Leading Hospitality and Tourism Operations: Hilton Hotel Report

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Hilton Hotels and Resorts, focusing on its operations in Singapore, specifically examining the Conrad Centennial Singapore. It begins with an overview of Hilton's history, brands, and target audience, highlighting the significance of the hospitality and tourism industry in Singapore. The report delves into the challenges faced by the Conrad Centennial Singapore, particularly within the human resource department, including difficulties in recruitment and employee retention due to government regulations, labor market dynamics, and changing employee expectations. Furthermore, the report discusses the leadership styles, core values, and ethical frameworks of Conrad Centennial Singapore, emphasizing the importance of customer satisfaction and quality management practices. The report concludes with specific recommendations to address the identified challenges, such as providing higher salaries, employer branding, flexible HR policies, and fair promotion practices, to improve recruitment, retention, and overall operational efficiency. The report underscores the importance of digitalization and training for future success, and it offers insights into how the company can overcome the challenges in the hospitality sector.

RUNNING HEAD: LEADING HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM OPERATIONS
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Leading Hospitality and Tourism Operations

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Table of Contents
Introduction................................................................................................................................2
Singapore....................................................................................................................................3
Department in Hotel industry.....................................................................................................4
Discussion..................................................................................................................................6
Recommendations......................................................................................................................8
Conclusion..................................................................................................................................9
References................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
Hilton Hotels and Resorts is a leading brand at the global platform that offers full-service
resorts and hotels under the flagship of Hilton, an American multinational hospitality
company. The hotel chain was established by Conrad Hilton in 1919 in Virginia. In 2018, the
company had 586 Hilton resorts and Hotels properties in 85 countries with 215,623 rooms
across six continents (Hilton, 2020). The company operates 14 brands that are Waldorf
Astoria, Conrad, Canopy, Curio, Doubletree, Tapestry, Embassy Suites, Hilton Garden Inn,
Hampton, Tru, Homewood, Home 2 and Hilton Grand vacations (Hilton, 2019).
The company has 100 years of history with 10 million team members, 3 billion guests and $1
trillion economic impacts. The target audience of the company is business travellers so that
they can focus on important things rather than struggling in unfamiliar places. In order to be
successful the company focus on improving their guest experience by offering them services
like televisions in the guest room, air-conditioned hotel lobbies and connected room with a
digital key (Chathoth,2016).
This report focuses on the challenges that tourism industry face and trend that is driving the
tourism industry. The report is based on operations of Hilton in Singapore and current and
future challenges in front of the brand that operates in the tourism industry in Singapore.
Further, leadership style, ethics, values, management practices and vision of the brand is
described in order to understand the business the environment in which the company is
operating. At last, recommendations are given considering challenges in tourism operations
and in the hospitality industry.

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Source: (Lashley, 2012)
Singapore based Hotels
Singapore tourism and hospitality industry are booming as tourism receipts grew by 12 % on
year on year basis and the number of tourists increased by 15%. The industry in the near
future will contribute approximately 8% to GDP. This industry is a leading industry in
Singapore as it contributes to the greater extent in the growth and development of the
Singapore economy. In order to understand the contribution and challenges that hotels face
in order to operate in Singapore hospitality industry operations of Conrad Hotels are
analysed.
Conrad Hotels and Resorts is a brand of luxury resorts and hotels operated by Hilton. This
brand is amongst the luxury brands of Hilton named after company founder “Conrad Hilton”.
This brand has presence over 33 locations that include America, Asia Pacific, Europe and the
Middle East and Africa with 10,625 rooms. In Singapore, Conrad Centennial located in
Marina Centre and has 512 rooms that include 31 floors, 25 suites and two basements.
Source: (Conradcentennial,2019)

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Department in Hotel industry
In the Hotel industry, human resource department is considered as an important department.
Any brand in the hotel industry can be successful with the help of its staff and team members
because the hospitality industry is all about offering a great and pleasant experience to its
customers (Schuckert et.al,2019). There are many challenges that the human resource
department face that is related to the recruitment of skilled staff and the retention of people.
These two are challenges that have always been present in the hotel industry.
Human Resource Department
There are two challenges that Conrad Hotel face in Singapore in the Human resource
department that are:
Recruitment: In Singapore, due to changes regulation in the labour market Conrad is facing
difficulty in getting the right people with the right skills. The problem arises because of the
implementation of government regulations on the labour market that includes a levy of $700-
800 per worker. As hotel industry mainly depends on low-cost staff and human resource the
hotel chains are struggling to get staff and next alternative in hand of Conrad is to hire and
attract more Singaporean staff in order to sustain its legacy but it becomes difficult for
Conrad to attract Singapore people to work in hotel industry because of perception that
people have and because of job roles such as porters, room attendants and many more. On the
other side, Singapore people are more concerned about “paper chase” that means getting
prestigious jobs and higher education certificates and degree. Hence, For Conrad, it becomes
difficult to hire staff at a low cost (Burke and Hughes, 2018).
Retention: At present Conrad is also facing issue to retain more employees in the
organization. As more competition in the hotel industry exacerbates the problem. In this tight

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labour market, Conrad is not able to match the expectation of Industrial relation in Singapore.
Conrad acknowledges that “the cost of retention is high; this cost is not just in cents and
dollars but also the frustration in managers”. The high turnover of employees develops
frustration or negative working environment. The company is facing challenges in retaining
employees because of changing labour laws, higher expectations of employees and impatient
behaviour of the younger generation. Conrad Hotels and resort believe that contented
employees perform to the best of their ability which translates to profitability (Paraskevas and
Quek,2019).
Digitalization and Training: The future challenge that Conrad hotel and resort will face in
the human resource department will be the training of staff and developing skills related to
digitalization. As in this industry 4.0, organizations are facing challenges in adopting
technology in its process. In the near future, the hotel industry will be more inclined towards
automation and use of robotics and artificial intelligence in order to give better customer
experience and to maintain a standard in services. In this segment, the one more challenge
that will face by hotels will be resistance by employees or workers to get training as the use
of technology will lead to the exploitation of the human resource in the organization. It will
be a challenge for Conrad in the near future to maximize its productivity without
compromising from service quality by reducing the resistance of change and providing
advanced training to its employees (Conrad,2019).
In a nutshell, from the analysis of HR department of Conrad Centennial Singapore, it is
identified that the hotel chain at present facing challenges related to recruitment of the right
skills because of tight control of Singapore government on the labour market and increasing
regulations on the labour market. On the other side, the retention of employees in the hotel
industry is the main challenge for Conrad to overcome. It is also identified that in near future

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the challenge that the human resource department is going to face is related to providing
relevant training to employees in regards to technology and developing digital skills. In the
below section, few recommendations are given for Conrad Centennial Singapore to overcome
these challenges.
Discussion
Brand, Vision and Leadership style
Conrad Hotels was begun by Baron Hilton in 1982 as another chapter with the motive of
operating as luxury resorts and hotels. Conrad Centennial Singapore was the second
development in Asia after Hong Kong. Conrad Centennial Singapore vision is “to be the first
choice luxury hotel of World travellers” by providing experiences that are personalized,
unique and hospitable to all guests. The three fundamental approaches that Conrad uses in
order to provide quality and to be successful are people, product and profits (Paraskevas and
Quek,2019). The leadership style that is used by the committee include participative
leadership style and democratic leadership style leaders focus is on to lead by example, the
involvement of staff, communication, participation and promote commitment.
Core of the Company’s success
The company believe that people are the most important asset; commitment, involvement and
teamwork are the values that drive Conrad hotels.

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Source: (Conradcentennial,2019)
The core values of Conrad Centennial Singapore are commitment, involvement, teamwork,
service excellence and profitability (Su and Reynolds, 2017).All these values and vision are
embedded in the company by senior executive leadership.
Team or Committee
The senior leadership in Conrad set the direction and pace of the company and developed a
service excellence company with a clear mission, vision and values. In the hotel industry or
hospitality industry, these traits are required in a leader in order to make the human resource
of the company feel valuable (Paraskevas and Quek,2019).

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Source: (Conradcentennial,2019)
Customer satisfaction and Quality
On the other side, the focus of Conrad is on its customer and they segmented them as
corporate leisure and MICE [meetings, incentives, conventions and exhibitions]. The hotel
chain uses many techniques and tools to provide service excellence to its customers. The
service strategy of Conrad is “to do thin first the right time”. The most important factor that
Conrad offer in order to satisfy its customers is services and food and beverages. In order to
provide the best services with the company to develop many strategies and use value-driven
leadership.
Ethical Framework
Conrad Centennial Singapore leaders are also committed to the community. The hotel builds
a reputation for actively supporting charitable and art drive. The ethical practices of hotel
chain have three areas of focus that are a community at large, hospitality community and
environment. Further, ethical practices include good working environment, team building
programmes, workplace diversity, open performance appraisal system and fair recognition
and promotion (Conradcentennial,2019).
Quality management practices
Organization culture of Conrad Hotels and Resorts is based on value-driven leadership as the
hotel adopts a systematic approach to reinforce and instil values in its employees. In order to
build organizational culture, a leader takes daily morning meetings, department head
meetings, service quality meetings, buddies meeting, and focus group meetings. At present,
the competitive advantage for Conrad is the delivery implementation of the service culture.

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The hotel chain developed a strong service culture that is recognized by customers across the
world. Conrad Centennial Singapore was awarded the Singapore service class award.
Competitive strategies
The strategies used by the company at present are that strong that can help the company to
retain its competitive advantage in future also. Some of its strategies are used by Conrad are
focus on five constituencies, guiding principles, implementation of the balanced scorecard
and ensuring Fun and fair policies at the workplace. With its focus on stakeholders and the
use of the different measure, the company can also retain its competitive advantage in future.
Recommendations
From considering the above scenario of Conrad centennial hotel in tourism and hospitality
industry in Singapore it is identified that Conrad is a leading luxury hotel and at present,
human resource department is facing challenges such as issues related to recruitment and
retention of employees in the organization. IN order to overcome these challenges it is
recommended that the company can overcome the challenge of recruitment by providing
higher salaries in order to attract more employees, and can use employer branding strategy.
Further, with this the company should emphasize more on career firming and aware its staff
about career opportunities especially with relation to file and rank positions such as waiters
and room attendants. Conrad can also redesign its job description in order to reduce the
dependence on foreign labour.
In order to retain employees, Conrad should focus on intrinsic reward and implementing
flexible HR policies such as medical claim, employer-employee relation and effective
communication. Further, promotion should be done in a fair manner. The flexible policies

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lead to employees feel that they are being valued by the organization and due to that sense of
meaningfulness, progress, competence and choice expand.
Conclusion
It is concluded that in Singapore hospitality industry contribute to the development and
growth of the economy to a greater extent. On the other side, the tourism industry is growing
at a rate of 12 % which gives the opportunity to hotels to expand. Conrad is a brand owned by
Hilton hotels and resort that operates in Singapore as Conrad Centennial Singapore. From the
analysis of Conrad, it is identified that the organization is facing in its human resource
department and in that challenges are the recruitment of the right people with the right skills.
Another challenge is related to the retention of employees. Both of these challenges are faced
by Conrad because of changing political and economic factors in Singapore. At last future
challenge for the human resource, the department will be training and developing skills of
employees because of globalization and digitalization.
References
Burke, R.J. and Hughes, J.C. eds., 2018. Handbook of human resource management in the
tourism and hospitality industries. Edward Elgar Publishing.
Chathoth, P., 2016. Historical evolution of hotel chains. The Routledge Handbook of Hotel
Chain Management. Routledge, London, pp.27-40.
ConradCentennial,2019. Quality and Standard. Retrieved From:
https://www.enterprisesg.gov.sg/-/media/esg/files/quality-and-standards/business-
excellence/sea_conrad_2019_sqa_summary_report.pdf?la=en
Hilton,2020. About us. Retrieved From: https://www.hilton.com/en/locations/conrad/

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Paraskevas, A. and Quek, M., 2019. When Castro seized the Hilton: Risk and crisis
management lessons from the past. Tourism Management, 70, pp.419-429.
Schuckert, M., Liang, S., Law, R. and Sun, W., 2019. How do domestic and international
high-end hotel brands receive and manage customer feedback?. International Journal of
Hospitality Management, 77, pp.528-537.
Su, N. and Reynolds, D., 2017. Effects of brand personality dimensions on consumers’
perceived self-image congruity and functional congruity with hotel brands. International
Journal of Hospitality Management, 66, pp.1-12.