assignment of ''quality of the hotel that is the problem"?

Question

Quality resit assignment

You have been invited in as a consultant to a once successful hotel in Cardiff. The management say that over the last few years they have not changed anything significant and no new competition has opened up in the area targeting the hotel's traditional market segment. However, bookings are down and the hotel is starting to lose money. You have heard from the staff that the hotel guests say that it is the "quality" of the hotel that is the problem.

State your plan of action and critically evaluate any tools and techniques that you would use to understand the possible problem and help prevent furhter problems in the future. (Word guide: 2,000)

Answer 1

Make a general plan of action .. include things like 'Investigation', 'Making Improvements', 'Re-launch party' and so on. Get this OK'd with the Hotel. Don't forget to find out what the Budget is = there is no point planning a total re-decoration and the building of an new Restaurant if they only have a Budget of £20,000 ... (including your fee)

Investigation = Customer feedback.
Start by getting details of their recent guests, and all their regular customers - these will be more likely to respond when you ask them for assistance.

Next you need to decide where to focus - is it general decoration, the facilities (such as bar, restaurant etc) or the Staff ?

As a first step, visit the Hotel as an 'anonymous guest' yourself and make a list of possible 'quality' issues.

Now comes the hard work - generate a detailed questioner and a covering letter (saying, in effect, that improvements are planned and you would like the guests guidance). You will need some sort of incentive to encourage a response - so in addition to pre-paid return envelope you could include something like 'all those who return a completed Questioneer will be given 2 free tickets to the re-launch party including overnight stay'.

Ask the customers if they would be willing to take part in a telephone interview.

Collate the responses and follow up with telephone interviews as necessary.

Improvements.
Put together at least 2 (better 3) possible recommendations for improvements ('below Budget', 'on Budget' , 'exceeding Budget'). Don't be afraid to say 're-deploy the useless Receptionist who fails to take bookings, never reserves the correct rooms and always gets the bills wrong' or 'hire some-one who can cook' etc)

Re-launch.
Makes suggestions for a re-launch Party ...

Additional.
Most Hotels focus on either Business or Tourist customers - these have two different requirements and this should always be taken into account = most Business customers will bin the Questioneer - they may be under-represented in the final 'count up' of who had a problem with what ..