Meeting Guest Expectations through Planning PDF

HOSPITALITY PRINCIPLE: FOCUS STRATEGY ON THE KEY DRIVERS OF GUEST SATISFACTION LEARNING OUTCOMES: At the end of this course, the student should be able to: Identify the three generic strategies for positioning products and services. Comment and/or react to the organizational planning cycle an...

HOSPITALITY PRINCIPLE: FOCUS STRATEGY ON THE KEY DRIVERS OF GUEST SATISFACTION LEARNING OUTCOMES: At the end of this course, the student should be able to: Identify the three generic strategies for positioning products and services. Comment and/or react to the organizational planning cycle and how its different elements result in the establishment of the hospitality organization's overall strategic plan and service strategy. React on how organizations plan and design the guest experience. Analyze the key external and internal factors that must be examined for successful planning. Differentiate the quantitative and qualitative tools used to assess the hospitality environment- external and internal. Identify the process to determine core competencies. Enumerate the importance of including the key drivers of guest satisfaction in the planning process. Enumerate the importance and value of product and service branding. Analyze and explain a planning model, showing how components are tied together and action plans developed. Introduction When guests show up at a hotel, restaurant, or any other hospitality service provider, they have certain expectations of both what will and will not happen. To give guests what they expect requires research to determine exactly what those expectations are. Translating those expectations into a service product that aligns or fits the organization’s mission and values takes detailed planning, forecasting, and sound intuitive judgment. Managers of excellent hospitality organizations try to mix all three together into a strategy that allows them to give guests exactly what they expect and even a bit more. Guests will return only if their experiences meet, if not exceed, their expectations. The service strategy is the organization’s plan for providing the experience that guests expect. THREE GENERIC STRATEGIES According to strategy scholar Michael Porter, an organization usually employs one or more of three different generic strategies. a. First, it can aim to be the low-cost producer and low-price provider in its industry, area, or market segment. b. Second, it can differentiate its product or service from those of its competitors. c. Third, it can fill a particular market niche or need. Successful hospitality organizations establish a strategy that may include one or more of these generic strategies and stick with it. THREE GENERIC STRATEGIES 1. A Lower Price: tries to design and provide pretty much the same service that the competition sells, but at a lower price 2. A Differentiated Product: all want to be perceived as offering a service product—the guest experience itself— that is different in ways their customers find favorable. The Brand Image: A major way to differentiate one’s service from those of competitors is through the creation of a strong brand image. 3. A Special Niche: focus on a specific part of the total market by offering a special appeal—like quality, value, location, or exceptional service—to attract customers in that market segment. 4. Combining Strategies: The strategies just discussed are not mutually exclusive. An organization can seek to differentiate its product from all others in the market (Strategy 2) by positioning the product in people’s minds as the best value for the lowest cost (Strategy 1). 5. Reinventing the Industry: If drastic change is forecast, the organization might even have to reinvent itself and learn new core competencies. A strategy might be to get cheaper, or better, or faster. 6. Providing Superior Service Quality and Value: These three generic strategies—competing on price, finding a niche, and differentiating—may each work for a while, but they also have potential shortcomings. Provide better service and value than the competition does, and they can’t beat you. 1. Name a hospitality and tourism brand and describe what impression and/or feelings it gives to you? 2. What specific scenario we can apply “a lower price” strategy? THE HOSPITALITY PLANNING CYCLE Leading guests to where they want to go but don’t know it yet is how the truly outstanding hospitality organizations become and stay outstanding. The organization gathers as much information as it can on what its present customers want, need, and do, tries to imagine what kinds of experiences their future guests will find satisfying, and then plans ways to deliver them. 1. Looking Around: These premises are the beliefs of the managers assessing all long-term aspects of the external environment and trying to use them to discover what forces will impact their business in the future and especially what customers will want in that future environment. 2. Looking Within: The internal assessment, or the searching look within for strengths and weaknesses, defines the organization’s core competencies and considers the organization’s strong and weak points in terms of its ability to compete in the future. 3. The Necessity for Planning: Those who fail to plan, plan to fail; Every hospitality organization needs a road map to unite and focus the efforts of the organization’s members and get them prepared for the future that the organizational planners predict.  The process described in Figure 2-1 seems to many like an attempt to apply rationality to an irrational world and to predict an unpredictable future. As shown in Figure 2-1, the hospitality planning process begins with a long look around the environment. ASSESSING THE ENVIRONMENT  WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD Among the many factors that the hospitality organization must forecast for the uncertain future, it must try to predict potential changes in demographics, technology, social expectations, economic forces, competitors, other relevant groups (suppliers of resources, capital, and labor), and surprise factors. 1. Changing Demographics: Generation X, Generation Y or the Millenniums, and the Next-Gens 2. Demographic Implications: Managerial Implications of Generation Y in the Workforce A Different Way of Thinking 3. Changing Technology 4. Changing Social Expectations 5. Changing Economic Forces 6. Changing Competitors 7. Changes in Other Relevant Groups Resource Suppliers Capital Suppliers 8. Surprises 1. Give specific example of a two generations (ex. Gen X and Gen Z behavior) and be able to describe their purchasing behavior. 2. Explain why do we need to know the demographic profile of our market in hospitality and tourism industry? WHAT THE FUTURE MAY HOLD (Continuation) 9. The Impact of Change on Strategic Premises 10 Strategic Premises Dave Thomas’ 5 trends Dave Thomas, founder of Wendy’s, told how his environmental assessment led to certain premises on which Wendy’s corporate strategy was based. When creating his new restaurant in 1969, he identified five trends he thought offered him a market opportunity that he had the competence to meet: 1. People wanted choices. 2. People were fed up with poor quality. 3. People were trying to adjust to a newer, more complicated way of life. 4. People were on the move. 5. People were ready for an upscale hamburger place. ASSESSING THE ORGANIZATION ITSELF: THE INTERNAL AUDIT 1. Core Competencies 2. Internal Assets 3. Vision and Mission Statements The Vision Statement: A vision statement articulates what the organization hopes to look like and be like in the future. It presents hopes and dreams; it creates a picture toward which the organization aspires; it provides inspiration for the journey ahead. The Mission Statement: articulates the organization’s purpose, the reason for which it was founded and for which it continues to exist; defines the path to the vision, given the strategic premises and the organization’s core competencies; is a guide to defining the how, what, who, and where for the organization’s overall service strategy that in turn drives the design of the service product, service environment, and service delivery system  A typical mission statement will include at a minimum the following three elements: (1) What you do (What is the product or service you are providing to the customer?), (2) Who you do it for (Who is the targeted customer?), (3) How or where you do it (Where is the product or service going to be provided to the targeted customers? Place, niche or market segment?) Give example of a SWOT statement: 1. Strengths 2. Weaknesses 3. Opportunities 4. Threats If you can't make it good, at least KilayisLife make it look good. Bill Gates