Read the following case study questions carefully and answer the preceding questions

Q1) CASE STUDY

The City Centre Inn has always enjoyed a positive reputation in the community it serves. Built as an independent hotel about 20 years ago, it has 400 rooms and appeals mostly to travellers looking for mid-range prices and services. It also has an excellent banquet facility and is generally recognised as one of the better hotels in town.

Recently, new competition has been built two blocks from the City Centre Inn. The new hotel has 300 rooms and also has good banquet space. It is a chain hotel and enjoys a good reputation based upon the chain.

Tom Malone, the hotel front office manager, has begun to see a downturn in hotel business. Some of the City Centre Inns regular guests are not returning. With the permission of the hotels general manager, Tom calls several of these regular guests to find out why they are not returning. Tom is pleased to find that the guests he calls like the hotel. They believe the food at the City Centre Inn is better than at the competitors. The guestrooms are just as clean and comfortable too. However, the City Centre Inn lacks many of the conveniences of the new competition, so the business travellers are going there instead. Tom made a list of these issues for the general manager. They include:

1. No convenient 800 number (toll free number) to call for reservations
2. Slow registration processing
3. Slow check-out processing
4. Frequent inaccurate guest billing
5. Lack of frequent guest recognition by the newer front desk employees

The City Centre Inn has a semi-automated front desk and all the equipment is in good condition. Reservations are processed manually using typewriters to fill out expected arrivals list for the front desk. Room status communications between the front desk and housekeeping are also manual, and so is the charge posting function. Tom decides the market is telling the hotel to change, but he is not sure what to recommend to the general manager.

Answer the following questions:

1. What alternatives does the hotel have to improve the service issues mentioned by the guests? Discuss the benefits and drawbacks of providing a fully automated hotel versus keeping their current systems. (7 marks)
2. If the hotels owners decide not to implement a fully automated front desk, what else can Tom do to minimize the problems identified by the guests? Are there other systems besides a front desk computer that can help this situation? (7 marks)
3. What forms and reports should Tom be reviewing to see if they can be simplified or eliminated? What other department managers should he include in this review?