Innovation and Entrepreneurship in Hospitality: Hyatt Hotels Report

This report examines innovation and entrepreneurship within the hospitality industry, using Hyatt Hotels Corporation as a case study. It focuses on the marketing department's adaptation to changes, including evolving customer expectations, technological advancements, and employee resistance. The Applied Creativity & Innovation Model is applied to define challenges, explore situations, generate ideas, design potential solutions, and implement them. Key challenges included ineffective marketing, and employee resistance to change. The report highlights the implementation of customer tracking technology, new staff recruitment, and training programs as solutions. It concludes that innovation and entrepreneurship are crucial for business expansion in the face of competitive pressures, emphasizing the importance of adapting to technological and demographic shifts to meet customer expectations and achieve success in the hospitality sector.

Innovation and
entrepreneurship in
hospitality and tourism
industry

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY...................................................................................................................................1
Application of framework of Applied Creativity & Innovation Model......................................1
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................7
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................1

INTRODUCTION
Innovation refers to translation of particular idea into product which caters values
(Altinay, Paraskevas and Jang, 2015). Entrepreneurship is characterised to the acts to take
innovations together with inventions so to turn them for establishing new business along with
concepts and executing practices. Innovation and entrepreneurship emphasis on interconnection
among thinking of entrepreneur and innovations. In hospital and tourism industry, tremendous
changes have been experienced in last 50 years. Th report is based on Hyatt Hotels Corporation
which was founded in 1957 by Jay Pritzker. The entrepreneur of the hotel started the business
with small motor lodge and now it has more than 770 properties in 54 countries (Hyatt
Corporations. 2019).
The selected department is marketing department which has experienced numerous
changes such as changes in customer expectations, continuous technological changes, improper
marketing strategies, seasonality challenges and employees resistance. In the last 50 years, the
department of the company has deal with situations by formulating new policies as well as
potential solutions which is described in the report with the application of Applied Creativity &
Innovation Model. With the help of the model, challenges are defined together with exploring
situations, ideas are generated, design of potential solutions along with implementation of
solutions in order to deal with the changing aspects.
MAIN BODY
Application of framework of Applied Creativity & Innovation Model.
Hyatt Hotels Corporation is a big brand that manages together with franchising luxury
hotels, vacation properties addition to resorts. It was founded in 1957 and with changes in time
the organsiation has expanded the business in various international countries. Due to
advancement in demography as well as technology, various changes are made in the working of
departments while conducting busienss activities. One of the department that has undergone with
changes is marketing department. By applying the Applied Creativity & Innovation Model,
challenge identification and its solutions are done to cope up with changes. The stages are briefly
defined below:
Defining challenge: At such phases, challenges that an organisation faces are clearly
defined (Challenges with marketing deaprtment. 2019). Some of the challenges that are faced by
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marketing department of Hyatt Hotels Corporation due to increase in technological
advancements and demography are defined below:
Changing cutomer expectations: Due to technological advancements, expectations of
customers has also increase. With no suprise, marketing department of the hotel is unable to
track customers understanding due to which they have faced challenges during the year 1984 to
1986.
Improper as well as ineffective marketing: In the year 1989 to 1995, when the
organisation was planning to expand in other countries, they faced the challenge of improper
along with ineffective marketing due to changes in demographic profile. The marketing team
was lacking in exploring effective strategies due to which their daily operations were impacted
and they were forced to reevaluate their efforts due to which huge expenses were beared by the
company.
Employee resistance: During 2005 to 2008, various technology as well as demography
cahanges were experienced by marketing team. But marketing employees were resistant to adopt
new technological changes that was a biggest challenge for marketing department. The
employees were used to of perfroming same strategies and restisted to adopt the new ones
(Ateljevic and Page, 2017).
Exploring situations: When the marketing department of Hyatt Hotels Corporation was
coming familiar with the technological and demographical changes, they startes exploring
situations. For example, when customer expectations were changed, the marketers of the hotel
analysed the new expectations along with the awareness of the hotel among customers. In the
year 1972, new expectations were explored and working was done accordingly. The reasons of
empoloyee resistance to accept change were also explored and found that employees do not want
to work as per the changing circumstances as they were forced to revaluate their efforts and work
hard.
Generating ideas: After exploring situations, various ideas were generated by the top
marketing team of Hyatt Hotels Corporation to deal with challenges. By coordinating with
management authorities, marketing managers have generated ideas by using techniques of
brainstrorming and mindmapping (Yachin, 2019). Generated ideas are as follows:
Customer tracking technology: In order to resolve challenge of understanding customer
expectations, managers have generated an idea to adopt customer tracking technology. Such
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technology will helps in knowing customer perception along with identifying the areas of issues.
It will further help in recording necessary informations about customers and their needs.
Training and development: To reduce employee resistances, managers have generated the
idea to provide training so to improve knowledge of employees and to provide them sense of
security. Through such training and development, marketing managers will be able to defining
the needs of changes, developing communication strategies, implementing support structure and
measuring change procedures (Dredge and Gyimóthy, 2017).
Recruiting staffmembers: The marketing managers of Hyatt Hotels Corporation have
generated the idea to recruit staff members who possess skills to understand customer
expectations and changing technological aspects. The decided to recruit people through external
sources such as campus interview and external agencies. Fresh candidates have knowldge of
expectations of customers and they accordingly motivates other existing employees to adopt
changes.
Cloud Based PMS: The organsiation managers has generated the idea to adopt Cloud
Based PMS technology that will help them to increase awareness by understanding customers
perceptions about the hotel. The management has generated the idea to improve customer
services together with satisfying expectations.
Designing Potential Solutions: After generating the ideas, the marketing managers have
evaluated potential solutions for the challenges.
Customer tracking technology: In order to overcome of challenge of understanding
customer expectations, the marketing managers has designed system of customer tracking
technology that will result in tracking interactions among current together with potential
customers and driving the booking of hotel rooms by making provisions or services as expected
by current customers.
Recruiting staff members: The marketing manager have designed potential solution to
reduce employee resistance is to hire new staff memebrs. It will create a sense of job fear among
existing employees and they will start working with new technological and demographical
changes (Xiang and Fesenmaier, 2017).
Training and development: To overcome from the challenge of ineffective marketing,
marketing manager have designed training as well as development programs that will result in
improving skills addition to knowledge of existing staff members and they will be able to
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understand changing aspects together with formulating effective marketing activities by adopting
strategies such as direct marketing and social media marketing (Fesenmaier and Xiang, 2016).
Implementing Solutions: Implementing refers to putting potential designed solutions
into actions as to deal with challenges. From the potential solutions following solutions were
implemented by marketing managers:
Customer tracking technology: To deal with the challenge of understanding customer
expectations, marketing managers of Hyatt Hotels Corporation decided to implement the
Customer tracking technology in the year 1987 (Gomezelj, 2016).
Recruiting staff members: From the year 2005, marketing managers have started
recruiting staff members in from different countries in order to deal with challenge of employee
resistant. When employees resist to accept change, marketing manager suspends existing staff
and recruits new potential and competent staff.
By implementing the solutions, Hyatt Hotels Corporation have moved on by expanding
the business in other countries (Prebensen, Chen and Uysal, M. 2018). The marketing
department have started framing effective marketing strategies through carefully understanding
expectations of employees and motivating staff force to work as per the technological as well as
demographical changes.
Change comes to strengthen the organisation and its workings. In context to hotel
industry, changes occurs due to the problems within any organisation. Changes impacts the
working, performance and position of the company. Technological addition to demographic
changes in context to marketing department of Hyatt Hotels Corporations impacts the human
operations, organising marketing data, restructuring strategies and channelising activities to
reach targetted customers that helps in capturing larger market shares and attaining success by
delivering services as per customer expectations (Prebežac, Schott and Sheldon, 2016).
Time chart is as follows:
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CONCLUSION
As per the mentioned information, I have concluded that innovation and entrepreneurship
helps in expansion of business by dealing with competitive challenges. All industries faces some
of other challenges due to changes in the competitive market. Some of the changes are related
with technology and demography that results in numerous challenges. Applied Creativity &
Innovation Model is applkied to understand the aspects of change and implementing solutions to
effectively dealing with any changes. An entity faces challenge due to technological together
with demography changes comprises of difficulties in understanding customer expectations,
employee resistance, improper planning and ineffective marketing. After analysing challenges,
various ideas were generated such as Customer tracking technology, Recruiting staffmembers,
Cloud Based PMS and providing training and development practioces. Further, potential
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solutions are evaluated and implementation of effective idea is done that helps in dealing with
the changes.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals
Altinay, L., Paraskevas, A., & Jang, S. S. (2015). Planning research in hospitality and tourism.
Routledge.
Ateljevic, J., & Page, S. J. (Eds.). (2017). Tourism and entrepreneurship. Routledge.
Dredge, D., & Gyimóthy, S. (Eds.). (2017). Collaborative economy and tourism: Perspectives,
politics, policies and prospects. Springer.
Fesenmaier, D. R., & Xiang, Z. (Eds.). (2016). Design science in tourism: Foundations of
destination management. Springer.
Gomezelj, D. O. (2016). A systematic review of research on innovation in hospitality and
tourism. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 28(3). 516-
558.
Prebensen, N. K., Chen, J. S., & Uysal, M. (Eds.). (2018). Creating experience value in tourism.
Cabi.
Prebežac, D., Schott, C., & Sheldon, P. (Eds.). (2016). The tourism education futures initiative:
Activating change in tourism education. Routledge.
Xiang, Z., & Fesenmaier, D. R. (2017). Analytics in smart tourism design. Springer.
Yachin, J. M. (2019). The entrepreneur–opportunity nexus: Discovering the forces that promote
product innovations in rural micro-tourism firms. Scandinavian Journal of Hospitality
and Tourism. 19(1). 47-65.
Zontek, Z. (2015). Innovation development in regional tourism enterprises. In 3rd International
Scientific Conference Tourism in Southern and Eastern Europe.
Online:
Hyatt Corporations. 2019. [Online]. Available through:
<https://about.hyatt.com/en/hyatthistory.html >
Challenges with marketing deaprtment. 2019. [Online]. Available through:
<https://www.soegjobs.com/top-management-issues-hospitality-industry/>