Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts: A Strategic Analysis

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Final Project - Research & Analysis Paper
– Part II

Contents
SUMMARY 3
S.W.O.T. – FORMULATING STRATEGIES 3
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSTRAINTS 4
STAKEHOLDERS 5
ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND DESIGN 6
MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES 7
RECOMMENDATIONS 7
CONTROLS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 8
REFERENCE LIST 9

SUMMARY
Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts is a multinational company having its operation in more than
40 countries. The company has opened its first hotel in 1961 and now the Canadian based
company is having more than 100 hotels in 50 years. The expansion story of the Four Seasons is
due to continuous innovation and single-minded dedication of its staff members.
The research and analysis paper includes the SWOT analysis on the hotel, environmental
constraints, stakeholders, organizational design and structure and the theories for motivating the
employees.
S.W.O.T. – FORMULATING STRATEGIES
Strengths
● The companies can use its differentiation strategy to gain sustainable competition over its
competitors. The hotel's differentiation strategy is to provide a high quality of services to
give the best experience to its customers. The company can promote its services for
expanding the market share.
● By applying a distinct business model for different location helps the hotel to minimize
the impact of external environment on the hotel.
● Controlled liabilities and the number of fixed and tangible assets helps in creating a
positive image in front of the stakeholders (Agrawal, 2016).
Weaknesses
● The weakness of low presence in some of the world’s fastest-growing economies can be
solved by identifying and analyzing the opportunity in terms of highest revenue and by
investing in it.
● The high operation cost can be managed through proper planning of funds and the ways
to reduce the operation cost.

Opportunities
● The activities of corporate social responsibility can be used as a tool to increase revenue
and creating a positive image in the minds of society. They should use these activities in
their promotional mix to increase its customer base.
● The company has many opportunities to provide different and unique services to the
customer. The customers always expect something unique and different from the hotel.
The company should analyze research and identify different services that the customer
expects from them (Vellas, 2016).
Threats
● The threat of competition can be minimized by offering differentiated services to their
existing and potential customers. If the customer is able to differentiate its service from
the other hotels then they never switch their loyalty.
ENVIRONMENTAL CONSTRAINTS
1. PESTEL analysis of Four Seasons Hotels and Resort
● Political factors:
▪ Diverse regulatory practices of countries
▪ Changing policies and laws of government
● Economic factors
▪ Unpredictable exchange rate
▪ Investment on core infrastructure
▪ Liberalization and easy trade policy

● Social factors
▪ Benefits due to migration
▪ Positive attitude towards health and safety (Robinson et al., 2016)
● Technological factors
▪ Inability to access modern technology
▪ Huge funds invested in R&D
● Environmental factors
▪ Renewable technology in the hotel industry
▪ Focus on waste management increases
● Legal factors
▪ Health and safety concerns in countries
▪ Different business laws
2. After analysing the organizational situation I can say that, it faces political, economic,
technological and legal factors. This is because the company has its operation in more
than 40 countries which affects its operation. Due to continuous technological change, the
company has to invest huge funds in upgrading the technology. The economic factor
affects the internal environment of the hotel as the top management has to make a
different business strategy for the different economic situation of the country (Vellas,
2016).
3. From my perspective, the major impact the hotel face is due to technological factors. The
operational cost of the company increases due to continuous investment in the
technological up gradation which decreases the revenue of the company.

4. Economic and social factors have created opportunities for the business. This is because
the company gets the talented and qualified employees because of migration and the
positive attitude of people towards health and safety increases its business operation.
Liberal economic policy generates opportunity for the business to expand its business in
any part of the world (Duong, 2018).
STAKEHOLDERS
Following are the list of the stakeholder of the organization’s specific and general environment.
● Employees: The employees are the most important member of the whole organization
because they are the only one who directly interacts with the target customers. Thus the
management provides them with proper training of their work (Buil et al., 2016).
● Customers: The success of the organization depends on the satisfaction and experience
of the customers. All the activities of the hotel are carried out to satisfy the needs, taste
and preference of customers.
● Investors (owners): Investors are the one who provides funds to the company for its
operations. Thus the availability of funds depends on the reputation and goodwill of the
company.
● Public relation agency: Public relation agency is the advertisements agency that acts as
a link between the hotel and the prospective customer. It helps in increasing the customer
base of the hotel.
● Project manager: the Project manager is one who looks at the construction related
activities and monitors its activities.
The hotel should focus and give its priority to its employees because the overall reputation of the
hotel depends on employees services given to its customers. The satisfied customer develops
positive word of mouth to other customers which is the best promotional tool for expanding its
market share.

ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE AND DESIGN
Figure 1: Organizational structure of the Four Seasons Hotel and Resorts
[Source: Essay Write System, 2019]
The company follows the mechanistic structure because the majority of the decisions are taken
by the top management and the hotel follows more formalized policies and practices for its
operation. This is because there is a requirement of specialized functions in smoothly carrying
out its operations (Xu et al., 2017).
Following are the ways the hotel uses to address relevant elements or organizational structure
and design:
▪ Work specialization: For the work specialization, the managers of the respective
department provide training to employees for getting efficiency in their work.
▪ Departmentalization: Departmentalization is done to simplify the overall objective of
the company. The manager of every department focus on their strategy and procedure to
achieve their respective objective but these all are integrated to achieve the overall
objective of the hotel.
▪ Chain of command: The chain of command flows in hierarchy i.e. from top
management to lower management.

▪ The span of control: Span of control depends on the ability of the manager but
minimum 10 staff members and a maximum of 15 members are included in a team of
leader.
▪ Centralized/ decentralized decision making: The majority of the authority to take the
decision lies with the top management because of its international operation. However,
authority is given to the managers to control day-to-day activities.
▪ Formalization: The manager of every department defines rules, roles and responsibility
of employees, groups and teams.
MOTIVATING EMPLOYEES
According to me, for the companies working in hospitality sector can apply Hertzberg’s two-
factor theory in the hotel for motivating the employees. This theory includes two factors i.e.
motivational factors and hygiene factors. The reason for choosing this theory is because the need
for every employee is different from others. For example, the members of lower level
management are getting satisfaction from the hygiene factors such as salary, hotel policies
(Alshmemri et al2017). However, top management gets satisfaction through motivational factors
such as recognition, prestige, career progression etc.
RECOMMENDATIONS
● By managing its resources properly the hotel can invest in the technological factors. The
reason behind is that the main factor that acts as a hindrance in capturing the market share
is less investment in technological up gradation. This not only helps the hotel in gaining a
competitive advantage but also it helps in bringing efficiency in the operation which
helps in decreasing operational cost.
● Rather than attracting customers, firstly the hotel should develop differentiation
strategies to retain the existing customers. A satisfied and delighted customer is the best
promotional tool for expanding the hotel’s customer base.

● The managers of the hotel must identify the needs of the individual employees to
motivate them. The company must use the financial and non-financial methods
according to their individual needs to make them satisfied.
● For improving its operation the hotel can use their funds in the promotion and
advertising such as organize or sponsor an event where there is a large number of
prospects customers such as sponsoring a business event where it can attract business
professionals and managers of different companies.
● The managers must frequently watch the activities of employees such as their attitude
and behavior towards customers and other members of the hotel. So that it becomes easy
for the manager to identify the area of training.
CONTROLS AND RECOMMENDATIONS
The process to monitor the progress of business plan and activities are as follows:
● Creating a business plan and corporate objectives.
● Assess daily performance by developing a tracking system.
● Maintaining coordination between corporate and marketing plan.
● Make changes whenever required.
To measure the effectiveness and progress, the company uses feedback controls i.e. the hotel
make the correction after getting the feedback from the customers. For instance, the type of
training to employees depends on the feedback received from the stakeholders.
Also, the hotel uses concurrent feedback for tracking employees performance, market control
and employee involvement.
By getting the positive feedback from the customers, the hotel can come to know that their goal
is accomplished.

REFERENCE LIST
● Agrawal, V. (2016). A review of the Indian tourism industry with SWOT analysis.
Journal of Tourism and Hospitality, 5(1), 1-4.
● Alshmemri, M., Shahwan-Akl, L., & Maude, P. (2017). Herzberg’s two-factor theory.
Life Science Journal, 14(5), 12-16.
● Buil, I., Martínez, E., & Matute, J. (2016). From internal brand management to
organizational citizenship behaviours: Evidence from frontline employees in the hotel
industry. Tourism Management, 57, 256-271.
● Duong, D. (2018). The Role of Customer Relationship Management In The Operation of
Small and Medium Hotels in Mui Ne, Vietnam: The Case of Hung Phuc Mui Ne Hotel.
● Essay Write System, (2019). 34. FOUR SEASONS HOTELS RESORTS GREAT
PLACE TO WORK REVIEWS online available at https://essaywritesystem.com/four-
seasons-hotel-organizational-chart/34/ (last accessed on 2nd April 2019).
● Robinson, P., Fallon, P., Cameron, H., & Crotts, J. C. (Eds.). (2016). Operations
management in the travel industry. Cabi.
● Vellas, F. (2016). The international marketing of travel and tourism: A strategic
approach. Macmillan International Higher Education.
● Vellas, F. (2016). The international marketing of travel and tourism: A strategic
approach. Macmillan International Higher Education.
● Xu, J., Camacho, M., Xu, Y., Esser, V., Liu, X., Trimbuch, T., ... & Rizo, J. (2017).
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