The Contemporary Hospitality Industry

 

 

Williams College 

Level:  4 Higher National diploma Unit: 1 The contemporary Hospitality Industry Course: Hospitality Management Semester: 2 Year: 2012/2013

 

The Contemporary Hospitality Industry

 

 

 

 

Lecturer: Shane De Fonseka

Student name: Tamar Marghia

Student ID number: T1205M15652

 

 

 

Due date:24^thMay 2013

Written report: pages 13; words 2917

 

 

Contents

Introduction…………………………………………………………………………………..4

Task 1 Understand the current structure of the hospitality industry……………………….4

1. Analyze the current scale, scope and diversity of the hospitality industry within the South West region of England……………………………………………………………………4
2. Given the facts that hospitality organisations are different to one another in terms of operation, size and the type of clients being served, discuss the different areas of a hospitality organisation, which must include both operational areas and function areas……………….5
3. As the UK is host to many leading bodies with relation to the hospitality and leisure industry, assess the role of hospitality related organisations and professional bodies quoting examples from the relevant area of interest……………………………………………………………6

Task 2 Understand staffing in the hospitality industry……………………………………..7

2.1  Taking in to account, the broad scope of hotels that operates within the Best Western group    of hotels, assess the staffing requirements of different hospitality industries, taking in to account, the different types of staff that can be found within the hospitality organisation……………….7

2.2 For the different staff discussed in 2.1 above, discuss the roles, responsibilities and qualification requirements in order to be successful within their field…………………………..9

Task 3 Understand recent developments affecting hospitality……………………………10

3.1 In recent times, new developments were made in terms of standard operating procedures, food safety, productivity and allied fields. Analyse operational, managerial and legislative issues resulting from recent developments affecting the hospitality industry…………………………..10

3.2 Given the fact that today’s travellers are more sophisticated than ever before, discuss the current image of the hospitality industry including customer perception, quality improvement, media and other trends within the hospitality industry………………………………………11

 

Task 4 Be able to recognise potential trends and developments in hospitality………….11

4.1 Taking in to account, the diverse nature of hotels within the Best Western group, operating in this region, present justified predictions for potential trends and developments in the hospitality sector that may have an impact on the group’s hotels………………………………………11

4.2 Based on your answer to 4.1 above, produce an impact analysis for the predicted trends and developments within the industry and suggest methods as to how Best Western can take maximum advantage of these trends. ………………………………………………………..12

Conclusion……………………………………………………………………………………13

References ……………………………………………………………………………………..13

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Introduction

Best western hotel is a chain of hotel brand that is widely known all over the world. It has over 4195 hotels in over 100 countries. Hotel is located in South West region of England. Just few regions in England can boast such a fantastically divers mix of landscape, communities and characters. That why this region is quite famous for visitors and the hospitality industry is developing there rapidly.

The assignments will be discussed the structure of hospitality industry based on the example of Best western hotel;  The methods of staffing that is necessary for any hotel;  the effect of hospitality industry developments on the particular hotel and the influence of trends that are predictable for future.

Task 1

1.1

Hospitality industry is the business which provides with services that concerned to accommodation of guest, food and beverages, entertainment and gaming. Hospitality industry is involves sections like: Tourism which can be provided by air, cruise, rail, coach, auto or ecotourism; lodging service that comprise from different kind of hotels and motels. Meetings, expositions, restaurants are also the field of hospitality industry. Recreation is the last part of hospitality industry the components of which are gaming, parks, attractions and recreation.

South West region of England is the largest area where five million people are living that’s why the hotel chain Best Western was built there. But different kind of hotels exists in this region which is possible to classify by four main aspects: hotel size, target market, level of service and ownership and affiliation. In south west region the customers can meet the following types of hotels:

Independent hotel is mostly run by family. An individual or company opens the hotel and managed it, taking all responsibilities for the hotel’s success. The advantages of such establishment are that owners have complete control over every aspect of their business and it is a great opportunity to operate freedom. (S. Chon and A.Maier 2009)

Chain Hotels are divided into three groups depending on the ownership style. 1) Parent company owned and managed by the brand; 2)Franchise licensed by investors and utilized by management who contract to use the name of brand; 3) management contract hotels owned by an investors and operated under the contract of brand. Most valuable is the ownership and strong national brand but on the other hand it need to establish brand loyalty among customers and diversify hotel offerings, trying to suit all things to all type of customers. 

Transit hotels meet the need of guests who are transit and travelling. It can be motels or airport hotels. The price is charges even for half day but even in such situation the occupancy of motels is 100%.

Boutique Hotels are the hotels that are very small and too expensive. Even though it is small it offers complete service in every department. It need to have restaurant also.

 

1.2

Hotel operates the activities that require to be separated from each other in different departments. Each department include the operational and functional areas. Operational area is the activity where the staff has relationship with guests and the function is the work within organisation without having any connections with customers. M. O’Follen and G Rutherford (2010) offers the explanation of main departments in hotel:

Front office is the hub or nerve centre of the hotel. The guest gets first impression about the hotel according to the front office. It’s duty to improve customer services by constantly developing services. It provide assistance to customers during their stay period, completes their accommodation, account and receive payments. This department utilize operational activities.

Food and Beverage department – is responsible for providing food and drinks to hotel’s guests. The activity is also operational because it includes the areas like restaurant, bar, coffee shops,banqueting but the half part of this department is functional. The workforce like: chief, kitchen porter, kitchen assistance, sale man.

Reservation department is responsible for the room that are reserved. They take the order and decide which room will be given to the particular customer depending on the wish of guest. Reservation staff, telephone operator are considered as a functional activity of the hotel.

Housekeeping department provides the guest with clean room and public areas. Room attendance, cleaner, PA cleaner  doesn’t have contact with guest but the staff like maid room makes the operational  activity.

Security department is providing guest protection and loss prevention. This department is functional area. Security officers make regular round of the hotel premises, check the equipments existence, provides with guidelines for the according to how to behave in a particular cases.

Accounting department is considered totally as functional area because the financial questions of the hotel have no any connection with guest. Just in the case of front office when they make a payments.

Some other operational activities are made by bellboy, concierge, cashier, lounge staff, room service waiter. The rest functional activities are laundry, IT department, Marketing and sales department, maintenance, HR, Management and Timekeepers.

1.3

  Hospitality industry is among the growth businesses of the world, with more and more jobs offer. The are some organisations that gives an opportunity to obtain the qualification in this field and organisations which offer you the chance of an interesting career with many opportunities to progress.  S. Fullagar and W. Markwell (2012) provides with information about such structures.

British Hospitality Association  (BHA) – is the leading organisation in the hospitality industry that presents hotels, restaurants and providers of food service. The purpose of their organisation is to deliver real return to their members, championing positively the industries priorities by relationship with government and the rest of associations. 

Confedention of tourism and hospitality (CTH) is the organisation that awards with qualification in hospitality industry in the UK. CTH provides with recognised standards for training in the hospitality and travel industry. The are huge amount of people who get the qualification from this organisation. Approximately it is 7000 students a year. It gives opportunity to students to get postgraduate Diploma and chance to start with industry qualification or get 3 year work experience in managerial level.

Institute of Hospitality – is the professional body for managers and aspiring managers who works and studies in hospitality, leisure and tourism industry. The institute reputation is based on promoting quality standards and educational centres in approximately 100 countries. The institute cares about continues to support the members’ professional development.

People 1^st- is based on providing with hospitality training courses. This organisation covers 24 industries in hospitality, transport, travel and tourism, passengers.  It covers the functions like: Aviation, Bus, Coach, contract food service providers, community transport, hotels, hostels, holiday parks, hospitality services, events, membership clubs, rail, restaurants, visitor attraction, taxi and private hire, tourist service, self catering accommodation, UK waterway, pub, bars and nightclub.

2.1

Hospitality industry and services has a lot of departments, especially hotel is the place where you need to create home away from home for guests. So in order to achieve this purpose hotel must have qualified and sufficient staff. It always depends on the size and type of the hotel. In this case the hotel in South West region is large so the structure of the hotel should provides with all services that any hotel can provide. S. Andrews (2007) suggest the following structure.

S. Andrews – Organisational structure of the hotel

There are some requirements and standards to the staff of the hotel which the personnel should provide. First of all the most important is appearance which include: personnel must be tidy dress, well groomed, clothing must be fresh  and ironed , the uniform depends on the level of hotel.

Requirements to reservation, pricing and billing

Booking service should be easy with such services like: giving the information what is included in the price; the information that can impact on the period or situation during the staying period (for example smoking policy); to worn if the restaurant is closed; full details of the hotel’s cancellation policy, if the deposit is required and explanation about the charges if it will be necessary for extra services.

Requirements to reception

Reception is considered as the first and last contact with guest so the hotel must has special attention to this department. Some requirements are: to be ready for arrival and departure of the guest all the time, to direct the guest to their rooms and give the brief explanation about the facilities of the hotel, to give the key to the guest, inform them about meal time, the times of opening the restaurants, bars and any other services that the hotel provides.

Concierge and housekeeping service

Laundry service should work so that to return the clean and ironed clothes to guest minimum in 24 houres; cloakroom service with a receipt provided; should also include the  shoe cleaning service, all letters handled directly to the guests and prevented in envelope; concierge service must be provided fully; should provides with booking of theatres, cinemas and other entertainments.

2.2

Best Western hotel is among the largest hotel chains of the world and consequently it has own standards according to the staff. 

 

 

Hotel receptionist

The main duties of the receptionist is: take the bookings by phone, e-mail or fax; choose the room for guest and provide with key; prepare bills and take the payments from guests; answer any questions that is related to the hotel. The requirements for this position is good administrational and customer service skills; IT skills sometimes are essential; knowing the computerised system of booking and payment system; there are some qualification that the receptionist need to have in order to get the job in this position like: certification in general hospitality; Award in introduction to the hospitality industry or awarding principles of customer service in hospitality. It also require personal skills like: writing, spoken communication skills; professional telephone manners; accuracy and attention to details.

Room attendant is responsible for clean rooms of the guests and the whole establishment. The duties are to use proper chemicals while cleaning the accommodation; to empty the bins in the room, replace duty beds with new one; replace the bags for laundry; polish and dust all the equipments and furniture in the hotel. To clean the room properly. Requirements are the experience of work, ability to assigned duties to details;  knowledge of the chemicals; punctually and reliable attendance.

Waitress  - provide personalised attentive and responsive service. The responsibilities are: Taking the food and beverage order it can be the output of the hotel like restaurant but also room service, deliver the order, clean the area and table after finishing the eating process and ensure that the customers were satisfied. Requirements to the waitress are: must be 18 years older; experience of work in the same position minimum 1 year; knowledge of food and beverages that she provides; a basic knowledge of dining room and service procedure.

3.1

Best western hotel chain controls their activities and follow the legislations that are provide by organisation that are in charge of it. Every change has impact on hotel industry and sometimes even cause the problem. SOP ( Standard Operating Procedures)- is the written instruction that is followed by hotel. It helps to maintain the quality of service and standards in the hotel. The development of SOP leads to integral part of a successful quality system because it gives the information to individuals in order to perform the job properly. It is necessary for all hotel’s staff to be trained in SOP. (C. Jones and A. Lockwood 2002)

Food Standard Agency (FSA) – is the organisation that is responsible for food safety and the hygiene of food over the UK. They work with to enforce food safety regulation and have the special staff who check the way how other companies follow the regulations. This process has an impact on hotel operations because it requires special needs and standards that is connected with double checking of own work.

 

3.2

Hospitality industry is the field which is grow day by day and it’s importance is feeling in every countries. The process of development leads to quality improvement of the hospitality services. The current trend in can be defined in different ways.

Globalization – nowadays much more people travel around the world freely than it was in the past. The international arrivals from 674 million in 2000, reached to 797 in 2005 and the number of travellers was 940 in 2010 increasing on 39,46 percent.

Safety and security  - security has increased greatly because of the terrorist attacked, tourist kidnappings, assaults. Security of hospitality industry is critical and due to issues that the industry met such problems were minimized. Personal safety of guest must be priority (Walker,2010). High security measurements exist in airports and most airlines organisations make plans in order to exceed the requirements of the airline industry through technology advancement ( Hall et al, 2003)

Service – competition and market consumption change the expending service sector, nowadays the quality plays an increasingly essential role in both attracting and retaining service customers (helms and Mayo, 2008) . Service is at the top of customer’s expectation. Just few companies can offer the exceptional services but all organisations try to obtain the standards of higher level.

Technology – has become a tourism business activity in development of strategic resources. Technology change the rules of tourism business, more specifically: information of all services and offers are available virtually; customers can be any residents of the world; decision making turns into a tourism specialist in every component; changes in customer service technologies also occur and it gives the chance to expand the marketing opportunities. 

Price value. The customers’ perception about price has changed. Guest are opposed to pay more ( they would like to get more and pay less) and the tourism organisations sould take measure in order to solve this issue.

4.1.

Hospitality industry will be optimistic and expect a brighter and better trends for the recent future. This is concerned to all hospitality divisions one of which is hotel chain Best Western. According to the economic progressing tourist will look for comfortable, simple, yet high-quality experience. It is important for hotel to centralised these opportunities to stay adead in the industry. Here are some of the emerging trends that people in hotel should keep in mind while preparing the strategy for the future:

Renewed focus on property websites. Hotels are focused on increasing the direct booking. To achieve this purpose all hoteliers try to develop their websites and trying to convince guests to opt direct booking and avoid the bookings through OTA. It is necessary for hotels to focus on new contracts, rich media and frequent update of promotions.

Great emphasis on content marketing

Marketing experts understand that in order to reach a wide audience, brand awareness is crucial. Hence strong online attendance is vital. Enganing blogs, webinars, interactive social media platforms, newsletters, ebooks, photo and video sharing are efficient. Nowadays people prefer to make booking and their transaction by online so in order to stay ahead of the competition free transaction models and user-friendly navigation are imperative.

Quality

Travellers will be focused more on the emotional value and will strive to experience where they get better quality. Instead of opting for cost effective getaways, the guests will look for better experience. The quality will be valuable in every department of the hotel and mostly in accommodation and food and beverage.

Social network integration

Social media plays an important role in attracting new customers to the hotels. Researching everything by using the media is a new trend. People start to read and compare the reviews before choosing their trips.

Mobile trend

Hotel market should be centralised on mobile applications, as social media and mobile decirces become indivisible. Smart-phones replaces desktop and laptops. And social media that is update from the mobile phone are the proffered trend

 

4.2.

 

 

All hoteliers would like to see an rise in the amount of income contributed from their website.  After all, direct bookings are the most cost-effective. Here are some ways that the hotel can implement to get staff to positively influence the website performance.

• Create posters, flyers, door hangers, tent cards , etc. and display these in guest rooms, elevators, breakfast rooms, and lobby.
• To take  advantage of digital marketing boards, feature a screen capture of your website
• Have the website URL printed on guest receipts

Quality always was on the high level so  it is require the constant improvement method. The best way to get progress in quality is to find out all issues and problems that the organisation has according to the customers, some services and operations. Staff must be involved in identification of such problems in order to discuss it further and to solve how to improve the existence situation.

Social network integration has as much importance as other aspects, because it is one of the way to attract the customers. There are huge amount of way how to present the hotel before new audience in proper way. For such hotel like Best Western it is not a problem to have own customers that are loyal but also more people will know about the services and facilities of the hotel more customers will use it.

 

Conclusion

The assignment shows different type of hospitality industry and aspects of each sectors. Based on the Best Western is demonstrate the organisational structure and staffing methods with examples of particular positions. The recommendation for future operation where given in this work, which help to adopt to new trends, bear the influence of general effects of hospitality industry.

References

J. Beach  and S. Chadwick  (2006), The Business of tourism management, Harlow; FT Prentice Hall

N. Jayapalan (2001) An introduction to tourism. Delhi: Mehra Offset Press

S. Fillagar, K. Markwell and E. Wilson (2012) Slow Tourism Experiences and Motilities. Great Britain: Short Run Press

P. Jones and A. Lockwood (2006) The management of Hotel Operations. UK: TJ international