Rebuilding Brand Reputation in a Competitive Sector

The assignment examines the challenges faced by businesses in maintaining a strong brand reputation within highly competitive industries. It emphasizes the crucial role of customer satisfaction in shaping brand image and suggests strategies for improvement. These include implementing digital tools, enhancing operational efficiency, validating measurement tools, promoting transparency through communication, and fostering employee engagement. The ultimate goal is to regain customer trust and establish a robust brand presence on a global scale.

INTRODUCTION TO
MANAGEMENT

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION ..........................................................................................................................1
ANALYSIS .....................................................................................................................................1
CONCLUSION ...............................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................6

INTRODUCTION
Hospitality sector is one of the broader categories of the service industry. It consists of
mainly four sub-divisions, out of which lodging and accommodation is one of the important
businesses that improves the revenue generation and overall profitability. Moreover, it makes or
breaks the reputation and brand value of the hotel in the global competitive markets as lodging is
the main attractive factor to fetch the customers' attention. With emergence of technological
advancements and open economy, there is a need of constant renovation and reinventing the
services provided to the clients' and guests that will lead to the complete contentment (Pizam,
Shapoval and Ellis, 2016). There are few defining aspects that assist in bringing radical changes
to improve the employees' engagement and gain the potential customers by maintaining the
existing base.
This assignment is based on the problem number one in context to Imperial Hotel, which
gives insights on the identification and evaluation of the entire scenario which is in relation to the
low productivity and decreased performance rate. This hotel is suffering from several challenges
like poor quality in management of operations like rooms services, hygiene component etc. with
improper behavioural approaches by the staff and many other factors.
Overview of Hotel: This is one of the oldest hotels which has turned a centenarian a while ago. It
is situated in the heart of London's West End. Along with this, it has been considered as one of
the established names in this industry serving in almost all the prominent hotspots of United
Kingdom.
ANALYSIS
This report is mainly focusing on the refurbishment procedure that must be undertaken at
the Imperial Hotel to eliminate all the problem areas that their management have received from
the customers' feedback. However, this establishment is widespread with around 500 suites with
large conference facilities and different departments including HR, F&B, housekeeping and
more. This dissatisfaction have put questionable marks on their credibility and reliability among
their customers'. As per the evaluations done with the help of different measurement methods, it
has been demonstrated that 65 percent of their customer base was disappointed by their lack of
responsibility and arrogant behaviour towards attending (Hill and Alexander,2017). Moreover,
their taskforce were also in dilemma due to poor provisions and low wages and strict working

hours. Therefore, the customers' retention power became low and also had an impact on their
local competition with poor performance in context to ARR (Actual Average Room Rate).
With respect to the scenario described, there were several complaints against Imperial
hotel's staff's behaviour along with the incompetency issues from their employees that are
stationed at the front desk. Moreover, the housekeeping also received negative comments due to
their irresponsible attitude in completion of the tasks. There was sanitation and hygiene concerns
as well in all the arenas of the hotel's property. Bathrooms were kept unclean and rooms were not
cleaned properly with few accessories missing. Along with, the check in and check out procedure
was cumbersome due to manual processing that consumed more time and long queues at the
counters. In regard to this, there were unwarranted miscalculations on consistent order that led to
more agitation among the customers and their guests during the time of final billing.
Nonetheless, the overall impact of such challenges led to an eye opening mindset of this
hotel's management who hired a new General Manager. Before coming to the suggestions, one
must understand the core causes for generation of such obstacles and problems. There were few
root causes that led to such spiralling effects of the entire operational activities of the hotel
(Chiarini and Douglas,2015). With respect to combating this scenario, Kaizen and Six Sigma
must be used to adopt some techniques to make their services better and satisfactory.
Hereby, Kaizen is the Japanese word meaning Kai for 'change and zen for 'good', that is
used as a management methodology to preach about the continuous improvement in terms of
employees engagement, entire management of business and processes and concentrating on the
customers' needs and specifications. Their ulterior purpose is to minimise the waste and
unwanted entities in all the operations adopted by the hotel management in order to standardize
the processes and activities. Thus, the new GM can easily develop optimal solutions by
incorporating training and orientation programs. This would assist the employees to find
improvisations in maintenance of rooms and hygiene component by understanding the loopholes
while addressing the queries of their clients list (Agnihotri and et.al., 2016). There will be
transparency in the interactive framework while working that would aid in better cooperation and
co-ordination to fulfil customers expectations. Lastly, this would lead to cost effectiveness by
removing the waste and other related drawbacks that affected this hotel's reputation at global
level.

In addition, there can be adoption of Six Sigma approach that put light on the problem
solving orientation along with exploring the varied zones in the hotels including lodging,
housekeeping etc. This methodology infers the time efficiency in measurable context with
quantifiable goal achieving (Shmula, 2018). Here, the main idea is to improve the quality
frameworks at the Hotel Imperial due to their bottom-line performance that repel their clients and
customers in prominent manner. Along with, there is a need of tangible generation of results
which can be gained through employing the Six Sigma method.
Consequently, as per the case scenario, there is an immediate need of improvement and
control of all the operations that have been receiving negative feedbacks. The management can
implement and draw an outline to monitor the strategies and training sessions to improve their
employees' behaviour with a sense of responsibility and moral obligation (Han and Hyun, 2015).
Along with, they must also use Pareto charts and histograms till reliability analysis to validate
the findings and making necessary modifications in the performance management of employees.
Moreover, this would support in measuring the sales growth with operational performance in
terms of services quality and customers' satisfaction.
However, the new General Manager also recommended few changes at instant level to
bring random but concrete changes to laid the foundation of efficiency and effectiveness at this
hotel. Therefore, all these recommendations focused mainly on the overall complaints and
feedbacks this establishment received from their customers and frequent travellers. According to
the GM's analysis, all the customers' feedback has to be assessed to analyse the challenges from
their viewpoints. It would lay a platform to build their services quality on the rating they got
from their regular customers' along with managing their hotel's operations in more fruitful
manner. This helped to lay emphasis on renovating their rooms and making the associated
equipments well managed. Along with, they kept their staff and personnel updated and aware
about the latest happenings to comprehend the customers' requirements (Sengupta,Balaji and
Krishnan, 2015). There must be organising the team meetings and sessions for providing proper
training to know and differentiate about the shortcomings to improve their working practices.
Furthermore, the front desk services must be keep in loop of ongoing activities at this
hotel to coordinate all the departments in more efficient manner. They must also implement the
new techniques for reservations and booking of rooms as well. These techniques involve usage

of keyless card or the new NFC technology, where use of mobile phones are included to unlock
the door entry. Along with, they must update on their official website or make a provision on
their mobile application to check in and check out facilities. This would save money for both the
parties and bridge the communication gaps in absence of any employee at the front-desk along
with eliminating the long queues and hold up. Along with, the administration can form auditing
team to check the cleanliness and fix a schedule to change the accessories plus laundry twice a
day. This step would help in enhancing their image as well as make their employees realise the
constant practise to maintain and manage the entire problem areas (Lee and How,2018).
Nevertheless, they must incorporate the technological tools in better ways to attract their guests
by providing free Wifi, automatic showers with alarm to stop the wastage of water, fixing the
noisy air conditioners and installing the new automated and advanced version of AC's to provide
appropriate convenience to their customers with complete comfortability component.
With the following above techniques and methodologies such as Kaizen and Six Sigma, it
has been cleanly indicated that this problem was subjective to the management of employees.
Their taskforce was unsatisfied and did not give their commitment and dedication in performing
tasks which paved the path towards such poor outcomes. Nevertheless, this hotel has already
carved a niche in this competitive markets but with passing time and lack of judgement in
providing better incentives tot heir staff, they faced such critical reviews about their services in
context to accommodation and housekeeping with reluctant reception management at their
lobbies. However, they are focused to bring creative alterations to attract the potential customers
along with maintenance of the overall services and facilities to meet the benchmark set to reach
the expectation levels of customers, investors and critics.
Additionally, the management must design their changes as per the approaches
mentioned to lay emphasis on management of quality parameter as it has become the most
integral part of this hotel to regain their lost sheen in the markets by targeting their audience in
effective manner. There will be always issues while recruiting new seekers in this industry but if
this hotel join hands with the consulting firms who provide training and separate sessions for
improving body language etc. as these play role in connecting with their guests. Professional
behaviour must be complied with strict adherence by their managers to speed up their
rejuvenation phase from all the dimensions of the hotel sector and various departments.
Employees engagement is necessary aspect to impress the customers in the very first place

without investing on any other aesthetics in the layout or planning of rooms design. Such
parameters if followed in proper and professional order would reap benefits to this hotel and
would lay an understanding between the staff and the management to channelize their conflicts,
shortcomings and other inputs in the form of communication or suggestions that must be
encouraged to foster their hotel's environment in optimistic mode with positive energies to
appeal their targeted audience (Kim, Vogt and Knutson,2015). Henceforth, the major agenda
must be to uplift the quality conscience to bring necessary modifications.
CONCLUSION
From the case scenario, it is evident that Imperial Hotel is in struggling phase and is
undergoing a renovation phase. It has been summarized that hospitality management is the study
of different aspects in terms of operations, taskforce, customers' and the brand value that aid in
enriching the enterprise's sales volume and revenues generation. Along with, as per the case
study, Imperial hotel was plagued with number of problems which they faced from the
customers' perception and needed immediate attention to save their customers'. However, their
management must follow few methodologies like Kaizen, lean, Six Sigma etc. to bring radical
changes for their survival in the competition prevailing in this ever growing sector. Along this,
there must be promotion of digital tools to gain their customers' trust again by enhancing their
features and making their operational activities less tiresome. Moreover, their measurement tools
must be validated and must be in line with the performance of entire enterprise properly so that
such problems must never resurface. Subsequently, their upper management must implement
active participation towards the sustainability of their brand and must adopt flexibility towards
their employees and must encourage transparent communication framework in sequential
manner. This would help them to gain their customer base in leaps and bounds and would
support in re-establishing their reputation and image at the global level.

REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Agnihotri, R. and et.al., 2016. Social media: Influencing customer satisfaction in B2B
sales. Industrial Marketing Management. 53. pp.172-180.
Chiarini, A. and Douglas, A., 2015. The impact of logistics solutions on customer satisfaction: an
exploratory qualitative study of manufacturing companies. Sinergie, 97(May-Aug).
Han, H. and Hyun, S.S., 2015. Customer retention in the medical tourism industry: Impact of
quality, satisfaction, trust, and price reasonableness. Tourism Management. 46. pp.20-29.
Hill, N. and Alexander, J., 2017. The handbook of customer satisfaction and loyalty
measurement. Routledge.
Kim, M., Vogt, C.A. and Knutson, B.J., 2015. Relationships among customer satisfaction,
delight, and loyalty in the hospitality industry. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism
Research. 39(2). pp.170-197.
Lee, C.G. and How, S.M., 2018. Long-run causality between customer satisfaction and financial
performance: the case of Marriott. Current Issues in Tourism, pp.1-6.
Pizam, A., Shapoval, V. and Ellis, T., 2016. Customer satisfaction and its measurement in
hospitality enterprises: a revisit and update. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality
Management. 28(1). pp.2-35.
Sengupta, A.S., Balaji, M.S. and Krishnan, B.C., 2015. How customers cope with service
failure? A study of brand reputation and customer satisfaction. Journal of Business
Research. 68(3). pp.665-674.
Online
Shmula, 2018. Ways to lean Six Sigma. [Online]. Available
through:<https://www.shmula.com/5-ways-lean-six-sigma-can-improve-the-hotel-industry/
26040/>.