Operations Management
Case Analysis: Hilton Hotel UK
Introduction
This paper intends to discuss operations management. Operations management is a term used to describe the supervision and organization of business practice as a way of creating a high level of efficiency in an organization (Brandon-Jones, Slack, Chambers, Johnston, and others 2016, p.8).
Furthermore, operations management is also concerned with the conversion of materials along with labor into profitable goods and services for an organization (Hodari, and Sturman 2014, p. 434). Notably, in order to effectively discuss operations management, the paper will consider Hilton Hotel UK.
Task 1
General Model of Operations
The paper will look at the concern of Hilton Hotel UK towards the environment, how it retains and empowers employees, and how it addresses the needs of society. Moreover, the paper will also look at the relationship of Hilton Hotel UK with its suppliers, and the relationship and responsibility of Hilton Hotel UK towards investors.
In addition, the paper will also pay special attention to customers by analyzing the quality of products offered to customers by Hilton Hotel UK and assessing whether the products ensure customers receive the value for the price they pay for products. Furthermore, the paper will analyze if the management of the business addresses the needs of owners.
Task II
Operations Strategy
Service Operations Concept
At Hilton Hotel UK, customers are allowed to make on line reservations through a website for Hilton Hotels http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/customersupport/index.jhtml that offers customer support (Bohdanowicz, Zientara, and Novotna 2011, p.797). However, Hilton Hotel UK also provides the option of making a reservation for a room, from a Hilton Hotel UK office desk, where customers present themselves physically.
Notably, when customers are already at Hilton Hotel UK, they are served with special meals from the restaurant section of the hotel, a children’s menu and beverages from the bar section (Gerritzen 2014). In addition, Hilton Hotel UK also provides a fitness center for its customers, as it aims at giving customers a homely feeling when they are far from home.
As customers check out from Hilton Hotel UK, lounge services are provided by the hotel to enhance on comfort to customers (Chen, Wang, and Chu 2011, p.213). Furthermore, Hilton Hotel UK also offers luggage hold, baggage storage and delivery services to its customers as they check from the hotel (Chon, and Yu, 2012).
Competitive Objectives Spider Diagram
In terms of competitive objectives, Hilton Hotel UK focus on increasing the efficiency of its services through increasing online platforms for service delivery, which impacts on the speed and efficiency of service delivery and also interconnecting of Hilton Hotels branches. Moreover, Hilton Hotel UK also observes the quality of services it offers.
For instance, the hotel provides a separate menu for children meals to make a visiting whole family comfortable (Boone, Veller, Nikolaeva, Keith, Kefgen, and Houran 2013, p.230). In addition, Hilton Hotel UK also observes the value of being dependable. For instance, the hotel offers services of foreign exchange to its customers.
Furthermore, Hilton Hotel UK observes flexibility in service delivery through attending to different types of customers with different needs, such as business men, families, and customers seeking comfort. The cost charged for getting services from Hilton Hotel UK depends on the services a customer requires. Therefore, there are a number of variations in costs charged to clients. For instance a client who requires Wi-Fi services will be charged more.
The four V’s Diagram
Hilton Hotel UK is a branch of a hotel that is believed to be the fifth largest globally. Therefore, Hilton Hotel UK is believed to serve a volume of more than 10 million customers every year (Brookes, and Roper 2012, p.580). Moreover, Hilton Hotel UK offers a variety of services, including recreational services, fitness services, comfort, relaxation and luxury services, along with business convenience services.
Therefore, Hilton Hotel UK enjoys variability in demand from customers who want to conduct business, customers who want to travel but still keep up with their routine for fitness, and also customers who want to enjoy quality family time Boone, Veller, Nikolaeva, Keith, Kefgen, and Houran 2013, p.230). Hilton Hotel UK also has visibility to end user, where its website is restrictive to only people who can form legal binding contracts (Alon, Ni, and Wang 2012, p.379). Moreover, the website also gives restrictions on the materials to be used by the website visitors.
Task III
Focused Analysis
Product/Service and Process Design: Hilton Hotel UK provides a number of products for its customers. However, the products are divided into various categories depending on the target group and requirements of the target group. The diagram below summarizes the two main target groups for Hilton Hotel UK, the products category of the products offered to the two main groups and their process.
Convenience to Business Men: Notably, Hilton Hotel UK offers business men with an appropriate environment for doing both their money generating activities, and their relaxation activities. First, Hilton Hotel UK provides rental services to business men for audio equipment and visual equipment (Brookes, and Roper 2012, p.580).
Therefore, business men can be able to conduct their meetings from Hilton Hotel UK. Secondly, Hilton Hotel UK has a special business center. Within the special business center, Hilton Hotel UK allows business men to have business phone services. Therefore, business men can still coordinate and control their firms and companies back at home, from Hilton Hotel UK.
In addition, Hilton Hotel UK also provides and arranges for courier services to business men utilizing their services. Thus, business men cannot complain of their business reports, and personal messages not getting to them on time. Consequently, business men are able to have regular monitoring of their businesses even when they are physically available in their home offices (Eva M Smith 2015).
In case a business man wants to record a message through speech, which the business man intends to use later or on another day for transcription, then Hilton Hotel UK has a Dictaphone for attending to such a business man’s needs. In another scenario, a business man may want to telephonically transmit materials that have been printed and scanned to his company back at home. To address such a need, Hilton Hotel UK has an available fax machine, which has been set aside for use by business men staying in Hilton Hotel UK rooms (Gerritzen 2014).
Markedly, Hilton Hotel UK has been receiving customers from around the world, who converge at Hilton Hotel UK with a sole aim of conducting a meeting, or a series of meetings. Therefore, Hilton Hotel UK has addressed the need by its clients by constructing and reserving a number of rooms as meeting rooms. Moreover, when a meeting is held, all members available in the meeting are issued with flyers, programs and agendas for the meeting to be held on that day. T
hus, Hilton Hotel UK identified that their customers require photo copying services, hence started providing business men with the service (Hanioglu, and Arditi 2013, p.370). In addition, Hilton Hotel UK also has a printer set aside for providing printing services to business men, who are utilizing services of Hilton Hotel UK.
Outstandingly, Hilton Hotel UK is an international hotel therefore the customers seeking the services of Hilton Hotel UK are from different social classes in society. In several cases customers may be high profile personalities, and people holding influential positions in their companies (Tufts 2014, p.52).
Therefore, the work load mandated to such personalities is huge, which then implies that such people require assistance. Thus, Hilton Hotel UK has attended to this need by providing secretarial service. Hilton Hotel UK also identifies that some of its customers work through team work. Hence, there is need for communication between the business men and their home offices.
Thus, Hilton Hotel UK provides the service of video conferencing (Petrović, Jovičić, Marković, and Gagić 2013, p.76). Moreover, some business men value communicating with people when they can see their faces, thus Hilton Hotel UK has a video phone to cater for the need. In addition, most business men require the internet to efficiently conduct their business therefore Hilton Hotel UK has Wi-Fi available in the rooms.
Comfort and Luxury to Business Men: Hilton Hotel UK attends to the comfort needs of business men by providing exchange services for foreign currency, staff members that communicate in different languages, a deposit box for safety and also baggage storage (Ransley, and Ingram 2012). Moreover, Hilton Hotel UK also offers an executive lounge that business men can hire, gives laundry services, room services, elevators for getting to the private rooms, and also allows for visitors (Henderson 2013, p.452).
Comfort and Luxury to families: Hilton Hotel UK identifies that a large number of its customers are families who intend to get a special experience away from home together. Therefore, Hilton Hotel UK has a number of plans in its delivery of services that suit families perfectly. Among the plans is providing two menus. One of the menus is a children’s menu while the other one is an adults menu (Hoefakker 2014).
The reason for having two menus is to ensure that, the family gets as much comfort as possible, while at the same time living a healthy lifestyle. In order, to comfortably fit and spend time together, Hilton Hotel UK provides cribs to accommodate families. In the cribs there are high chairs that add on to the comfort and uniqueness of the stay at Hilton Hotel UK (Jung, Ineson, and Green 2013, p.394).
In addition, Hilton Hotel UK offers families with tours, which are meant for sightseeing. Such tours impact on the feelings of family members, make them have a more close relationship and also turn the stay at Hilton Hotel UK to be a memorable one for the family (Kim, Palakurthi, and Hancer 2012, p.198). At Hilton Hotel UK, the management identifies that for any family, health is the number one priority. Therefore, all family members require achieving fitness for their bodies.
Thus, Hilton Hotel UK attends to the need by family members through providing a fitness room. Additionally, bathroom and bedroom doors are built with enough entrance space of 32 inches (Niewiadomski 2015, p.178). The aim of concentrating on the size of bedroom and bathroom doors is to make people feel at home despite their sizes, since some are plus sized, while others are slim and others medium sized.
Task IV
Improvement
From the analysis of Hilton Hotel UK, it is evident that a number of areas need improvement. First, Hilton Hotel UK charges extreme high prices for clients using Wi-Fi services at the hotel. This problem is attributed to using Swisscom as their internet provider. Swisscom is globally known as unstable and outdated. The offering given by Swisscom is very complex while its reliability is extremely low. Moreover, customers are given restrictions on the number of megabytes that they can download (Jung, Ineson, and Green 2013, p.395).
Consequently, a customer is forced to purchase a number of vouchers if they intend to do video streaming. In addition, the network provided by Swisscom has regular changes occurring to the bandwidth, along with the speed of surfing. In some cases changes in speed of surfing may turn from great into poor and later to disconnect (Lee 2013, p.35). It is therefore recommended that Hilton Hotel UK makes changes to their internet network.
Moreover, it is also worth noting that, at Hilton Hotel UK phone reception may be a problem in some cases. This is due to poor network at the hotel rooms, since there are no signal boosters or stable routers for surfing network. Therefore, customers who work from indoors are inconvenienced and forced to seek better network connections in nearby areas such as malls and shops (Kim, Palakurthi, and Hancer 2012, p.198).
Furthermore, Hilton Hotel UK charges exaggerated prices for drinks taken from the Hotel’s mini-bars (Kasim, Gursoy, Okumus, and Wong 2014, p.1092). For instance, a bottle of Coke with a capacity of 0.2L is sold at 4.5 Euros, which further implies that if one is interested in buying a whole liter of Coke then he/she will be expected to part with 22.5 Euros. Notably, 22.5 Euros are further expensive compared to the prices charged for a wine bottle in Hilton Hotel UK (Chen, Wang, and Chu 2011, p.213).
Additionally, though the bathrooms of Hilton Hotel UK are ok, it would be expected that the shower would be separate. However, that is not the case. It therefore becomes even more irritating that the shower is separated by a curtain. Hence, when a customer is in the bathtub, they might regularly feel the touch of the curtain on their skin (Kasim, Gursoy, Okumus, and Wong 2014, p.1098).
Management of allocation of rooms at Hilton Hotel UK is another important thing to review. Notably, customers who pay for rooms online have a higher likelihood of getting rooms that are lower in value that what they have paid for. Evidently a number of customers who paid online to book for rooms at Hilton Hotel UK have complained on the Hotel’s website. This is brought about by poor management of online platforms (Hodari, and Sturman 2014, p. 445).
In addition, since Hilton Hotel UK is located in a very busy place, it would be recommendable to provide cab services to customers. Cab services from Hilton Hotel UK would help in reducing the inconveniences Hilton Hotel UK customers undergo when trying to check in to Hilton Hotel UK or to check out of Hilton Hotel UK (Tufts 2014, p.52).
Furthermore, in order to improve on the convenience of customers travelling around UK it is important for Hilton Hotel UK to review the interconnection and interrelation policies of all Hilton Hotels UK, to enable customers move from one branch to another, by being allocated rooms of the same value they have paid for.
Hilton Hotel UK should also focus on holding regularly, team building activities for their employees and also increase the motivational activities held for employees. This is in a bid to improve on customer attendance services. Notably, when employees are in a good mood, and love their work, then they are likely going to offer high level services to customers, show concern and even try to form friendly relationships with customers (Kim, Palakurthi, and Hancer 2012, p.200).
For security of customers’ belongings, though Hilton Hotel UK offers a safety deposit box, it would be recommendable to construct large safes inside customers’ rooms, which can fit a laptop in. The safe should also be protected by electric cables.
Notably, Hilton Hotel UK uses key cards for getting access to the rooms. Sadly, key cards are known to have a tendency of getting mysteriously deactivated (Ransley, and Ingram 2012). Deactivation can be attributed to proximity of the key card to a customer’s mobile phone, but also it can be attributed to having misunderstandings over the time the customer is expected to check out from the room. Therefore, one issue that needs attending by Hilton Hotel UK is the efficiency of operation of key cards in accessing rooms.
Citing the need for controlling the temperatures of rooms at Hilton Hotel UK, the hotel has a system for climate control. Though the system works in a favorable way, it is recommendable for Hilton Hotel UK to upgrade the system into a system that produces minimal or no noise at all. Moreover, Hilton Hotel UK should consider issuing customers with earplugs when they issue toiletries (Henderson 2013, p.452).
The need for earplugs is to deal annoyance on customers when they have noisy neighbors or when there is construction going on. In addition, it is also important to construct hotel rooms with windows that all customers can comfortably reach and open when they feel the need for fresh air. Mostly, the hotel rooms at Hilton Hotel UK have raised windows that a majority of customers can barely reach to open (Gerritzen 2014). It would be important for Hilton Hotel UK management to address this issue when renovating the rooms.
Most customers of Hilton Hotel UK complain on the website of Hilton Hotel about the position of power outlets. In most rooms customers are expected to bend below the desk and plug in whatever they want to charge. It would be a thoughtful idea to move the power outlets to desk level or have power outlets stuck on the nightstand of every room.
Task V
Challenges and Conclusion
Challenges
In the near future Hilton Hotel UK is likely to face two challenges. The first challenge will be an influx of customers to Hilton Hotel UK yet the number of employees at Hilton Hotel UK cannot be able to meet their demands. In addition, Hilton Hotel UK might also experience a shortage of rooms to accommodate the large number of customers visiting from different parts of the world.
The second challenge Hilton Hotel UK might be facing in the near future, is competition from upcoming hotels. Many investors have identified that there is great opportunity in the hotel industry, and the rewards from investing in the hotel industry are also attractive. Hence, many investors are turning to the hotel industry, where they are coming up with new hotels that offer latest facilities.
Conclusion
The paper above has discussed operations management by looking at the case of Hilton Hotel UK. Using a general model of operations the paper has analyzed the environment of Hilton Hotel UK, how Hilton Hotel UK relates with suppliers, owners, investors, society and the employees. The paper has gone ahead to discuss operations strategy at Hilton Hotel UK by looking at the service operations concept, the competitive objectives by the use of a spider diagram, and the four Vs diagram.
In addition, the paper has also provided a focused analysis of Hilton Hotel UK by looking at product and process design at Hilton Hotel UK. Furthermore, the paper has further given recommendations on improvements that Hilton Hotel UK might consider doing and also revealed possible challenges that Hilton Hotel UK may encounter in future.
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