Outsourcing, Planning, And Controlling In Accommodation Management Essay.

Accommodation Management in a Hospitality Firm

Question:

Discuss about the Accomodation management.

This report reflects my personal experience and understanding about the outsourcing, planning, controlling, managing the things in an organization, customers, their needs etc. this essay depict all about the accommodation management according to my knowledge and understanding about it. In this essay, reader will get to know about different aspects of above described points. This essay would depict some key steps which a manager must take to ensure the customer needs as well as their satisfaction.

Accommodation management is key managing department of a hospitality firm to manage and maintain all the rooms and lobbies of a hotel. This department’s main concern is to ensure the satisfaction of customers and fulfill their needs. This department ensures that their hotel run efficiently and the company’s standard of maintenance and cleanliness could be upheld. According to my knowledge, the department managers and control over budget and in that budget it also ensures the sustainability of firm (Lamminmaki, 2008).

Outsourcing is a contract in which a firm contracts with another firm and passes some of its work to another firm for the purpose of saving the time, cost or provide the higher quality product to customers. It has been analyzed by me that outsourcing is one of the best way for effective cost saving and improving the efficiency of the company.

According to my understanding and readings, I have examined that outsourcing is a vital options as due to this option company could not only reduce the extra cost but as well as the time could also be saved by the company and efficiency of the company could also enhanced (Lamminmaki, 2011). A company must choose it so that it could focus on its core operations and thus the company could experience a growth.

There are so many benefits of outsourcing such as the labor cost could be reduced, capital could be appraised, customers might get super quality product, company could get some benefits of re-engineering, company could save the time to focus over core product, it helps the company to reduce the risk as well as enhance the customer satisfaction. Thus it could be said that the outsourcing is a viable solution for every company especially in accommodation management of a company (Espino-Rodríguez and Padrón-Robaina, 2005).

It is not easy for me to analyze the departments of a hotel which could be outsourced. Actually it totally depends over the firm and pressure on it. Like in peak season company do outsource some of its department to manage the staff and enhance the satisfaction of customer whereas according to a study over a hotel by me, I have found that there are huge fixed cost of a hotel as whether guest come or not but the hotel have to pay to its staff, so it is better for the hotel to outsource some of its department and whenever needed take a help of it and pay accordingly (Gibson and Earley, 2007).        

Outsourcing in Accommodation Management

A hotel could outsource housekeeping department, security department, online booking department, customer support department etc to mitigate the risk, cost saving, less time consumption and for customer satisfaction. These departments are the most cost consuming department of a hotel and if a hotel do outsource of this departments than the losses could be overcome by the hotel on a huge level (Roessler and Rubin, 2006).

There are huge benefits for a hotel behind outsourcing these departments. The main benefits a company could enjoy after outsourcing some of its department are reduction in the total fixed cost of the company as company need not to hire staff for the work and whenever needed, it could ask for the contracted party to do that work. Another benefit of outsourcing is that better quality of products and services could be offered by the hotel to its guest as the contracted party would be professional in that particular task and thus the professional services would be given by them.

Outsourcing has some disadvantages too. As it becomes hard for the hotel to make control over outsourced departments as that people do work according to their understanding only. This also makes it difficult for the hotel to control over the quality (Shang, Hung and Wang, 2008). The another disadvantages of outsourcing is lack of alignment as due to outsourcing it becomes difficult for the company to align the strategic aspects and objective correctly.

There are many other disadvantages has also studied by me in hotel due to outsource its services to other companies. Such as security issues, lose control, risk, understanding etc. thus it has been understood by me that outscoring has some advantages as well as disadvantages. A hotel must review on both of them and then take the decisions accordingly. 

Planning and controlling is the main pillar of every management. This pillar decides the strategy a hotel must use to achieve the objectives and controlling helps the hotel to identify the reasons behind the differences on actual and expected result. Planning is an action for future to determine the future course of action of hotel. This process is the main steps of the organization process which involves that why this action must be involve and how to involve that particular action and at what time the action must be taken.

Controlling is the last step of organizational process which is the essential step to continue this process. This step involves the action like check the process of task against the plans that might need some modification according to the feedback. Many issues could be faced by a hotel according to my understanding due to influence in planning and controlling.

If a hotel take influences while planning the strategy and action which must be involved while implementing the plan than many issues could be faced by the company. Such as company could face some issues in management and some actions could be choose by the company according to the external factors rather than considering the internal factors.

Benefits and Drawbacks of Outsourcing

The contributing influence from outsiders could make an impact over the internal factors of the hotel as they are not aware from the internal fluctuations of the hotel and thus the influence of theirs could also demotivated the company’s staff. The influence of professionals from outside could also affect the objectives of the company and strategy of the company. Thus the risk would be higher and the cost could also enhance due to their influence.

If a hotel take influences while controlling over the actions of the company which were involved at the time of implementing the plan, organizing and leading the plan than many issues could be faced by the company. Such as company could face some issues in management and some actions could be choose by the company due to considering the external factors rather than internal factors (Lockyer, 2005).

The contributing influence from outsiders could make an impact over the internal factors of the hotel as they are not aware from the internal fluctuations of the hotel and thus the influence of theirs could also demotivated the company’s staff. The influence of professionals from outside could also affect the objectives of the company and strategy of the company. Thus the risk would be higher and the cost could also enhance due to their influence.

Thus it has been analyzed by me that the external influences could help the management to make some better decisions but it also raise some issues in front of the accommodation management which could be harmful for the management as well as the other staff members of the company. Thus I do suggest to the hotel management to take influences after considering all the internal as well as external factors of the firm (Lin, Chen and Chang, 2011).

Customers are the person who buys services or products from a company. In accommodation management, customers are the one who comes in the hotel to stays in the hotel and buys services from the hotel. The primary goal of accommodation management is to enhance the customer’s base by offering them the best quality products and services in economic price.

Customer’s satisfaction is the primary goal of a company as only of a customer get satisfied than he will come again to enjoy the services of the company again and will do mouth publicity in public. In the current market scenario where competition is on highest, understanding your customers becomes essential. Understanding the customers is important as it offers more revenue and certainty to hotel, organization are totally dependent on the customers, without the customer an organization could not exist. Thus it becomes important for the organization to understand its customers.

A customer could only be satisfied and loyal if the customer’s need could be understand by the organization and fulfill it according to their wishes. Customers satisfaction is important as if offers the business owners and marketers a metric which could be used by them to manage and enhance the profitability of the hotel. It is quite cheap for an organization to retain the customers than acquire the new customers and for retaining the customers, it become important for the organization to understand their needs.

Departments of a Hotel that can be Outsourced

I have analyzed a nearby hotel of mine and have studied over its accommodation management to understand that what steps their manager take to ensure that their customer’s need has been fulfilled. Following steps has been analyzed over there. These are: online services, invite customer suggestions, effective customer care, set up an effective channel for communication, carrying the internal audits out, set up some regulations, establish an system of effective management, personal appraisal, employee participation, strategic planning and personnel motivate.

The above described steps are the main steps which could be used by every accommodation manager to ensure that in his hotel all the need of the guest has been ensured and fulfilled. In the above steps the strategy, objective and training of the staff is done in such a way that the customers get satisfied and feel happy after using the services of that accommodation (Hughes, 2006).

It becomes important for a accommodation manager to identify that how the customer has felt in their hotel and according to it, manager could implement some action to enhance the services of the company. I have analyzed that the below described Steps must be taken by the accommodation manager to ensure the positive experience of customers (Shackley, 2009).

Take the feedback of customers, conduce a online survey, create an emotional connection with them and ask them about the services of the company, be polite and ask them about any problem which they have faced while accommodate in hotel, take the feedback in real time, measure the ROI, analyze the expressions of the customer.

These are some ways through which a manager could understand the feedback of the customer and the manager must work according to the feedback to enhance the customer satisfaction so that the profitability of the hotel could enhance (Guilding, Warnken, Ardill and Fredline, 2005).

Through the above study, I have found that the accommodation management is the essential pillar of a hotel to reduce the risk, enhance the profitability, increase the customer base, grab the market share, satisfy the customer etc. I have found through this study that how an organization must take decisions regarding the outsourcing, influence in planning and controlling etc.

Many important factors of accommodation management have been studied in this paper to analyze the role of accommodation management department in a hotel.

References:

Espino-Rodríguez, T.F. and Padrón-Robaina, V., 2005. A resource-based view of outsourcing and its implications for organizational performance in the hotel sector. Tourism Management, 26(5), pp.707-721.

Gibson, C.B. and Earley, P.C., 2007. Collective cognition in action: Accumulation, interaction, examination, and accommodation in the development and operation of group efficacy beliefs in the workplace. Academy of management review, 32(2), pp.438-458.

Guilding, C., Warnken, J., Ardill, A. and Fredline, L., 2005. An agency theory perspective on the owner/manager relationship in tourism-based condominiums. Tourism Management, 26(3), pp.409-420.

Hughes, M., 2006. Change management. Chartered Institute of Personnel & Development.

Lamminmaki, D., 2008. Accounting and the management of outsourcing: An empirical study in the hotel industry. Management Accounting Research, 19(2), pp.163-181.

Lamminmaki, D., 2011. An examination of factors motivating hotel outsourcing. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 30(4), pp.963-973.

Lin, L.Z., Chen, W.C. and Chang, T.J., 2011. Using FQFD to analyze island accommodation management in fuzzy linguistic preferences. Expert Systems with applications, 38(6), pp.7738-7745.

Lockyer, T., 2005. The perceived importance of price as one hotel selection dimension. Tourism Management, 26(4), pp.529-537.

Roessler, R.T. and Rubin, S.E., 2006. Case management and rehabilitation counseling: Procedures and techniques. PRO-ED, Inc. 8700 Shoal Creek Blvd, Austin, TX 78757.

Shackley, M., 2009. Visitor management. Routledge.

Shang, J.K., Hung, W.T. and Wang, F.C., 2008. Service outsourcing and hotel performance: three-stage DEA analysis. Applied Economics Letters, 15(13), pp.1053-1057