Case Study on Imperial Hotel: Poor Team Working and Inefficient Use of IT Systems

This case study focuses on the poor team working and inefficient use of IT systems at Imperial Hotel. It discusses the problems faced by the hotel and proposes a 3-point plan for resolving the issues. The plan is based on Henry Fayol's management principles and includes awareness, conversion, and loyalty. The article also includes an analysis of the individual problem and its relation to other problems, as well as a conclusion and references.

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Individual report on a case study – The Imperial Hotel

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Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................3
Analysis of individual problem.......................................................................................................4
3 Point Plan for resolving the problem............................................................................................5
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................7
References........................................................................................................................................9

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Introduction
The hotel industry is an emerging industry nowadays due to increased demand for travel. Every
visitor has the desire to get superior service from them. Team working is crucial for delivering
high-quality services to the customer, as it helps in amplifying the productivity of the employees
as well. Lack of team working can lead the organization into the adverse situation and raise
conflicts between employees. Cooperation among employees is necessary for the business to
achieve common goals. Technology has become advanced that is being adopted by hotel industry
to provide high quality of services to the customers (Cobanoglu, Berezina, Kasavana and Erdem,
2011). The role of having skills in the employee to handle technology is significant because
This assignment is based on the case study of Imperial Hotel, London which is known for the
international branded chain of hotels in the 4 Star Market. This chain is facing many issues, for
which the new manager Peter Farnsworth has identified five concerns and one of them will be
highlighted by me as an independent consultant in this paper. The issue is poor team working
and ineffective use of IT system involving the reservation and property management systems.
Lack of cooperation impacts on the productivity of the business because instead of leading
employees towards completing tasks, managers have to expend a lot of time in handling
interpersonal conflicts between them.

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Analysis of individual problem
Discussion on problems from management and operational perception and the relation on
them with other 4 problems
Poor team working and inefficient use of IT systems
The role of front house staff in the Imperial hotel keeps significant vale in the relation of offering
service and support to guests. It is necessary in the hotel to have the availability of reception area
for 24*7 in order to give up to date information to the guest regarding vacant room and other
services. From case study, it has been found that the reception staffs has three shifts of 8 hours in
which three teams are made for the same. In the context of the problem, the supervisor of each
team is facing the issue in managing the information that should be passing on next shifts team.
Micros Fidelio reservation and Property Management System (PMS) is being used in the hotel to
provide real-time information about guest reservations. There are other departments as well in
the hotel including restaurants, kitchen and conferencing that are relied on reception for numbers
and data of guests.
There isa number of problems identified through the case studyfrom a management and
operational perception, that the hotel employees are unaware of their responsibility. Another
department of the hotel has to suffer due to wrong and inadequate information about the guests,
these are wrong or out-of-date data on room availability information to the housekeeping,
cleaning issues, inadequate information about early and late arrivals and subsequently rooms,
guests have to wait for a long period to get their room keys and the reception department is
unable to give proper data on numbers of guests coming in for meetings and conferences.

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Relation of a chosen problem with other 4 problems
Every problem has many reasons to occur and it is necessary for the organization to recognize
the root of the problems before it takes huge phase of concern. There are another four problems
recognized by Peter that are poor guest satisfaction, high staff turnover, negative work culture
and poor operating and control procedures in place. It shall be noted that the major problem of
the poor team working and inefficient use of IT systems has generated through other problems
(Hoch, Pearce and Welzel, 2010). There is a lack of training and development program through
which clients are not satisfied which increase the frustration level of employees and they start to
blame each other. Due to high staff turnover, many responsibilities come on the head of the
single employee which become the reason of not completing the task in an adequate manner
(Köseoglu, Topaloglu, Parnell and Lester, 2013). A negative working environment and lack of
staff, the employees do not follow their responsibility to pass on the necessary information
regarding guests to another team which raises conflicts.
3 Point Plan for resolving the problem
It has been found from above discussion that there is a huge need to provide a solution of above
issues in maintaining the decorum within the management. Management of Imperial Hotel needs
to be active in providing an upper level of services to the customer who can be done by
managing employees’ activity in an adequate manner (Kearney, Harrington and Kelliher, 2014).
To resolve the issues, 3 point plan for resolving the problems are mentioned below so that the
management of the Imperial Hotel can be improved.

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Above model depicted three points for resolving the issues within the Imperial Hotel in which
the first point of Awareness define that it is necessary to have better understanding regarding
problems. It has been found through case study that Peter, a new general manager is aware of
ongoing issues and wants to resolve them as soon as possible. The second point of conversion
elaborates the change in the organization for the purpose of reducing the issues (Moe, Dingsøyr
and Dybå, 2010). The resistance management plan can be implemented by the manger of the
company in order to resolve the problem of staff morale, operational efficiency and productivity
in order to make the hotel financial stable. The third point of loyalty is about seeing changed
things in a successive manner, from which the organization can move further without any hurdle
in the way of growth (Hoque, 2013). For this, performance management and their evaluation are
necessary from the organization side so that the productivity of the employees cannot be
affected. Every employee wants to pay off their efforts, which can be done by giving them the
opportunity to get promoted within the organization.

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The above-mentioned 3 points can be achieved by applying Henry Fayol’s principles that entails
14 principles but the discussion will be made on some of them to attain the objectives of the
company. The management of Imperial Hotel should follow the below points in order to resolve
the problem of staff morale, operational efficiency and productivity in order to make the hotel
financial stable (Peaucelle and Guthrie, 2015).
Division of work
It is the principle of Henry Fayol that depicts that staff performs in a well efficient manner when
they are selected in the company (Rahman, 2012). It has been found by the case study that
employees are not aware of their responsibility that increases the conflicts among department.
The team is divided into the different department to provide the services to the customers 24*7,
but due to improper segregation of the work confuse them to work effectively (Golden Pryor and
Taneja, 2010).
Discipline
It is the principle that advocates for defining the rules and regulations objective at attaining good
employees discipline and obedience. It has been found through the case study that the employees
of the hotel are not punctual and due to lack of discipline, they avoid to remain in the office in
working hours and leave the hotel without informing (Uzuegbu and Nnadozie, 2015). This
activity develops issue within the hotel in the form of a long wait for servicing by the guests. It
can be reduced by implementing technology of biometric machine through which management
will be aware about the status of punch-in and punch-out of the employees.
Unity of command

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This principle of Henry Fayol elaborates that there should be single plan, one objective and one
head for each of the plans. There is a lack of coordination among employees through which they
ignore to convey the right information to other department, which is connected with the customer
services directly. What Fayol meant is that the hotel will generally have aims that are necessary
by the employees to follow and as well departmental goals which need to be attained the unified
objectives (Peaucelle and Guthrie, 2012).The team should email the last status of the guests and
room availability to the next team so that the next team can perform adequately.
Remuneration
Motivation is necessary for working and it can be categorized into two terms that are monetary
and non-monetary incentives. Monetary covers those aspects which cover incentives, bonuses
and salary, on the other hand, non-monetary are all those that covers rewards and recognition.
There should be implementation of performance-based pay system that would increase the
productivity of the employees in a significant manner and they will get aware about their
responsibilities (Salas, Prince, Baker, and Shrestha, 2017).
Equity
It is the principle that has another meaning of fairness. According to this principle of Henry
fayol, it is necessary for the managers as well as managers to be fair towards their working and
each other. Staff of the hotel should be awarded and punished as per their
commitment;faithfulness and working criteria and this should be same for every employee so
that biasness could not take place within the hotel.
Stability of Personnel Tenure

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In this principle, Henry elaborates the requirement to hire right staff and train them on the job
with a hope to retain them for a long. Team coordination in Imperial Hotel can be developed by
providing high quality training and development program to each employee so that they can get
aware of their allocated tasks and perform accordingly. In the context of use of IT systems and
upgraded model, training will be helpful for them to learn how to operate the upgraded systems
in an effective manner without giving chance to management of any mistakes.
Initiative
The working environment of the hotel is not good that demotivate employee to work hard and it
is required by the management of the company to have good manager who should be creative in
terms of taking the initiative of new ideas and also be able to implement them (Rahimi, 2017).
Peter should encourage the employee to speak up and share new ideas and their view in the
context of bringing change within the company so that customers get satisfied. With the help of
this activity, the staff morale will be amplified and they will be good in providing a high quality
of services to the employees.
With the help of the above management principles of Henry Fayol, the management of Imperial
Hotel can be changed in a significant manner. The major issue of poor team coordination and
lack of knowledge about how to use the IT system will be resolved by giving proper training and
development program to the employees. discipline will be helpful in managing the time criteria
of employee so that they can become liable for their work and perform adequately by keeping in
mind to provide high quality services to the customers so that they visit again and again at same
place due to good hospitality services.

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Conclusion
It can be concluded from above discussion that team coordination has a noteworthy role in the
hotel industry to move on the growth path of the business. The case study of Imperial Hotel has
been considered under this assignment in which one specific problem is being chosen to resolve
by management principles and theories. It has been found that there was a lack of team
coordination and improper use of IT that become the issue for the departments to get aware about
the status of guests in the hotel. Due to lack of team coordination, it has been found that the
relevant and necessary information did not pass on to another team that has become issue for the
customers. To resolve the issues, the principle of Henry Fayol has been proposed under this
assignment so that quality of service, staff morale, operational efficiency and productivity to
make the hotel financially sustainable can be improved.

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References
Cobanoglu, C., Berezina, K., Kasavana, M.L. and Erdem, M., 2011. The impact of technology
amenities on hotel guest overall satisfaction. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality &
Tourism, 12(4), pp.272-288.
Golden Pryor, M. and Taneja, S., 2010.Henri Fayol, practitioner and theoretician–revered and
reviled. Journal of Management History, 16(4), pp.489-503
Hoch, J.E., Pearce, C.L. and Welzel, L., 2010. Is the most effective team leadership
shared?. Journal of Personnel Psychology.
Hoque, K., 2013. Human resource management in the hotel industry: Strategy, innovation and
performance. Routledge.
Kearney, A., Harrington, D. and Kelliher, F., 2014.Exploiting managerial capability for
innovation in a micro-firm context: New and emerging perspectives within the Irish hotel
industry. European Journal of Training and Development, 38(1/2), pp.95-117.
Köseoglu, M.A., Topaloglu, C., Parnell, J.A. and Lester, D.L., 2013. Linkages among business
strategy, uncertainty and performance in the hospitality industry: Evidence from an emerging
economy. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 34, pp.81-91.
Moe, N.B., Dingsøyr, T. and Dybå, T., 2010. A teamwork model for understanding an agile
team: A case study of a Scrum project. Information and Software Technology, 52(5), pp.480-491.
Peaucelle, J.L. and Guthrie, C., 2012. The private life of Henri Fayol and his motivation to build
a management science. Journal of Management History, 18(4), pp.469-487.

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Peaucelle, J.L. and Guthrie, C., 2015. Henri Fayol. In The Oxford Handbook of Management
Theorists.
Rahimi, R., 2017. Customer relationship management (people, process and technology) and
organisational culture in hotels: Which traits matter?. International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management, 29(5), pp.1380-1402.
Rahman, M.H., 2012. Henry Fayol and Frederick Winslow Taylor’s contribution to management
thought: An overview. ABC Journal of Advanced Research, 1(2), pp.32-41.
Salas, E., Prince, C., Baker, D.P. and Shrestha, L., 2017. Situation awareness in team
performance: Implications for measurement and training. In Situational Awareness (pp. 63-
76).Routledge.
Uzuegbu, C.P. and Nnadozie, C.O., 2015. Henry Fayol’s 14 Principles of Management:
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Practice, 3(2), pp.58-72.