MKT01909 Analysis of Service Concept in Coastal Hotels: Operating Strategy Assessment Answer

Executive Summary

In this report, the intention has been to gestate marketing management, human resources management and organisation management of Coastal Hotel. Being connected with the hospitality industry addressing the issues and accomplishment of customer expectations are the most prioritised features for the Company in order to be on a competitive edge and generate profitability. The key five segments discussed in this report would assess those expectations and the influence on them. The operational strategy has been focused on explaining the Company standardised products and the service deliver being aligned with following Levitt’s theory. The service proposal considers the operation as whole to identify the mail pitfalls points for being aware and two significant points holding an imperative bearing on consumers’ experiences. The service delivery system has been kept aligned with operational strategy and hence proposing the essential backbone of service delivery to assessing capacity and productivity management. By the end of this report, quality management and human resource capital management focus prominently on activities of workforce in enhancing delivery services and perceived quality for better performance. 

Introduction

Operating strategy: In this report, the service concept that has been developed in Coastal Hotels is analysed. The report also focuses on the operation, marketing and human resource and their relation with the customer satisfaction of the hotel. Employee management and quality management as well as the service blueprint of the organisation has also been analysed in this report. The relation between all of the above-mentioned sections and how these sessions are affecting the customers in the hotel and their satisfaction rate are discussed in detail.

1. Operating strategy

According to the theory by Levitt, in order to maintain proper performance and quality in servicing customers in hospitality organisations proper procedures and approaches as well as specific operational guidelines are needed.  As the customer demand in this Hospital the organisations vary according to their expectations and needs, every organisation has to design a certain production line like Service Delivery, serving the customers in table properly, taking the order by customers at counter. Not only the exceptional items in the menu increases the customer satisfaction and customer retention, but also the proper service and consistent quality of performance from the service persons also helps to enhance the customer satisfaction rate (Rayna and Striukova, 2009). 

In terms of operation, Coastal Hotel is one of the full service operational hotels that provide food and lodging to their customers. Being located in the Northern Sydney sea area, this hotel provides quality wishes to the customers by providing them different kinds of rooms according to the budgets. The Tourist and the backpackers are always welcome in the hotel and in terms of payment instant room booking is available. Along with instant room booking true online, 10% discount and complimentary breakfast are offered to the customers. The customers are also provided with smart rooms and multi cuisine restaurant and food facility.20% discounts are allowed for the Australian customers and backpackers in order to enhance the Australian tourism. The social media marketing Technology has been used by the organisation in order to communicate with their potential and existing customers. In fact the social media has been used for not only the promotion but also taking the feedback from the customers regarding their service and operation (Baek et al. 2020). As the marketing and human resource workforce of the organisation are related to each other, the service providers have already set it as their objective to use the employees as their marketing tool. The employee behaviour and attitude plays a great role in customer satisfaction and mitigating customer need. The organisation has objectified it to train their employees in a way that they can be used as a part of their marketing process. 

2. Service blueprint

Figure 1: Service Blueprint of the Hotel

This blueprint stated above is the overview of the service provided by Coastal Hotel. The points that are marked in light red are highlighted as failing points. Here the customers experiences are affected at the time of service consumption. Mostly the front house staff that serve the customers interact with them. It is the responsibility of these employees to ensure that the customer demands can be mitigated and customer satisfaction can be ensured. However, two of the points according to the blueprint are food provided by other organisations and the verifying satisfaction of the customers. It has been found that mostly in these points the customers evaluate the value of the organisation and therefore their satisfaction rates are also based on these services provided by the hotel (Enz & Way 2016). Customer dissatisfaction can also be found from these points as the intangibility of the service. Verbal and nonverbal communication of the employees and customers help to verify the satisfaction rate as well as the identification of dissatisfaction can also be developed from here (Hummel & Murphy 2011).

On the other hand, in terms of food, the organisation should appoint expert and skilled staff who have the knowledge of multi cuisine foods and prepare them successfully. Sitting management and timing of providing food to the table should also be maintained as all of these are crucial to maintain customer satisfaction. Here also the verbal and nonverbal communication is crucial in order to train the staff, while hiring the new employees for kitchen and food. It is essential to communicate with them so that their problems and knowledge can be understood (Al-Ababneh 2016). On the other hand, it is required to provide free service briefing and post service feedback with them so that these employees can understand their level of work. Post service feedback will also help them to identify their limitations and therefore they can use these feedbacks in order to improve these fields.

3. The Service Delivery System

As a hospitality company, provisioning of unique services inspired their hotel ambience and food quality is considered as the high priority at the Coastal Hotel. In the next section, Coastal Hotel’s steps in service delivery has been presented in such a strategic way such that a visitor enters into the hotel premises and mesmerised with productivity and quality of services. 

1. Accommodate and Greet-Visitors are directed to their hotel rooms, menus are provided and the first essential orders are noted.
2. The Hotel staffs take the responsibility of checking the luggage room and even cross check with the logbook of left luggage.
3. Soon after entering the Coastal Hotel, the receptionist explains all the specialties to be offered and entry is made.
4. The waiters working at the Hotel takes orders proficiently when a mouthful of food or drink is left on their tables.
5. The Coastal hotel next offers sparkling or still water to visitors
6. In case there is any necessity of food and wine, the orders are instantaneously notified.
7. After that, the ordered menus are served to the respective Hotel rooms according to their order.
8. The room attendants are responsible for cleaning guestrooms soon after the customers leave the Hotel premises. 
9. Moreover, during the period of such COVID-19 pandemic, the management in Coastal hotel has been strictly focused on proper sanitization.
10. All the hotel staff comes to greet each visitor with a warm welcome.
11. The Coastal Hotel is proficiently focused in leveraging technological innovations while communicating with other departments and hence tract completion of tasks accurately.

The points discussed above constructs the backbone of the excellent services offered by Coastal Hotel. In terms of time management, the entire workforce at Coastal Hotel better knows at which point each guestrooms will be further helping them with productivity, profitability and time. With certain effective steps, it can convincingly be ensured that each customer visiting the Hotel receives equal level of service standards and attention. The Hotel capacity do not rely on the number of customers that can be availed at the guestrooms however the competency of handling all incoming orders in a strategic and timely manner within the framework of the highlighted service delivery steps (Lovelock et al. 2015). Essentially, vacant guestrooms produce no revenue to the Hotel and the objective is set to fill Hotel rooms with visitors resulting in as much turnover as possible. Introduction of reservation systems would be facilitating ease of accessibility to customers taking reservations online. However, it holds much essentiality in balancing how many rooms are filled, number of customers lodged in checkouts at one time. 

4. Service employee management

In a service industry a business can flourish only when the employees are devoted and faithful to the company. Devotion towards the work is evident from the motivation towards the work and enthusiasm to improve the quality of service that is provided. Thus it is important on company’s part to keep the motivation high of the employees and keeping the retention rate low. Restaurant industry is not ideal as first workplace due to many reasons such as long hours, atypical schedules, less number of leave and so on which can have a serious impact on health. It also requires certain knowledge (e.g., knowledge about food and liquor) which is very crucial for restaurant industries. It is important for the management to recruit candidates with right attitude, as it a significant part for service industries and skills can be taught with time (Kandampully et al. 2015).  While recruiting for the Coastal Hotel certain personality traits are favoured in the employees which will allow to work as a team, considering the work as fun, and ability to handle stressful situations. 

In service industries which also include the restaurant industries service personnel are considered as the pillar that play a significant role looking after product value, competitive advantage, and customer satisfaction. Especially in case of restaurant industries the employees who work in the front desk are compelled to deliver high-contact services uninterruptedly which require multiple skillets and is extremely difficult and stressful at the same time. In order to attain organisational goals and sales goals keeping in mind customers’ satisfaction, handling customers’ aggression, maintaining a balance between professional life and personal life are the examples of few things that a frontline employee of a restaurant industry has to manage on a daily basis (Razalli 2020). So much of work pressure can trigger stress at any point of time which can affect the performance the employee.   

Because of the hectic schedule of the restaurant industries, it is essential to treat the team as a family, and knowing each employee closely. To maintain the workplace happiness several activities and staff gatherings can be arranged throughout the year, several plan of actions can be followed to motivate the employees on a daily basis (e.g., providing benefits, wages, performance incentives) and also long term opportunities (e.g., financial stability, growth opportunities).

5. Quality management measures

While globalisation has increased the opportunity it also increased the level of competition in the market. Thus it is important for any organization to create greater customer loyalty to their services and looking after the needs of customers. Evidence suggests that maintaining regular customer is more cost effective than targeting new customers. Because of the multi-faceted nature of the services it becomes often difficult to assess the quality of services. Five different dimensions of service quality have been identified by the concept of SERVQUAL: reliability, tangibles, responsiveness, empathy, and assurance. Multiple gaps between expected and perceived services were also been indicated by the gap model. In order to achieve customer satisfaction five key gaps were identified which needs to be taken care of by the management (Xu 2019). Fulfilling customers’ satisfaction was determined as top most priority factor for the Coastal Hotel. In order to achieve this service gap model will be used by Coastal Hotel to understand customers’ expectation and dimensions of SERVQUAL will be incorporated throughout the process. 

Figure 2: SERVQUAL Model of the Hotel 

• Gap 1: In order to know the segments, extensive market research will be done. During operations several tools can be used to build customer profile (e.g., ResDiary) which will help in knowing the customer personally and targeting to deliver specific services keeping in mind each customer’s need. 
• Gap 2: Providing training at regular intervals, mentoring, and supporting will help all the employees to become aware about the sequence of services and the service standards. In order to monitor the quality of service customer feedback surveys are conducted and regular feedback is also provided by the manager. Employees are rewarded with incentives on achieving targets (Lemy et al. 2019).   
•  Gap 3: It become essential for the employee to identify how and which of their actions have an effect on customer’s satisfaction in order to assess all dimensions of the SERVQUAL. 
• Gap 4: Transparent and achievable promises are made to do promotions and marketing, such as special occasions, like Valentine’s Day or setting different price point menus. 
• Gap 5: From the viewpoint of the restaurant to understand about how the customers’ expectations have been influenced and to become aware about their perception of services, it is important to understand each customer on a personal level (Chen et al. 2018).   

Conclusion

The report has been proficiently generated addressing the key purpose of presenting the factors that affects customer satisfaction and experiences considering Coastal Hotel’s business operations, marketing management and human resource capital management. For the management it is inevitable to consider all components collectively as measurements in isolation with other factors would affect overall process. Thus, for understanding the influences on customer satisfaction by addressing their expectations is important through evaluation of all key aspects of operation, marketing and human capital management and the way each component impacts on the customers. The final service design allows the company to give best customer satisfaction. It is also clear from the SEVQUAL model that being transparent, customization, employee behaviour and employee expertise has extensive importance in terms of satisfying the customers in a restaurant.