Analysis of Front Desk Staff Performance at Imperial Hotel, London

Desklib provides past papers and solved assignments for students. This report analyzes the poor performance of front house staff at Imperial Hotel.

IMPERIAL HOTEL
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TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION............................................................................................................................. 3
ANALYSING THE PROBLEM-........................................................................................................... 4
SUGGESTIONS................................................................................................................................ 6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................. 9
REFERENCES.................................................................................................................................10
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INTRODUCTION
Imperial Hotel is a four-star hotel based in London which is a part of Star hotels that is a chain
of four-star hotels and have 25 hotels in the UK. Imperial hotel is 100 years old and entertains
mostly international business and tourists guests. The hotel is having the capacity of 500
bedrooms with leisure centres, bars and restaurants. The facility of 12 conference rooms that
can entertain 1000 guests at a time is also available. The hotel is managed by 6 departmental
heads (Food and Beverage, Housekeeping, Guest Services & Concierge, Front of House &
Reception and Human Resources and training) and the staff of 450 employees in total with the
assistance of outside contractors.
Currently, the hotel is facing some internal problems that are affecting its business and
reducing its customer base. There are mainly six problems that the hotel is facing that problems
are- poor guest satisfaction, high staff turnover ratio of 80% each year, negative working culture
and high rate of absenteeism, inefficient use of its systems by front house staff and poor
performance of back house staff. There is also the problem of the ambience of the hotel, as the
hotel was renovated 8 years ago and now it needs restoration and redecoration. The
renovation will take 2 years and will make 60 rooms out of action at a time and this will double
cost the hotel as the costing of renovation plus the loss of revenue from those 60 hotels that
are out of action. The hotel needs to solve all these problems but the report will be focusing on
the problem of poor performance of front house staff.
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ANALYSING THE PROBLEM
The problem at the Imperial hotel is about the poor performance of the front house staff
including staff of reception, conference hall, banquet, bars and restaurants. The main problem
arises when the regular guests shifted to the other hotels because of poor services of reception
staff and hence due to lower guest satisfaction the revenue has been decreasing day by day.
The satisfaction level should be 78% but currently, the satisfaction rate is 60 % which is very
low, indirectly affecting the revenue as the rates of one room per night is £95 and that is very
much lower than the other local hotels in London. The hotel manages to fill up to 90% of the
occupancy but if the rates are so lower than how the hotel can manage the total revenues. The
problem here is the rudeness of reception staff in treating the guests, the guest rate the hotel
in feedbacks according to the behaviour of the reception staff as this staff represent the
Imperial hotel.
The next problem is faced by the housekeeping staff, because the reception staff is unable to
provide accurate data on the guests time schedules of checking in and checking out, the guests
have to wait too long because of the housekeeping staff cleaning their rooms , it’s the duty of
reception staff to timely communicate the occupancy status to the housekeeping department .
The hotel works in 3 shifts of 8 hours each so the reception team has to communicate the
details of guests to the next working shift but miscommunication happens and so the staff is
unable to provide the accurate data to the other departments leading to dysfunctioning of the
all the departments.
The reception staffs do not communicate properly to the restaurant, conference and
banqueting staff about the number of guests arriving in the meetings and conferences. The
hotel uses Micros Fidelio and property management system(PMS) for maintaining the data of
guests in the hotel but still, the reception staffs are incompetent to provide correct information
about the guests to the other department.
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The complaints regarding the rudeness and miscommunication of the reception staff are being
heard from all the other departments like housekeeping, restaurants, conference staff and also
the guests are complaining about the rudeness of the staff. The guest complaint about the
abrupt behaviour of the reception staff on basic or small needs is to be taken seriously, no
guest should be treated like this, this behaviour is creating a negative image of the hotel, and
this is the main reason for decreasing rate of customers and unsatisfied guests shifting to other
hotels.
The reception staffs need to handle all the information of departure, arrival and specific needs
of the guests and maintain guest billing data for the whole 24 hours which may be the cause of
the dysfunction and errors in communicating information around the hotel. The conflicts
between the front house department and the other departments are creating a negative
working culture in the hotel and making the other staff also involved in unnecessary conflicts.
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SUGGESTIONS
Every organisation has problems that may be due to internal or external factors. The Imperial
hotel is facing the problems of improper management of the internal human staff which
creating other hotels the advantage of the situation. But the new head of the front house staff
is here to solve the problems he can assist the general manager and help in resolving the
problems on his level (Collings et al., 2018). The suggestions for solving the problems are-
Performance measurement
The delegation of work and accordingly measuring the performance is very much necessary to
ensure effectiveness and productivity in the hotel. Delegating the work also includes the
responsibility of the work assigned the staff cannot pass it to others and have to bear the
responsibility of the work he cannot deny his work. The new head has to measure the
performances with the standards he can do this by collecting feedbacks from the other
departments. They will tell the real reason and the main employees those are creating conflicts.
If the staff do not perform well they need to be given last warning and should be seriously
explained about the causes and the actions if they don’t perform well (Sainaghi et al., 2013).
Training
The front house staff needs the training to increase their efficiency and productivity. The
training should include both technical training and training of developing communication skills
for the front desk employees. As the guests and other department complain about the
rudeness of the reception staffs which needs to be solved immediately, every reception staff
represents the hotel so they should be so soft-spoken that the customer feels delighted from
the services they are being offered hence this will help in rebuilding of the good image of the
hotel in eyes of guests. Training for the software needs to be provided as there is a lot of
incorrect information being communicated, because the staff is not trained properly they tend
to make errors in processing and feeding the information in the software’s systems, doing this
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will help a lot in reducing the errors and will ensure smooth functioning of the hotel (Zaitseva et
al., 2016).
Motivation and warning
The reception staff needs to be motivated because they face a lot of work pressure due to
increase in staff turnover in the hotel and they have to do a lot of extra work simultaneously
have to train frequently to other staff, so they require motivation for performing good and also
for the stability in the hotel so that these employees feel a sense of responsibility towards the
hotel with the feeling of belongingness in the organisation. Motivation can be through
monetary benefits (increase in salary or bonus) and non- monetary perks that will induce the
productivity and efficiency in the hotel. Warning for misbehaving with guests and other staff,
creating conflicts, miscommunication with other staff etc. should be given. If these staff of front
desk will continue behaving in this manner then they will be asked to leave the organisation or
have to pay penalty for degrading the goodwill of the hotel. Errors or miscommunication is
somehow tolerable but misbehaviour towards the guests will create a severe problem for the
staff (Kusluvan et al., 2010).
Team-based approach development
The hotel can only be managed to increase its revenue and profits only when its staff will work
together to achieve the main goal of pleasing the guests and gain their satisfaction. To maintain
harmony and to resolve the day to day conflicts the new head and the general manager need to
work collectively to bring team spirit within the staff. To ensure harmony the new hared needs
to keep a continuous eye on the staff and should randomly visit each the reception staff so that
the person responsible for misbehaviour can be identified. The problem of miscommunication
can only be solved when the employees all of once resolve their conflicts in a meeting, then
after taking a new start towards teamwork. The head and the general manager should have a
regular meeting of staff respectively to resolve the conflicts immediately without disturbing the
guests (Tews et al., 2013).
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Feedback and promotion
The main goal of the hotel apart from increasing profit and customer base is to satisfy the
guests that the hotel entertain, and if these guests are not satisfied the whole work done is
wasted and simultaneously the goodwill is also turned to negative image of the hotel, so to
ensure the guests are delighted with the services offered to them during their stay at the hotel
the new head and the staff have to take feedback from every guests in the hotel at the time of
checking out about the experience and what are the faults and mistakes that need to be
corrected to make the experience better. The feedback of misbehaviour can also include the
person or staff member behaving in this manner can solve the problems and the head can take
serious action against the same employee. There may be some guests who will be highly
dissatisfied from their staff and services offered to them so to compensate that the guests
should get a special discount so that the customer is pleased and will return to the hotel again
(Radojevic et al., 2015).
Also, the promotional and advertising activities need to be performed for increasing the
customer base and this will help in creating a brand image of the hotel and regaining its
goodwill.
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CONCLUSION
The above report can be concluded by implementing the above suggestions and executing
them to ensure guest satisfaction. Every hotel has problems but the internal problems should
not exceed that much that it affects the goodwill of the hotel. To resolve the problems the head
and general manager needs to set some ground rules and policies for the staff and strongly
implement them and take strict actions if these are overruled by any staff. These rules and
policies may include behavioural rules, what actions should be taken if there are
interdepartmental conflicts, what are the main responsibilities of front desk employees. The
head should communicate to every employee that their main motive is to please the customer
regardless of their issues with other staff. Head needs to analyse the problems faced by the
reception staff and should give solutions to these problems, he should use various tools to
measure performance and approaches to resolve the conflicts within the staff members. He
should ensure that the employees are also satisfied and motivated; this will automatically
increase their efficiency and productivity.
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REFERENCES
Boella, M. and Goss-Turner, S., 2013. Human resource management in the hospitality industry:
A guide to best practice. Routledge.
Collings, D.G., Wood, G.T. and Szamosi, L.T., 2018. Human resource management: A critical
approach. In Human Resource Management (pp. 1-23). Routledge.
HL, 2018. Motivation. (Online) Available at:
https://www.hotelogix.com/blog/2014/04/16/motivating-hotel-staff-perform-better/(Accessed
on 2nd March 2019)
Kusluvan, S., Kusluvan, Z., Ilhan, I. and Buyruk, L., 2010. The human dimension: A review of
human resources management issues in the tourism and hospitality industry. Cornell
Hospitality Quarterly, 51(2), pp.171-214.
Radojevic, T., Stanisic, N. and Stanic, N., 2015. Ensuring positive feedback: Factors that
influence customer satisfaction in the contemporary hospitality industry. Tourism
Management, 51, pp.13-21.
Sainaghi, R., Phillips, P. and Corti, V., 2013. Measuring hotel performance: Using a balanced
scorecard perspectives’ approach. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 34, pp.150-
159.
Tews, M.J., Michel, J.W. and Ellingson, J.E., 2013. The impact of coworker support on employee
turnover in the hospitality industry. Group & Organization Management, 38(5), pp.630-653.
Zaitseva, N.A., Goncharova, I.V. and Androsenko, M.E., 2016. Necessity of changes in the
system of hospitality industry and tourism training in terms of import substitution. International
Journal of Economics and Financial Issues, 6(1), pp.288-293.
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