Revitalising The McQuarrie Hotel: Improving Customer Experience And Identifying Customer Needs Through Essay.

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.

Hotel industry is one of the most important sectors in modern days (Benavides-Velasco, Quintana-García and Marchante-Lara 2014). People travel from hotel to hotel for a variety of reasons requiring for different facilities and luxury that meet their needs as well as are budget-friendly. In current days, numerous hotel organizations have diversified portfolio to target specific customer market. They have developed varieties of structures and operations that align to every brand’s purpose and that clearly signify the difference between each brand. Hotel Mcquarrie is one of those iconic hotels that is successfully standing in the business market of hotel industry since its existence. In this report I shall discuss what more that management of McQuarrie needs to develop in order to maintain its position effectively.

1. Systems and technologies that will enhance the customer’s experience and will provide organizational efficiency from the staff

McQuarrie hotel had been successfully serving the customers from the past 20 years and it is still meeting the customer needs efficiently. It is successful in gaining customer preference among the most preferred hotels. Still, there are changes required in the hotel in order to maintain the same success and reputation in the near future. One of the very common complaints that the customer does in the hotel industry is regarding their housekeeping interruptions.

McQuarrie can install infrared sensors (Saddler et al. 2016) in each of the doors of its hotel rooms that detect the heat of the body. If the sensor placed on the door panel shows up, then the hotel staff members would easily detect that the guests are busy. In that case, they will move on and will ensure that they are never disturbed until next checking.

Mobile technology is rapidly changing into the biggest game changer in the business sector (Fidlschuster, Mayer and Linder 2017). Each of the travelers today, carries a smart phone with him. McQuarrie too can make use of mobile technology in order to enhance its customer’s experience. It may introduce a new technology that would enable its customers to select their choice of rooms digitally. With the same, it would also have some advanced features like digitally check-in facilities and food ordering as well. It would also enable them unlock their doors using the device itself. It would work as a remote control for life. In addition, the device will also let the customers gain access to several items like towels, charger, toothbrushes etc and provide them a wake-up call and other room services.

RFID or Radio Frequency Identification Data (Sharma, Shimi and Chatterji 2014) is an exceedingly convenient tool. It is simply scalable for hotel guests. Hotel McQuarrie can replace its traditional methods of using key cards with this new technology in its hospitality services. This will allow its customers RFID-enabled cards, wristbands or key fobs in place of wallets and room keys. These RFID cards will also track the guests movements throughout the hotel. Furthermore, these cards will enhance the customer meeting or appointment by notifying the employees about their presence and will allow the hotel to provide a more customized experience to its guests (Bahr and Price 2016). The hotel may also implement fingerprint-activated hotel room entry.  

1. Systems and technologies that will enhance the customer’s experience and will provide organizational efficiency from the staff

In order to meet its guest demands for some more entertainment in the hotel rooms, hotel McQuarrie can install smart TVs in each of its 280 rooms that will allow its guests to instantly be connected with the online shop, internet and local events to the TV from their devices.  In addition, there are TVs that can offer a more wide range of features such as apps and games, video playback by USB, phone connectivity, social networking, and voice control.

Accommodation is one of the broad sectors in the hotel industry (Melissen et al. 2016). There are several guests arrives in McQuarrie who are from different sectors. There will be some guests who comes along with their families arrives in the hotel only to spent their holidays. There will several international clients who visits the place to attend a business meeting.  There will be some who are international tourists and they basically spent their most of the time outing. These segments of guests are all different entities that have different needs, wants and travel patterns (W. O’Neill and McGinley 2014). Better understanding of these sectors or segments will lead to even more success of the hotel.  Hence, McQuarrie must make sure that it serves each of their guest type sincerely and accordingly.

Families: The guest who falls under the family sector is a package deal. It would consist of crying infants and their exhausted parents (Lindauer 2017). It is loud and is a bit out of management control. However, they are comparatively a great family bunch as well. This sector will require a little more time than the other sectors from your part in order to keep settled and it is likely that the parents will definitely appreciate and cherish your efforts (Evangelista, 2000).  Hence, you must ensure that your hotel is well equipped with games activities and other coloring books in order to settle the children.

Business or corporate clients: These types of guests are more efficiency and convenience conscious. They are more interested on the available food options, local transportation and a comfortable accommodation. Provide them with a business centre room that will meet all their needs and ensure that their check-in and check-out processes are quick and hassle free.

Tourists: The tourist guest travel for visiting, non-business and sightseeing activities and they mainly travel in a group (Law et al. 2015). They are usually interested to learn about the language, culture and history of very place they visit. Hence, in order to impress them in a way, make sure to provide them with the information that they may need or will help them know about the area. In addition, provide them with essential information on the local events that will be held in your surroundings.

The elderly: The elderly people cannot take care of their own as the years passes. So, it will be obvious for them to look for a hotel which will be with a friendly and pleasant environment.  Be kind to them. Be patient. Look after and take care of them without letting them know that you are behaving in such a manner, as they have grown old.

Above all, make sure that the food supply is healthy and efficient enough. Food and beverage sector rule its hotel.  For the guests who come along their families, suitable room with at least double bed and a TV for children entertainment, as mentioned in the above should be made.  It should look forward to develop its hotel with the cotemporary rooms that are for two to three people with comfortable beddings, XL showers, Comfortable beddings and breakfast buffet. During guest departure, the hotel staffs must thank all the guests for their arrival and for giving them the opportunity to serve them. They must do the arrangements for handling luggage. In addition to that, if the guest needs any sort of drop facilities, the front office desk must fulfill it.

Conclusion

The iconic hotel McQuarrie serves its best to meet customer-satisfaction. However, change is needed is every industry in order to maintain its success and therefore, there are few suggestion made in the above analysis that McQuarrie hotel  can implement in its business system for remaining in its success place for the coming years as well. These will enhance its customer experience more efficiently and would draw the attention of more customers towards its services and this will automatically contribute to improve profitability.

References

Benavides-Velasco, C. A., Quintana-García, C., and Marchante-Lara, M. 2014. Total quality management, corporate social responsibility and performance in the hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 41, 77-87.

O’Neill, J., and McGinley, S. 2014. Operations research from 1913 to 2013: The Ford assembly line to hospitality industry innovation. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 26(5), 663-678.

Evangelista, R., 2013. Sectoral patterns of technological change in services. Economics of innovation and new technology, 9(3), pp.183-222.

Melissen, F., Koens, K., Brinkman, M. and Smit, B., 2016. Sustainable development in the accommodation sector: A social dilemma perspective. Tourism Management Perspectives, 20, pp.141-150.

Lindauer, S.J., 2017. Excellent customer service in the age of compromise.

Law, R., Leung, R., Lo, A., Leung, D. and Fong, L.H.N., 2015. Distribution channel in hospitality and tourism: Revisiting disintermediation from the perspectives of hotels and travel agencies. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 27(3), pp.431-452.

Fidlschuster, M., Mayer, C., & Linder, P. 2017. Hotel Market Germany. In Understanding German Real Estate Markets (pp. 403-422). Springer International Publishing.

Sharma, S., Shimi, S.L. and Chatterji, S., 2014. Radio frequency identification (RFID) based employee monitoring system (EMS). International Journal of Current Engineering and Technology, 4(5), pp.3441-3444.

Bahr, W. and Price, B., 2016. Radio frequency identification and its application in e-commerce. In Encyclopedia of e-commerce development, implementation, and management(pp. 1841-1857). IGI Global.

Saddler, J., Jacobson, E., Johnston, A. and Gopinatha, A., Accenture Global Services Limited, 2016. Connected hotels worker experience. U.S. Patent Application 15/299,698.