Oberoi Hotel

Oberoi Hotel

Executive summary

After independence, owing to the wealthy historical and cultural inclusiveness of the country, India was one of the most appealing to the tourist’s nation. It attracted not only tourists but also global hotel business chains looking for high business chances in India, and the number of foreign tourists in India grown exponentially from 17,829 in 1951 to 7 million in 2003.

The case’s introductory paragraph starts by narrating us of the encounter of a client at The Oberoi Vanya villas in Ranthambore, India. It is one of the company’s best properties, consists of twenty-five luxury tents in a jungle close to a tiger reserve. This hotel geared towards offering its clients a luxurious wildlife encounter. But regrettably, during his stay, a guest was very uneasy because he was unable to sleep at night due to the passing sound of a train that was almost some miles from the premises. Buell et al. (2015), the customer left the room within two days, while the customer made a reservation for three days. To compensate the client, the manager repaid the three night’s expenses and also wrote a personalized letter. With this, the business, who had lately been named “world’s best hotel brand” by readers’ of the united states situated travel magazine, acknowledged that swiftly recovering from service shortcomings was very important in attaining and preserving a premium product that the business stands for. “Bad experiences of customers should be dealt with utmost care and concern since this can have long-term effects on the company’s brand and mage.”

In the hospitality sector, with Mr. Chopra in mind, there are four aspects to do: a warm welcome, a zero-defect product, anticipatory service, and a fond farewell. This idea demonstrates how customers are handled and how their hotel employees welcome them. Visitors are treated as gods, and their guests feel lavish and give them the confidence of belonging. They have an electronic device named the glitch report that allows them to discover out the errors and the leading cause of the issues so they can avoid it from repeating the same thing with other guests. They have created an environment where individuals have anticipatory service, which means they have a vigilant client service strategy. Rather than waiting for issues to occur, they have policies in the first place to avoid problems. Its fond farewell strategy is very friendly.

Oberoi offered all workers housing, bus service, and food. The workers also had access to other facilities such as a tuck shop, concierge service, game rooms, and on-call doctors. Workers are provided lots of classes on topics ranging from English and geography to parasailing and salsa. Events such as talent shows, festivals, and crickets are also usually held to promote community development. Oberoi is discouraging gratuities for individuals. Instead, it seeks to create a mix of option financial and non-monetary rewards rather than tips. The performance data is updated continuously and noticeable to workers.

Issues statement

There are several issues faced by the business; among these are employee engagement, customer satisfaction, employee training, and employee selection.

Employee training

The restaurant staff and other hotel employees are trained in such a way that they identify, examine, and comprehend the client’s contextual personalities, particularly the clients’ tastes, and interests. The restaurant staff, as well as other employees, are expected to maintain the clients’ contextual personalities and feelings and interests, and provide clients with services according to their contextual background, highlighting the tasks they like and evading the things they do not like. Raman, et al. (2015) The restaurant management also implementing several strategies to maintain their productive and frequent customers ‘contextual backgrounds to offer the services that suit them and enjoy every moment they visit the hotel. These involuntary services provided by the restaurant attract several clients to the brand, which consequently improves clients ‘overall devotion to the brand and thus raises the overall ability to compete with the restaurant and enables the hotel to obtain a significant position in the market as a whole.

Vikram emphasizes employee training to help them understand customer’s likes and dislikes for them to ensure that their needs and demands are satisfied and made. Oberoi has also put in place several strategies to ensure that its regular customers’ needs are established and treated with a lot of concern to ensure that they continue visiting the restaurant, creating the right name for the hotel and help boost their brand.

Employee training is the best approach for ensuring that hotel staff and employees get to understand customer’s likes and dislikes. Still, the experience can be the best option for these groups of individuals to ensure that they address customer issues efficiently. Before Oberoi son took over as the managing director of the company he had to travel intensively and spend much time in different hotels so that he could get an in-depth understanding of how to handle various issues related to hotel management before he was given the mantle to be the managing director of his father’s business. At my level, I can opt for exposing employees to different environments so that they could meet with different customers and get to understand how to deal with different clients and the way of studying to understand their likes and dislikes. Experience is the best teacher than training.

Employee engagement

Among the issue highlighted from this case study are employee engagement and openness. Vikram Oberoi intended to create a tradition where all employees are free and open to report whenever they observe a problem within the hotel so that it could be addressed.Muthuramet.al. (2015) “The first thing that we need to do is to create a culture where people are not afraid of the mistakes. If a mistake has occurred, the concerned employee needs to highlight that something has gone wrong, and share with everybody within the hotel so that we have time to address .if we hear about it when the guest is checking out, and it is too late. If you highlight it immediately, we can act upon it immediately and spare no effort to set it right”.

As the owner of the Hotel Vikram was trying to address this issue of employee openness and engagement so that they could be free to engage and share the problems they experience with anybody so that those issues are addressed for them to ensure that customer satisfaction is made.

With this issue at a personal level, I could encourage job sharing and responsibility as well as instilling the spirit of ownership among the employees so that they could be able to address that problem at their personal without having to report to anyone. Saying to someone else might have a lot of consequences. For instance, if an employee has to report to his or her boss, the boss might take long to react to the issue depending on the status of the boss and the employee, or at the time of reporting the boss had other urgent matters to address, and the thing might not be solved. In another scenario, the boss might be having some misunderstanding with the individual reporting the case, and the issue ends up not addressed, posing a lot of threat to the employee of losing the job. Giving employees the power to resolve the issue at their level is crucial because it will save them from losing their jobs and also ensure that the problem is addressed with the urgency that it demands.

Customer satisfaction

The hotel is struggling to ensure that customer satisfaction is made, and all the issues concerning the customer address with more concern. A single restaurant could have all the needs the customer demands. For instance, “a guest at the Oberoi Raj Vilas in Jaipur traveling with his son and trying to decide which of two restaurants at the hotel to choose for dinner, ask the front office assistant to send up menus for both restaurants, and attendant arrived with menus for Surya Mahal and Raj Mahal. The guest was leaning towards the Raj Mahal but wanted to ensure that it will have something his son will like. Looking through the menu, he mentioned to the attendant that he was “glad the Raj Mahal had Dal Makhani,” which his son wanted. When two arrived for dinner less than half an hour later, the waiters receiving them address the son by name, pleasantly reassuring him that “we do have Dal Makhani for you” “although these two hotels are within the same restaurant it has supplement each other to ensure that customer satisfaction are made. It shows that the hotels have issues of meeting customer’s needs. Customers choosing the Raj Mahal instead of Surya Mahal means that the other hotel does not meet customers’ demands and satisfaction.

Having two hotels under the same owner offering similar services is not an economical idea. It could be a good idea to have these hotels having different functions for the customers. For instance, one could be used for drinks and food and another one as lodging so that customers can get all the services they are likely to demand.by doing this Vikram will have increase diversity and reduce uncertainties,in that if one of the hotels faces some challenges the other can still be running. At my level, I would have opted for diversity by investing in different commodities instead of having two hotels at the same location offering similar services.Another option I could take is to have these two hotels but at various locations providing related services. Diversity is essential for any business to help reduce the risk that it may encounter in case uncertainties occurs.

Employee selection

The Oberoi hotel had challenges in choosing the best employees for its business. Many of the Indian community lacks the best skills and fluency in the English language, which poses a lot of problems to luxuries hotels like Oberoi. (Raman & Buell, 2016). “One employment agency estimated that fewer than 11% of graduates of Indian hotel management were employable. The study cited deficiencies in domain language, quality orientation, interpersonal skills, and ability to work under pressure, as well as difficulties in communication. Nearly 40% of Indian hotel management programs lack a sufficient command of English”. The challenge of selecting the best employees did the business to incur a lot of cost in traveling. They had to travel to over eighteen cities, meeting more than eight thousand people.

Getting employees with a good reputation and working experience was a difficult task for the Oberoi hotel. Money had to spend to get the best candidates because the company was focusing on status and the provision of quality services to customers.

The issue of employee selection could have another alternative at my level. With the current advancement in technology, several advertising platforms are existing. Employing the use of these technologies could have helped the company broaden its search area and attract many candidates with a better experience. Social media platforms enable access to information by several individuals not only within India but also outside India. The idea could also have reduced the business expenditure because the cost of traveling will be incurred by those looking for opportunities at the company. In my opinion, an alternative that I could have chosen is adopting technologies in advertising job opportunities or even conducting interviews for those outside India. Having employees from diverse areas with varying cultures, ethnicity, and religion will boost unity. The technology could have enabled Oberoi to reach many individuals who could have the experience and skills they demand to ensure that the proper brand, reputation, and provide quality customer services.

Recommendations

The company had several issues which if they empress this recommendation, more income will witness, and several employees will provide a better working environment.

The company employees should have one responsibility to ensure efficiency and effectiveness in service delivery. In Oberoi, one employee is entitled to several burdens that slow down service delivery. For instance, “a front office assistant would work at the front desk, check guest in, check guest out, take luggage to guest’s room, and work as concierge switching among roles as needed.” With these criteria, workers are less effective because they do not focus on a single activity.

Many of the company employees are young and energetic individuals from diverse regions within the country. The company provides accommodation and transport for its workers. The company should reduce the services and incentives it offers to its workers to save on cost and increase income levels.

Implementation plan

The best method to implement all these recommendations is to change the company’s policies and responsibilities. The company should try to amend the systems that make it incur a lot of costs.

References

Buell, R. W., Raman, A., & Muthuram, V. (2015). Oberoi Hotels: Train Whistle in the tiger reserve. Harvard Business School case (615-043).

Raman, A., & Buell, R. W. (2016). Oberoi Hotels: Train Whistle in the Tiger Reserve.