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Optimizing The Guest Experience at The Florida Hotel

Guest Experience Paper

Course

Guest Services Management I (HFT 3540 )

3 Documents

Students shared 3 documents in this course

University

University of Central Florida

Academic year: 2020/2021

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Alyssia McDonald

The University of Tampa

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Optimizing The Guest Experience at The Florida Hotel Alyssia McDonald University of Central Florida

Abstract The hospitality industry truly thrives off of offering courteous and professional food, drink, and

lodging services to guests in order to successfully fulfill the interaction between the organization and a guest. This interaction is called the guest experience and it is something that either makes or breaks the system as a whole. Various institutions within the hospitality industry are determined to provide an exceptional guest experience, especially amongst the hotel industry. The Florida Hotel is a facility that is based in the heart of Orlando, Florida, which is a hotspot for all types of guests. Here at The Florida Hotel, we value our ability to create a successful strategy that consists of designing/mapping, managing and executing the optimal guest experience. Our highly-capable service delivery system allows for this success to be executed because of the eight steps within the program. The guest experience would certainly not be the same without these strategies. Introduction The Florida Hotel is located at the major shopping area called the Florida Mall and it is in close proximity to the Orlando Airport. The hotel’s purpose is to offer city convenience combined with upscale comfort and warm hospitality. The friendly atmosphere, outstanding hotel amenities including casual on site dining, a twenty-four hour fitness center and business center and an open air swimming pool, and the genuine personalized service truly highlights what makes our service setting so special, as they are our key products. Our location, global outlook, quality management and flexibility take the role of being our key satisfaction drivers because they allow for our staff to accomplish and exceed desired goals. The guest experience is produced by our service delivery system as a whole, which includes eight major steps that will be discussed throughout this analysis. Service Delivery System The act of service, which is an action or performed task that takes place by direct contact between the customer or guest and representatives of the service organization, is a necessity when it comes to creating a great guest experience (Fenich, 2019, pg 7). The service itself is the root to almost everything, as it sets up the service encounter, the service product, the service quality, the service setting and environment and most importantly, the service delivery system. The Florida Hotel’s eight-step service delivery system consists of the following; developing and deploying our guest experience intent

The fourth step within the service delivery system is to create dialogue with our guests. Obtaining guest feedback is vital to our business at the hotel because it allows us to learn, understand, and grow. The Florida Hotel greatly values this type of guest connection and offers simple, yet tremendously helpful ways for both guests and employees to participate. Our facility widely distributes comment cards and surveys to the guests due to its mutual benefits. Not only are these comment cards and surveys extremely cost effective, but they also provide incentives for both parties, as the guest has a chance to win a cash prize after participating and the employee who distributes the information has a chance to add money to their paycheck. This opportunity for dialogue among our guests and the hotel means we are constantly listening and creating a governance model for maintaining and responding to guest feedback. Building guest experience knowledge within the hotel is our next significant step because it is vital to our business. Our employees regularly interact with guests and they need to understand what kind of guest experience we strive to provide and how we need to deliver that experience. This necessity is why we strive to train our employees beyond their job description. Anyone working at the Florida Hotel

Initiate guest contact

Assess guest’s wants and needs

Develop a plan to satisfy the guest’s wants and needs

Verify that the guest’s needs have been met

Prepare guests for their role

Manage guest’s behavior or role execution Deliver the service to a specific guest

Evaluate and/or monitor service delivery

maintain service Modify and/or delivery as needed Respond to guest inquiries

Conclude service

Determine resources are what needed

Schedule and/or assign resources

Coordinate with internal and external partners

materials, Gather equipment, informationand

resourcesPrepare

must know their job position, the ups-and-downs within our facilities, our mission, and most importantly, our guests’ expectations. These employee requirements relate to the guests’ expectations because they will become experts on the characteristics that a guest hopes and assumes will be associated with a service experience (Fenich, 2019, pg 487). Having knowledgeable employees who know how to deliver and exceed successful guest experiences allow for the next step of recognizing and rewarding to remain intact. The Florida Hotel’s compensation system displays what is truly important and what isn’t. We provide ample amounts of incentives to our employees who fulfill guest experiences, including promotions, raises, monetary gain and broadened work-experience opportunities. These incentives are indeed game-changers, but we make sure they go to the most deserving employees in order to keep the structure intact. We want to correctly monitor and analyze our employees and their interactions with guests to confirm that they are genuine and not superficial for their own personal gain. We choose our prized employees responsibly in a way that informs them of the expectations at the hotel, but also motivates them to be the best they can be. The next step revolves around executing an integrated internal communications plan. We absolutely value and praise our communication with our guests at the hotel and we strive towards having the same relationship internally. Our hotel’s leaders must regularly update on any guest concerns, issues, or opportunities in order to prevent our best internal marketing from falling short of fostering any important changes. When the guest inquiries are monitored and reported within, we are allowed to adjust and correct things as a team. Lastly, building a guest experience dashboard will properly conclude our service delivery system at the Florida Hotel. We like to shy away from feel-good guest initiatives because we prioritize detailed laser-guided projects that are supported by clear and formalized performance metrics that will assign the necessary commitments. Having the facts and straightforward details about what goes on within our hotel and the relationships with our guests will only allow us to continue to improve. Accurate metrics and aggressive performance goals will not only drastically drive up accountability for prosperity but it will also help rid our organization of any misaligned initiatives.

because our veteran employees are paving the way. Ultimately, our staff will always strive to make the difference within the hospitality community because employees of the Florida Hotel strive to create memorable guest experiences. Training Granting the hotel casts a lot of faith on anyone who is hired at our organization, we still take our training very seriously because we want our staff to be prepared at all times. Training and development is very important in the hospitality industry because it is the only way to succeed in the working environment. Training allows the employee to be able to learn and strengthen the skills that are needed for their position at the hotel, which will allow for the employee to improve and perfect their work over time. Development brings employees together on a higher level of connection, in which they can share and feed off of their skills and knowledge as a way of reducing any weak links within the team. Some of the key issues within training is lack of engagement within the different learning habits and an overly- implied focus on teaching textbook-style information. The Florida Hotel takes pride in getting to know each of our employees and how they learn in order to ensure that training is a success. We focus on training our staff on the big picture, in which we teach employees our organization’s overall values, purposes, and culture, and how what they do helps our organization succeed coach our staff on the guests’ wants, needs and expectations in order to prepare them for a great guest experience. Touch Point Communication The Florida Hotel’s touch point communication system is rather efficient compared to many other hotels because communication is one of our most vital components. Our strengths consist of always prioritizing communication in connection to the guests as well as within our internal employees. We make it a necessity to showcase everything that goes on in the hotel, both good and bad, so we can continue to advance and grow stronger as a whole. Our hotel finds ways to communicate and obtain feedback in simplistic and affordable ways compared to the extremities that other hotels participate in. Our weakness would be our budget because we sometimes have to make the most out of our resources that are less costly. Our current training process gives us the opportunity to branch out and learn new

methodologies from all of the diverse employees we interact with. This interaction also relates to our touchpoints because each employee has their own take on how to fulfill the duties that are mapped out for them and it makes it really exciting for the guests’ experience. The most prominent touchpoint would be when the employee has to develop their own way of satisfying the guests’ wants and needs because they get to throw in their own creative touch. Management The management team at the Florida Hotel truly provides strong leadership skills that guide our team for success. Our managers must supervise, coach, and coordinate the many employees performing various duties, as well as checking employees’ work to creating work schedules, providing training, conducting performance evaluations, and supplying necessary equipment and supplies. Some of the key issues with management are poor communication skills and poor morale. These difficulties are prevented by our hotel management throughout the many practices and activities our managers do. These practices and activities consist of communication and structure workshops, team building activities, employee evaluations, and intricate meetings to discuss any issues. Our management is directly and constantly following up with the guests’ needs and confirming that our staff is doing everything they can do to make sure they are met. The management team also makes the right selection of who the service naturals are and how to use them to our benefit in relation to our competitors, as these types of employees make our hotel more special and memorable compared to other hotels.

Competitive Strategy Although The Florida Hotel is one of the best hotels in the Orlando area, we definitely still have many competitors amongst us. Hotels like the Four Seasons Resort and Disney’s Grand Floridian Resort are prime demonstrations of the organizations we compete with because of their ample luxurious offerings and great reputation. This competition is why having a competitive strategy is vital for our business and our goals. Our competitors are able to highlight our weaknesses because they have us beat by their higher financial standing and resources but we have them beat by many other things. The Florida

References Ford, R. C., &amp; Sturman, M. C. (2020). Managing hospitality organizations: Achieving excellence in the great experience. Thousand Oaks, CA, N/a: Sage.

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