Enhancing Customer Experience, Organizational Efficiency, And Profitability At McQuarrie Hotel - An Essay.

The McQuarrie hotel had been a landmark mid-size hotel (280 rooms) in Sydney for over 20 years.
Following the successful sale of the hotel the new owners have decided to engage a consultant to
revitalise the hotel to meet current and future customer needs. The Hotel has maintained success in the past however confronted with a dynamic environment the hotel requires continual analysis and
improvement.

You and your organisation have been successful in gaining the consultancy for the McQuarrie hotel. Your task now is to examine a number of areas to help the new owners make a successful and profitable hotel.

Task 1: The new owner is excited about new and modern systems that are available within the industry
and has requested you to highlight new systems that will enhance the customer’s experience, provide
organisational efficiency from a staff and systems perspective and improve profitability.

Task 2: will be to evaluate a number of new customer sectors (e.g families, corporate clients, leisure
guests, international tourists etc.) and identify what provisions within the accommodation facilities and
services would need to be provided to each sector. 

Task 1: Highlighting New Systems

The report gives an overview on the accommodation management in hospitality. The report has two parts, the first part deals with highlighting the newer systems that will help in enhancing the customer experience, ensure providing organizational efficiency and lead to improvement in profitability in McQuarrie hotel. The second part of the report deals with evaluation of a number of new customers sectors that include families, leisure guests, corporate clients, and international tourist along with the identification of service and accommodation facilities for each of the sectors.

The introduction of the latest technology has a key role in improving the journey of the customers and at the same time not only impact a guest or a diner’s choice but determine whether they will return in future (McColl-Kennedy et.al 2015). New technologies include Wi-Fi access, closed circuit television (CCTV), access control and integrated communication solutions.

Use of CCTV Cameras

Restaurants and hotels in particular have the responsibility of ensuring the security and safety of the guests. However, enhancement of security ensured through installation of reliable CCTV cameras that can enhance customer experience throughout the venue.

Use of Premium Quality Displays

The McQuarrie hotel can enhance the luxurious experience for the customers that will allow them to stream content from the tablet or the Smartphone to the television in the room with the help of various applications. This will not only enhance customer experience but will also make sure that they return to the venue.

Ensuring Improvement of the Hospitality Process through Phone Systems

The latest technology enables initiating fully integrated solutions in the McQuarrie hotel. This will not only lead to the acceleration of the work performance of the employees but also help in better streamlining the hospitality processes (Mok, Sparks and Kadampully 2013). Thus, introducing the best high tech services in hospitality will help in the expansion of brand loyalty.

Ensuring a Unified Customer Service Channels   

The McQuarrie hotel needs to undertake significant developments in technology that aligns with the expectation of the customers. The hotel must provide high tech services that lead to ultimate comfort of the customers (Piotrowicz and Cuthbertson 2014). This also helps in retaining its unique factor that remains the reason behind customer attraction. In this respect, technology can ensure bringing together all channels of the customer service into centralized system and helps in coordination the customer address with phone numbers. This will help in tracking the conversations of the customers irrespective of the channels.

The McQuarrie hotel can incorporate certain ideas that boost productivity that results in organizational efficiency while being cost effective. These ideas are as follows:

Through Encouraging Communication:

The hotel in order to ensure organizational efficiency must promote communication that will enable the staff members in easily discussing issues with the management as well as their peers (Conrad and Poole 2012). Organizational efficiency initiated by holding regular meetings, implementing an open door policy, creating an email message group and encouraging social media communication  

Ensuring Automation of Employee Payable Accounts:

a. New System Enhancing Customer Experience

The sector must also take initiatives in automating the process of accounts payable that will not only ensure saving time through improvement of productivity but also make the entire cycle more efficient (Borthick 2012). This process also helps ion generation of return on investment for the hotels of every size.

Ensure Providing Incentives:

To ensure better productivity amongst the staffs, the hospitality industry must ensure providing incentives to their staffs (Shields et.al 2015). The incentives need not be huge but will encourage the employees to put a little more effort.  

By Going Paperless:

The McQuarrie hotel must ensure organizational efficiency by going paperless. Instead, computerized system used for scanning every document that not only saves time but also help in displaying authenticity (Pfister and Schwabe 2016). Going paperless also have a positive impact on the environment.

Through Reduction of Workloads:

There should be reduction in workloads of their staffs so that they can make their contribution to organizational efficiency (Miwa et.al 2014). Tasks that are largest wasters of time taken care of so that the staffs can devote time to the tasks that actually matters.

The hotel business can enhance its profitability through adopting of the following (Rosman and Stuhura 2013):

By offering better value:

McQuarrie hotel needs to offer services that help in enhancing its profitability. The staffs can put in more effort in delighting the guest if freed from the burden of repetitive task (Nagle Hogan and Zale 2016). The hotel business can also make a mark through additional services like parking benefits and free spa.

By focusing on social media:

To make more business the hotel must ensure drawing revenue from social media through interactive contents, creative posts and other activities that also helps in encouraging the users for sharing experiences they had during their stay at the hotel (Leung et.al 2013).

Selection of Online Booking Channels:

To boost up its profitability the hospitability sector especially the hotels must enhance online bookings directly (Bilgihan and Bujisic 2015). Customers will also find it convenient, as they will be able to make booking with the click few buttons.

Through prioritization of Websites

McQuarrie hotel must know that the website of company serves as an important source of revenue. Therefore, there should be necessary measures undertaken for optimizing the websites through improvement of page design and loading times (Virginia Phelan, Chen and Haney 2013). There should be a prominent call to action option located in a prominent position so that guests have an idea of the place once they are booked.

By Staying Informed about Latest Trends:

The hospitality sector is growing at a faster rate in terms of technology, booking trends, guest behavior and spending patterns (Rasmusen and Yoon 2012). Therefore, keeping track of the latest developments is necessary. The knowledge about the new happenings can help the McQuarrie hotel to implement better strategies for enhancing profitability.

The hotel in order to build a customer base must ensure activities that are not only family oriented but also child friendly (Wu and Ko 2013). The hotel must ensure that travelling with families is simple a cakewalk. Thus, it is important for the hospitality sector to focus on the needs and requirements of families. The hotel authorities can thus implement various activities taking in account the families and the children.

b. New System Enhancing Organizational Efficiency

The activities that the hotel can implement for taking care of the families includes ensuring appropriate age television facilities like cartoon channels. There should be implementation of special menu for children and snack items for the family. The availability of snooker table and board games for adults can be one of the options. The hotel must seek to provide best room service with state of the art facilities. There can be pool and tennis facilities for a kids as well as adults.

However, to ensure unique experience for the corporate clients the hospitality industry must provide certain unique facilities. Corporate guests are responsible for providing a source of regular business that have the potential of greatly boosting the occupancy periods. Therefore, there is a need for not only attracting these corporate guests but also ensures that they turn into loyal clients (Ransley and Ingram 2012). The hotel however needs to undertake this with minimum efforts. Besides offering the minimum amenities like desk, chair, a Wi-Fi, accommodation facilities there are certain additional steps that the authorities needs to undertake.

McQuarrie hotel should have a page dedicated in its website that provides a list of amenities provided which might include complementary printing, extra large work desks, copy and fax facilities, cordless phones, meeting spaces, luggage store and electronic safes that provide space for laptop. The hotel must implement business friendly means of bookings facilities for the corporate. In addition to this, the hotel must also connect it to the reservations calendar so that they there is no chance for loss of bookings. Various companies create corporate accounts with the hospitality sector so that they are able to pay directly for the employees (N and Kline 2013). Therefore, there are systems in place that might help in making a booking in no time thereby ensuring benefits. Further, as a part of the hospitality industry, McQuarrie hotel does not find any difficulty in making a booking on behalf of the corporate.

The leisure travelers look for comfortable beds, price, recreational activities in-house dining options and recreational activities (Chan and Lam 2013). Thus, the hospitality industry must provide the following facilities to a leisure guest in order to turn them into loyal clients.

Hotel location plays a vital role for leisure guest. They primarily look for things that they can do around the destination like place to eat, cultural activities that they can enjoy, wander around popular attractions and explore historical monuments. Leisure guests also look for the best available accommodation at reasonable prices. Thus, the hotel must provide good deals to its customers on a continuous basis. McQuarrie hotel must also provide facilities for in house dining. Therefore, the hotel must have options like coffee shops, room service, snack bar and restaurants (Mok, Sparks and Kadampully 2013). The hotel must provide Wi-Fi service as a complimentary option that will attract leisure guests. The facility will enabled them in staying connected with family or friends.

Dedicated service is what leisure guests opts for. The hotel needs to have an excellent staff service so that they not only earn good reviews but also feedback from guests. The leisure guest looks for activities that allow them to not only enjoy but also relax at the same time (N and Kline 2013. The hotel must therefore incorporate various facilities like spa, sauna, swimming pool, golf course, theatre and gym for attracting more leisure traveler.

c. New System Enhancing Profitability

McQuarrie hotel can attract international guests by adopting usage of Social Media ((Murphy 2013). The social media platform help in identifying the loyal customer base of a hotel that is the first big step in attracting international guests. The identification of the target audience of the hotel along with observation of online travel can help in attracting international guest. The hotel in order to attract international guests needs to employ a strategy of search engine optimization. This helps the hotels in determining the countries that searches for the hotel website thereby helping in determining their global audience. Further, the hotel must encourage partnerships and link building with other international sites that helps in driving more traffic internationally.

Conclusion:

The report provides an evaluation of the service and accommodation facilities provided to a new customer base that include international tourist, leisure guests, families and corporate clients. The report also discusses about the new system that enhances customer experience, enhance organizational efficiency and enhance profitability.

References:

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