides a homely feeling to the guests. This provides value for money for the customers, an aspect that has kept customers loyal despite quite a higher fee imposed by the hotel. Room service is reported as one of the best among the Canadian hotels. The servers ensure timeliness, preciseness, and etiquette of the highest order. This keeps the customers gratified as there is no delay in any request made. An extra aspect to note is that the employees are neither motivated nor threatened by any condition, rather all these are done from the obligation one has to providing quality service to the hotel’s clients (Delta Hotels and Resorts, 2008). Dining is an extra segment that was not discussed in the analysis of research data. The hotel ensures superb dining services that include the setting, variety of food and proper serving. This is one area that they have consistently utilized to hold on to their customers as the kitchen provides excellent cooks who do a perfect job to ensure customers get appropriately seasoned and tasty food. Relevance and Impact of Research As previously mentioned in the introduction section, Room Division is a significant department in the hotel industry. This attachment greatly impacts the hotel industry and other service industries that tend to dismiss duties that seem to have employees not highly educated employees as trivial and insignificant. The research aims at elevating the level of importance of this service, mostly attached to the hospitality wing of most services (Maier, 2009). Customer contact by employees to the customers gives the clients a firsthand experience of them that directly reflects the values of the facilities involved. This attaches great contribution to the profit that service companies gain from this lot of department employees. Furthermore, this research aims at impacting the quality work implemented by RDM given the challenge imposed that relate poor production level especially in recession period, threatening the profit levels of hotel facilities. It is, therefore, forecast that within 3-5 years, tough considerations have to be met before employees are admitted to perform activities pertaining to RDM as it would have gained the required level of significance that it carries (Aggarwal, 2007). Conclusion RDM has great significance attached to its values: customer satisfaction, quality services, better facility management, easy HR effectiveness and customer reliability. However, some few disadvantages are attached to this practice. These include high cost expenditure, employee pressure to impress and undermining submissiveness with the intent to impress customers. These demerits, could, however, be accommodated given the final results they are bound to produce. This is true apart from the first point that contradicts the thesis of this paper, stating that there is a likely to have losses with proper implementation of perfect RDM. Despite these, the future RDM should improve its employee vetting process to ensure competent employees and also seek a better position in the management hierarchy given its potential to return high profits. With these implementations in the future, there is a promise of better working condition for RD employees and quality services that will be mutually beneficial to both customers and hotel management and productivity levels (Martinez, 2011). References Delta Hotels and Resorts. (2008, February 2). Delta Hotels and Resorts. Retrieved from http://www.deltahotels.com/en/hotels/ontario/delta-chelsea/ Rodgers, T. (2009, May 23). Room Division. Retrieved from http://www.deltahotels.com/en/hotels/ontario/delta-chelsea/ Aggarwal, D.K.. (2007). Banquet Management and Room Division. London: Aman Publications Hussain, H. (2012). Hotel Room Division Management: An Evaluation Study. New York: LAP LAMBERT Academic Publishing. Miller, J. (2003). Hotel Rooms Division Management. Los Angeles: American Hotel & Lodging Educational Ins. Rivera, P. and Casado, M. (1998). Hotel Front Office and Rooms Division Management. New York: John Wiley & Sons Inc (February 3, 1998) Casado, M. (1999). Housekeeping Management. New York: Wiley; 1 edition (September 13, 1999) Maier, T. (2009). Welcome to Hospitality: An Introduction. Boston: Delmar Cengage Learning. Martinez, C. (2011). Room Division: The Front Desk. New York: Wiley Publishers. Rebecca, K., and Francis, K. (2009). Impact of Room Division in the Hotel Industry. Cambrige: Cambridge University Press. Read More