Innovation and Customer Orientation

Discuss about the Innovation and Customer Orientation.

McQuarrie hotel is an established hotel in Sydney, Australia at the bank of Georges River. It is in the hotel industry for more than twenty years. The hotel is running very successfully due to various reasons, such as, location, rates, accommodation, friendly staff, cleanliness etc. However, the ownership of hotel has been transferred recently as the previous owners were shifting to some other city (Brotherton 2012). The new owners are very enthusiastic about this new acquirement. They want to move ahead with some new goals in mind. They have understood that to progress, intense research should be done about the new systems and technologies in the industries to exploit the opportunities completely. Hence, they have called my organization, McKinsey and Company, to give them suggestions.

I have been chosen by my company to give suggestion to the new owners of McQuarrie hotel on the new technologies in the industry, which can help to enhance customer experience.

Upon visiting the McQuarrie hotel during a peak season, I have found some of the key areas where improvement is required for enhanced customer satisfaction. Like every other industry, the hotel industry is undergoing a technological transformation too. Here are few suggestions for the hotel that I provided:

Firstly, online booking systems are a must-have feature in today’s world. When every work is becoming convenient for the customers, then hotel booking via telephone has become obsolete. McQuarrie hotel still have the telephonic booking system, which needs to be changed in the first place. The company website must be updated to introduce the online booking facility with a simple interface. It will enable the customers to book rooms anytime, such as, outside the business hours, and from anywhere, thereby increasing the convenience. Hence, it will definitely improve customer experience. However, based on their needs, they can go for their individual customized system if they can afford one, or use a third party booking system, such as Hotels.com (McManus 2013).

Secondly, the hotel should start using the CRM (Customer Relationship Management) software. It will enable the management to keep and organize the contacts and information of the customers in one place. An efficient CRM system helps to build a more connected relationship with the customers and it also makes the customer details easily accessible to all the staffs (Mok, Sparks and Kadampully 2013).

Thirdly, the hotel should introduce the Electronic Point of Sale (EPOS) system along with online booking system. It makes the purchases easier for the next generation customers (Nicolau and Santa-María 2013).

Fourthly, McQuarrie hotel should think about implementing marketing automation. It allows the hotel to send personalized emails to the customers. For example, they should send automated emails containing discount offers to the customers on their birthdays, or special package offers during the anniversary of the hotel (Sigala, Christou and Gretzel 2012).

Fifthly, the social media has a great impact in the hotel industry. Particularly Facebook, tripadvisor are very important for drawing the customers’ attention. The hotel should utilize the huge potential of the social media to improve its service. It can put advertisements in Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram and incorporate pictures of the hotel to gain some prospective customers. They should create a page in Facebook, along with some attractive pictures of the hotel premises and rooms, room booking facility, check in option, reviewing option, rating option. Moreover, there should be a dedicated team to handle these social media profiles so that a customer gets quick reply to his queries (Pegg, Patterson and Gariddo 2012).

Sixthly, McQuarrie hotel must develop a smartphone app for the hotel. This will again improve the customer convenience and experience. The whole world is captured by the smartphone mania and an app will definitely increase the popularity of any establishment. The room booking facility, room selection, options for check in, check out, customer service, making extra purchases, integration of maps should be the key features in the app. It should also provide free wifi in all the rooms (Chen 2012).

Finally, along with smartphone application, the advances in the home automations are a new thing in this industry. The hotel should consider installing appliances in the rooms, which can be controlled by a single smart device such as tablet or a smart app (Kang et al. 2012).

To increase the profitability of the business, McQuarrie hotel must employ an efficient and friendly staff also. It is a major requirement in the hotel and hospitality industry. The technology can only help to enable to customer convenience, but to attract new customers and retain the old and existing customers, it is very essential to have an efficient, experienced and organized workforce, who can help the customers to feel at home, thereby building a strong relationship.

The customers of a hotel can be distinguished into four broad categories: Families, Backpackers, Seniors and Business travelers (Chathoth et al. 2013). The McQuarrie hotel is an establishment older than twenty years in the Liverpool area of Sydney. This location itself has made this hotel a popular choice for the customers.  However, the needs of the customers are changing over time. The categories of customers are getting widened too. The customer segmentation of this hotel can be described as follows: the families, clients, business travelers, international guests, backpackers, seniors and excursion groups.

McQuarrie hotel has 280 rooms in total, which includes AC, NON AC, Smoking, Non-smoking, Deluxe, Standard, and with single, double or king bed. All the rooms serve various purposes to various customers. However, the hotel needs to improve some of the features to attract more customers.

The backpackers are the younger crowd who generally prefers low cost rooms, even dormitories. They want to save more and hence, are not willing to pay much for the hotel room. These groups are more interested in sightseeing and roaming with just a backpack, rather than spending in a hotel. Hence, to attract this crowd, McQuarrie hotel should allocate some very low cost rooms, or dormitories with a shared toilet for cost effectiveness. The hotel should also provide maps of the local area and brochures to the backpackers for local information (Li, Ye and Law 2013).

The hotel must bring out a provision to make a banquet hall, which would draw the business clients. The businesses always look out spaces to hold conferences. They always prefer to host these conferences in a known and tested venue. Hence, to attract this crowd, McQuarrie hotel must build an attractive banquet hall with all the modern facilities like free wifi, bigger space, printer facilities, office facilities, and AC hall. These type of customers are less price sensitive and they prefer efficiency and convenience. Initially the hotel should keep the price low to attract the clients, and once they are impressed, it can raise the price. Quick response is also mandatory in such cases, as the business people will not wait much to get the booking confirmation.

Sydney is a global tourist destination. Hence, to cater to the international tourists, McQuarrie hotel must improvise the facilities as per international standard. The rooms and other facilities must be improved with better amenities. They also need to open up a swimming pool, a fitness center, an adjacent restaurant, and provide maps and brochures containing local information, which will draw the global tourists.

For the senior tourists, McQuarrie hotel must have the staff assistance and transport facilities. Sometimes a tour company brings the senior people from an old age home from any other city than Sydney, for the tour of the city. If the hotel can provide staff and transportation assistance to these old people, the popularity of the hotel will increase among the seniors. It can also team up with a local tour agent to provide sightseeing tours to the seniors. If they can arrange a pick and drop facility directly to the hotel, that will be an added advantage. Along with these, a high level of customer service with a constant check on them will be highly appreciated among the seniors (Grissemann, Plank, and Brunner-Sperdin 2013).

Lastly, McQuarrie hotel must retain its reputation as a family hotel in Sydney. The improvisation of the family rooms is required in the first place as per international standard. Along with that, the options of a new swimming pool, restaurant will definitely increase the popularity of the McQuarrie hotel.

References:

Brotherton, B. ed., 2012. International Hospitality Industry. Routledge.

Chathoth, P., Altinay, L., Harrington, R.J., Okumus, F. and Chan, E.S., 2013. Co-production versus co-creation: A process based continuum in the hotel service context. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 32, pp.11-20.

Chen, J.S. ed., 2012. Advances in hospitality and leisure (Vol. 8). Emerald Group Publishing.

Grissemann, U., Plank, A. and Brunner-Sperdin, A., 2013. Enhancing business performance of hotels: The role of innovation and customer orientation. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 33, pp.347-356.

Kang, K.H., Stein, L., Heo, C.Y. and Lee, S., 2012. Consumers’ willingness to pay for green initiatives of the hotel industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31(2), pp.564-572.

Li, H., Ye, Q. and Law, R., 2013. Determinants of customer satisfaction in the hotel industry: an application of online review analysis. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 18(7), pp.784-802.

McManus, L., 2013. Customer accounting and marketing performance measures in the hotel industry: Evidence from Australia. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 33, pp.140-152.

Mok, C., Sparks, B. and Kadampully, J., 2013. Service quality management in hospitality, tourism, and leisure. Routledge.

Nicolau, J.L. and Santa-María, M.J., 2013. The effect of innovation on hotel market value. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 32, pp.71-79.

Pegg, S., Patterson, I. and Gariddo, P.V., 2012. The impact of seasonality on tourism and hospitality operations in the alpine region of New South Wales, Australia. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 31(3), pp.659-666.

Sigala, M., Christou, E. and Gretzel, U. eds., 2012. Social media in travel, tourism and hospitality: Theory, practice and cases. Ashgate Publishing, Ltd.

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