Read the Case Exercise and Answer the Questions Above.

3.Why do you think the staff do not welcome changes?

4.What would you suggest Davina should do to encourage the staff to show warmth and spontaneity when their natural instinct is to seek security from procedures and routines

Case exercise o The Empress Hotel Group b A CH Robert Johnston and Bridgette Sullivan-Taylor, Warwick Business School Textbook Exercises Davina Rullani had just taken over as personnel director at the Empress Hotel Group, a major inter- national five-star hotel chain with its headquarters in Hong Kong. Her task in the previous hotels in which she had worked involved setting up systems and procedures updating the standard operating procedures and running customer service training departments that provided and coached scripts. encouraged teamwork and allocated roles and duties. She had personally trained senior hotel managers in leadership and motivation. This hotel chain, she realised, was going to be rather different The Empress Hotel Group's chairman and chief executive was Bob Beaver, an evangelical American whose dream was to create the most perfect hotel chain in the world'. He felt that the standardised approach to five-star hotels was not appropriate for the discerning international traveller, who wanted a taste of local culture and traditions, not a 'McDonald's experience'. Hol wanted his hotels to be run by the local management teams, not by head office. He felt the hotels should use local furniture and furnishing and decorations, create local menus and use local produca. He thought the uniforms should be different from hotel to hotel and reflect the local culture and climate and that the service should be warm and spontaneous Davina, like most of the hotel's management, had come from other mainstream chains, which were extremely different. The HR department's role was to create manuals spelling out exactly what should be done, by whom and how. The role of the operations managers was to implement these procedures and if they were not sure of anything they always know they could find the answer in one of the manuals that covered one wall in their office. I surprised Bob, but did not surprise Davina, that the amount of discretion applied by managers in the hotels was, in practice, small. Indeed her predecessor had worked with them to provide systems and procedures, for which he was sacked. Bob was determined to bring about his vision and Davina was instrumental in this All the staff were paid slightly above the industry average and Empress Hotels were seen as the place to work. As Bob ruefully pointed out: It is not necessarily seen as the place to stay. We need to put my vision into practice.' Davina's job was to persuade both hotel managers and the staff, from front of house to pot washers, to use the discretion they really had to make Empress Hotels the best place in the world to stay Davina had to deal with the hotel's facilities, food and service and she decided to start with the service. On her way out to see her mother in Germany she stopped for a night at the group's highly rated hotel in Dubai and stayed in the Seychelles on the way back. She realised she had her work cut out. At check-in both hotels 'processed' her very efficiently but there was no warmth or colour. She asked both receptionists, who were not busy, about local attractions and was told 'See the concierge (Dubai) and There are some leaflets in your room (Seychelles). Davina also asked the difference between the guestroom she had booked and an executive room and was told 350 dirham' (Dubai) and 'They are on the fifth floor with breakfast included' (Seychelles). At dinner in the hotels' restaurants she was not offered a dessert, although in Dubai she was asked if she would like a coffee Back in Hong Kong Davina set herself objectives in three areas: Reception to try to make the service more spontaneous Staff training - to encourage the staff to focus on the needs of the guests and not on the procedures Hotel managers to help them assess their staff in terms of good service rather than compliance and encourage their staff to do a good job rather than what they have always done. Davina explained her approach: It's about mixing discretion with professionalism. We need to get away from standarisation and focus on the customer and let the local colour and culture come out Training staff is going to be the key, but it's going to be hard when we can't define or specify what they have to do. They will need to have the right skills, be highly motivated and willing to go the extra mile. We just have to Case - The Empres... BUSI5233 Minor nela Ajuda bring it about