Assessment Case Study – The Imperial Hotel, London

Assessment Case Study – The Imperial Hotel, London
The assessment is based on a business and management case study which requires a team-based approach to identifying and problem-solving a range of business and management challenges within the case. Throughout the term you will undertake research and analysis which will inform your individual report. Within the individual report you will include a summary and key justifications for the resolution of one of the problems in the case.
The report will be an individual 2,000 words report which will address one of the six specific ‘problems’ identified in the case (e.g. a human resource management challenge, an ethical problem, a performance and productivity issue, etc). You will receive an initial briefing about the case study in week 1 seminar and a full briefing in Week 4..
Students will be expected to apply management theory to practice throughout the report.
Case Study – The Imperial Hotel, London
The Imperial Hotel is a London 500 bedroom hotel, which is owned and managed part of a well-known international branded chain of hotels in the 4 star market – Star Hotels which operates 25 hotels in the UK. The Imperial Hotel, located in the heart of London’s West End, caters for mainly international business and tourists guests who have high expectation in terms of service standards.
The facilities at the hotel include the following:
• 500 bedrooms, all with en-suite facilities.
• Conference facilities for 1,000 people
• Leisure centre with swimming pool
• 3 Bars and 4 restaurants
• 12 conference rooms
Staff
• 6 Heads of Departments: Food and Beverage; Housekeeping; Guest Services & Concierge; Front of House & Reception; and Human Resources & training.
• 450 staff in total (300 full-time and part-time)
• Outside contractors (for specialist cleaning; laundry services; management of the leisure centre;)
A new General Manager, Peter Farnsworth, has recently taken over the management of the whole hotel. He is an experienced manager having worked in several of the other Star city centre hotels outside London. The previous General Manager, who had just retired, had been experiencing a range of problems in managing the hotel, namely that: there was a very high turnover of staff in all the departments running around 80% a year mainly due to poor staff morale; the hotel was graded the lowest in the whole Star chain in terms of overall guest satisfaction running at a rate of 65% in the company’s benchmark grading system; the overall sales in the hotel are improving, and although the hotel occupancy (the ratio of rooms sold against the total number of rooms available) was running at 90% for the year, the actual average room rate (ARR) achieved, currently running at £95 per room per night was relatively low compared to the local competition. This poor performance is having a direct negative effect on the costs of the hotel and the hotel’s overall profitability.
The Imperial is an old hotel having been in operation for nearly 100 years. The hotel was last fully refurbished some 8 years ago but is now in need of some restoration and redecoration. There is a programme of staged refurbishment in place which means each floor of the hotel is being closed for building work to be undertaken. The consequence of this is that, at any one time for the next two years, 60 rooms will be out of action. This is putting the hotel under budgetary pressure due to the ongoing building costs as well as the loss of income from the 60 rooms out of action at any one time.
 Planned Strategy for Resolving the Problems in the Hotel
Peter Farnsworth is under no illusion as to the challenges ahead and has decided to plan a strategy for resolving the operational, management and business-related problems in the hotel. The first part of the plan is to identify the top six problems for the hotel for the coming year. He identifies the problems as follows and Peter has put forward some initial suggestions for resolving each of the problems.
Number 5 is my problem:
• Problem 5: Front of house staff (Reception, Conference & Banqueting, and Restaurant & Bars )– poor team working and inefficient use of IT systems including the reservation and property management
systems
Problem 5: Front of house staff (Reception, Conference & Banqueting, and Restaurant & Bars) – poor team working and inefficient use of IT systems including the reservation and property management systems
The front of house staff, particularly in the Reception have a pivotal customer-facing role in offering service and support to guests. The Reception needs to be open 24 hours a day and is the first point-of-call for guests as well key staff in all Departments to have up-to-date information and data on guest arrivals and departures, specific guest needs and guest billing data. The Reception staff at the Imperial Hotel work three, 8 hour shifts working in teams. Each team has a supervisor and they have a particularly challenging function of managing Reception teams as well as in passing on important guest information and data on to the next shift. The hotel uses a Micros Fidelio reservation and Property Management System (PMS) which provides up-to-date information on real-time and prospective guests and their reservations. The other departments including the kitchen, restaurants and conferencing are dependent on Reception for guest numbers and data.
Some of the key Reception staff have been in conflict with the other Departments after numerous complaints about wrong and inaccurate information being provided. Housekeeping have been given wrong or out-of-date data on room availability, and whether a guest is staying on in the hotel. Reception have also failed to inform Housekeeping about early and late arrivals and subsequently rooms have not been cleaned in time with guests having to wait for long periods to get their room keys. The conference and banqueting staff have complained that they have not been provided with proper data on numbers of guests coming in for meetings and conferences. This, combined with complaints from guests that Reception staff are often abrupt or even rude in dealing with even the most basic request has caused a lot of animosity within the Reception staff and other staff throughout the hotel. The Reception Department has become somewhat dysfunctional and there are examples of Reception shift teams arguing with in the incoming teams about not providing proper handover information.
A new Head of Department of Front Office and Reception, working closing with the General Manager, is aware of the conflict issues within the department as well as with the other departments within the hotel and intends to undertake a stand to manage the conflict quickly and efficiently. The Reception teams’ dynamics are not good, and there is a blame culture with staff not working constructively and there is a clash of some strong personalities within the Department. He is going to review: the way the teams are structured; the individual performance of staff in terms of performance and productivity; the rewards and benefit being offered for good performance; and training and development needs. He also intends to develop and co-ordinate a team-based approach to managing the staff. The poor data issues can be dealt with through improved use of the IT systems (PMS) although the animosity within and between working teams will be more difficult to resolve
Initial suggestions by Peter Farnsworth to resolve the problem:
• Training into IT systems
• Cross-team building exercises
• Review of team bonus schemes
 Tasks
As an independent consultant, you have been asked by Peter Farnsworth to take responsibility for analysing the problem, commenting on Peter Farnsworth’s initial suggestions and putting forward a joint set of resolutions for the listed problems. You are therefore to put forward and prioritise proposals for the resolution of the problem. The expectation is that within 12 months there should be dramatic improvement and change in performance in all six areas. You have asked to write a 2,000 word report addressing your single problem topic to attempt to resolve that problem in the hotel.
Each person in your group will be investigating a different problem.
Staff Incentive Schemes
There are currently a number of incentive schemes to encourage staff to meet excellent standards of work, and to improve productivity. These include: Employee of the Month (for the whole hotel - £200) and employee of the month for each department (£50); staff (including agency staff) consistently meeting individual and performance targets in three consecutive months within the department (£200 vouchers towards staying in any one of Star Hotels); department, end-of-year parties (funded by the hotel); college fees being paid (NVQ levels 2-4).
End of case
Marking criteria:
Individual report element: 2,000 words (100% weighting for the module)
o A review of management theory to one specific problem in the case
with appropriate use of essential texts and academic reading 30%
o An analysis of one specific problem within the case demonstrating
an understanding of the processes and procedures for effective management 40%
o A summary and justification of key proposals for the resolution of the problem in the
organisation 20%
o Report presentation, format etc 10%
Suggested report format:
 Title Page
 Introduction – Explain the background to your individual problem in the context of the case (250 words approx).
 Analysis of the individual problem – Summarise and interpret the data from your secondary research into published literature and management theory. Describe and present your results for effective management of the problem. A summary and justification of key proposals for the resolution of the problem in the organisation (1500 words approx.)
 Conclusion – This should be a brief summary of findings of the analysis of the individual problem. (250 words)
 Bibliography
• Additional information on Moodle – examples and exemplars of successful and unsuccessful assessments and reports will be provided as a guide to students as well as a list of Frequently Asked Question (FAQs) to support your progress towards completing your assessments.
• Referencing - You MUST use the Harvard System. The Harvard system is very easy to use once you become familiar with it.
Assignment submissions – The Business School requires a digital version of all assignment submissions. These must be submitted via Turnitin on the module’s Moodle site. They must be submitted as a Word file (not as a pdf) and must not include scanned in text or text boxes. They must be submitted by 2p.
For further general details on coursework preparation refer to the online information via StudentZone http://studentzone(dot)roehampton(dot)ac(dot)uk/howtostudy/index.html.
Mitigating circumstances – The University Mitigating Circumstances Policy can be found on the University website - Mitigating Circumstances Police
Aim -100/150 words
-state the aim of the assigment
-Outline the assignment
Introduction to the problem
Outline and analyse the problem{my case is problem 5}
What is the problem the hotel is facing?
based on a research ,what are the potential causes of this problem?
Analysis of the Individual problem-1500 words
Analyse Peter Farnsworth's suggestions.Take one suggestion at the time,Based on research,are the suggestion valid?Why the been successful or unsuccessful in the hospitality business? What conclusion can you draw from the research?Would you suggest different approach ?remember to provide counter-arguments in order to strengthen your position.
Conclusion -150 words
-restate the thesis statement/aim
-summarise ideas stated in the body of the assignment