Research on the hotel in Auckland
The main purpose of this study is to conduct the research on the hotel in Auckland which has around 100 bedrooms for the customers. For this research study, Holiday Inn in Auckland is selected.
Holiday Inn is identified as the British owned American brand in the hotel industry. Similarly, it is also the subsidiary of the InterContinetal Hotels Group. Holiday Inn is one of the world’s largest hotel chains which has 1173 active hotels along with the 214000 bedrooms as of 30th September 2018.
Hotel Holiday Inn is famous for its quality services at the hotel with a five-star rating (Hotel Holiday Inn Auckland Airport, 2020). Holiday Inn offers rooms to its customers at reasonable prices which can starts from the US $ 105. Moreover, food services, conventions, meetings, timeshares and loading services are also provided in the Holiday Inn along with the room services.
Some basic amenities like free WiFi, on-site restaurant and the pool are also offered to its customers at its different hotel sites.
Task1 (a) Describe the five departments of the hotel, their functions and their contribution in an effective management of accommodation services
In relation to the hotels, it is mentioned that the Hotel Holiday Inn is one of the world’s famous hotel which has its branch in every country in order to provide its services to its customers.
In this manner, a number of departments are maintained by the hotel with respect to conduct its operation in an effective manner so that most of the customers can be satisfied with its services (Dogan & Vatan, 2019). Moreover, five important departments are mentioned below with their purpose and important functions:
| Departments and Purpose | functions and their contributions |
| 1. Housekeeping Department: The key purpose of it to provide the guests with the desirable room. | Immaculate care and upkeep of the guests in order to make them satisfy. |
| Keeping the venue clean so that the customer’s concern related to health can be kept on preference. | |
| Laundry services are included in the basic amenities to its customers to make the accommodation services effective | |
| 2. Front Office Department: it has the main purpose to act as the face of the hotel to make the customers satisfied. | Reservation: provide the reservation facility before check-in increases the hotel values (Köseoglu et al., 2019) |
| Guest services: With the help of effective guest services, customers are made satisfy as they made the correct choice. | |
| Room status: by offering room status facility, customers are saved from the additional trouble. | |
| 3. Accounting Department: the key aim of this department is to record and report about the cash flow transaction within the hotel. | Account receivables: it helps the customers to inform about their dues on the hotel so that their bills can be settled up with any error (Dogan & Vatan, 2019). |
| Payroll: In this function, salary-related matters of the employees are included so that employees can be paid for their services and they can serve the customers efficiently. | |
| Financial Reporting: by informing the senior management about finance, an appropriate budget can be maintained for the hotel services to the customers. | |
| 4. Human Resource Department: the main purpose of this department is to manage the human resources under the organization. | Hiring and recruitment: it helps to maintain human resources under the business |
| Training and development: it increases the efficiency of the employees to work properly (Seidel, 2018). | |
| Employee benefits: By providing them, employees are made satisfied so that they can perform effectively. | |
| 5. Food and Beverage Department: it has the main purpose to maintain the high quality in terms of food, services, managing restaurant, food costing and bars, etc. | Planning menus: it gives the food choices to the customers to make them happy. |
| Maintaining daily operations: it maintains a cleaned and organized kitchen to keep their customers healthy. | |
| Foodservice hygiene: under this, equipment hygiene needs to be maintained so that customers can be attracted to the hotel (MS3304 Hospitality Management, 2012). |
Task1 (b) Explain the perishability in the context of hotel services, its impact along with the detailed examples
Perishability is identified as one of the important characteristics of the hospitality industry. As per this term, services cannot be developed as well as stored before consumption as these services exist only when they developed. Under the hospitality industry, products and services are consumed when they are developed.
In regards to its impact on the profitability of the hotel, it is reflected that the hotel rooms are perishable product because the hotel rooms are limited in the hotel (Javanmard, 2017). As an outcome, the pricing and customer satisfaction remain the essential variables that are subject to the revenue management within the hotel.
These all things are done for balancing the demand of the room and the capacity of the hotel through forecasting the prices in concern of maximizing the hotel resources’ effectiveness.
In this way, it can be mentioned that perishability has a deeper impact on the profitability of hotels as due to the perishable services, the hotel has to face loss as the service capacity cannot be inventoried for the future sale (Sebastian Kaiser, 2012). In addition to the above, some examples of perishable in the hotel are given below:
- Hotel Rooms: when the hotel rooms are not booked today, it is not possible to take today and sell these rooms tomorrow.
- Flight Seat: in similar to above, an airline company is able to sell seats of its flight only before the departure of the flight.
- Employee’s Recruitment: Under the hotel, it is not easy for it to maintain the balance between supply and demand as it is difficult to forecast. In the case of a hotel, this demand can vary by the season, business cycle, or the time of day. Due to demand fluctuation, hotels find difficult to maintain the quality of their services. While having this situation, the hotel may hire more employees for the season.
Task1 (c) Discuss one example of a way to overcome the challenge of perishability
The perishability of the services is one of the challenges for the hotel industry. It does not mean that the services will spoil but under the hotel industry, services are time-bounded. These services cannot be stored like physical products.
In this way, services are generally performed at a particular time and on the mentioned dates. For example, an airline is unable to sell the seat on the flight which has left the airport (Joshmeah.com, 2018).
In case of this challenge, the hotel Holiday Inn tried to connect with the customers so that forecast can be conducted in an accurate manner in order to maintain the services as per the demand of the customers effectively. At the same time, extensive research was also conducted by the hotel for finding the real need of the customers and customizes its services as per their needs.
Task2 (a) Determine the competitor of Hotel Holiday Inn and their similar target markets
One of the key competitors of the Hotel Holiday Inn is Hotel Hilton which also has its branch in Auckland, New Zealand. They both the hotels have their similar target market for example, Australia, New Zealand, and the UK etc.
While conducting the comparison between them, it is identified that both the hotel chain provides some of the similar facilities but there are some things which make them different from each other (Salvioni, 2016).
On the basis of the above discussion, it can be mentioned that both the hotels are different from their own way. One of the biggest difference between both the hotels that Hilton Hotel offer its products and services in respect to the leisure travelers as well as business travelers whereas Hotel Holiday Inn offers its services to the families mainly.
Task2 (b) Identify the goods and services which are not provided at both the Hotels
| Hotel Products | Hotel Holiday Inn | Impact | Hotel Hyatt | Impact |
| Service | Free Breakfast | It can increase the hotel value (Oktay, 2017). | Online Chat Services | By doing this, guests can be updated online within no time. |
| Service | Kids Entertainment Services | It can be effective for family guests. | Refundable services | It can decrease customer satisfaction. |
| Products | Toothbrushes and paste | These are the basic things that can play an important role to make the customers happy. | No Additional Bed | Due to this, guests with the family suffer a lot. |
| Products | Chargers | These are the basic things that can play an important role to make the customers happy. | Discount Services | It can attract the customers towards the hotel as compared to other hotels (Saeed et al., 2018). |
On the basis of above goods and services, it can be mentioned that without these services and products, both the hotel are lacking to increase their business growth and their profitability too as above mentioned products and services are more important for the customer in order to make them more satisfied (Choi & Kandampully, 2019). This is the major reason due to which hotels lose their profitability at a significant level.
Task2 (c) List of required resources for the above goods and services in both the Hotels
| Hotel Products | Hotel Holiday Inn | Impact | Hotel Hyatt | Impact |
| Service | Free Breakfast service | Human resource and physical resources | Online Chat Services | Human resource and financial resources |
| Service | Kids Entertainment Services | Human resource, financial resources and physical resources | Refundable services | Human resource and financial resources |
| Products | Toothbrushes and paste | Physical resources | No Additional Bed | Physical resources |
| Products | Chargers | Physical resources | Discount Services | Physical resources |
References
Choi, H., & Kandampully, J. (2019). The effect of atmosphere on customer engagement in upscale hotels: An application of SOR paradigm. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 77, 40-50.
Dogan, S., & Vatan, A. (2019). Hotel Managers’ Thoughts Towards New Technologies and Service Robots’ at Hotels: A Qualitative Study in Turkey. Co-Editors, 382.
Javanmard, A. (2017). Perishability of data: dynamic pricing under varying-coefficient models. The Journal of Machine Learning Research, 18(1), 1714-1744.
Joshmeah.com. (2018). Service marketing management: 5 challenges and 5 strategies. Retrieved from: https://www.joshmeah.com/service-marketing-management-5-challenges-and-5-winning-strategies/.
Köseoglu, M. A., Chan, E. S., Okumus, F., & Altin, M. (2019). How do hotels operationalize their competitive intelligence efforts into their management processes? Proposing a holistic model. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 83, 283-292.
MS3304 Hospitality Management. (2012). Functions of F&B operations. Retrieved from: https://ms3304hospitalitymgt.wordpress.com/2012/02/28/functions-of-fb-operations/.
Oktay, S. (2017). An analytical study to identify and determine the usage frequency of sales and marketing strategies for 5 star hotels in the Antalya region. Procedia computer science, 120, 862-870.
Saeed, A. A. A. S., Arous, S. A. E. H., & Ahmed, G. N. (2018). Using of Electronic Marketing Channels in Building Customer Loyalty in Hotels. Journal of the Faculty of Tourism and Hotels-University of Sadat City Vol, 2(1).
Salvioni, D. (2016). Hotel Chains and the Sharing Economy in Global Tourism. SYMPHONYA Emerging Issues in Management, (1).
Sebastian Kaiser. (2012). Tag Archives: Perishability: Characteristics of the Tourism Industry. Retrieved from: https://sebastiankaiser.wordpress.com/tag/perishability/.
Seidel, M. (2018). Six Main Functions of a Human Resource Department. Retrieved from: https://bizfluent.com/info-8244762-six-functions-human-resource-department.html.
Hotel Holiday Inn Auckland Airport. (2020). About Us. Retrieved from: https://www.ihg.com/holidayinn/hotels/us/en/auckland/aklap/hoteldetail
