Creating A Homely Environment In Hotels – Concepts And Strategies

Definition of Hospitality and Hospitality Management

What concepts of home are being used and why? Examples? Create an organisation – you will need to give background (it can be a real one!). What types of recommendations and why?

The definition of hospitality is welcoming the guests and looking after the needs of the guests mainly in the form of drink, food and accommodation (Skandrani and Kamoun 2014). Hospitality management comprises of the different types of the business and industries. This type of business includes different sorts of businesses that specialize on the airlines, tour agencies, resorts, casinos, restaurants and hotels. The hospitality industry caters the needs of the people that are away from home. These type of businesses exists both in small and large scale which are privately or publicly owned. There are different types of people that belong from the diverse cultures and religion are connected via this industry. The hospitality industry can be found in every corner of the globe that provide transportation, food, entertainment, jobs and also a place to sleep (Buhalis and Crotts 2013). The main purpose of the report is to find the concepts of home and the rationale of why the concept is used. The study also includes creation of an organization and give a background study of it. Lastly, recommendation will be given of how to implement the home concept and the rationale for the specific recommendation.

The business for which the concept of home is consulted is a hotel business. In this particular study, a hypothetical hotel company named Oasis hotel, which is located is Australia is emphasized upon. This hotel will specifically target the people that will be using the hotels for staying in for a night or for a week. People generally going for a vacation are the potential guests for this hotel. Hotels are the establishments that give the facilities of paid staying for a short term period. The different types of the facilities that a hotel provides are furnished bathrooms, televisions, leather upholstered chairs, kitchen facilities that include the refrigerator, micro oven, dresser, fine quality beds. Whereas the qualities of the service and the facilities provided by the hotels differ depending upon the large and small priced hotels. The high quality and high priced hotels offers more exquisite options like the social services, restaurants, gymnasium, basketball court, tennis court, conference rooms, business center, swimming pool. Hotels exists and operate in different sizes and perform different function based on the cost. There are different categories of the hotels which includes the luxury hotels, lifestyle and boutique hotels, full-service hotels, select or focused service, limited and economy service, extended stay, destination and timeshare clubs, motels, microstay. While other types of hotels include the resort hotels, specialty hotels, capsule hotels, garden hotels (Mok, Sparks and Kadampully 2013).

Introduction to Oasis hotel and hotel business

The sudden rise in the personalized experience is a new key theme which is existing within the industry. Some of the recent hotels in the market are offering their guests with the experience that suits the individual tastes of the guests. This homely atmosphere can be provided to the through providing the food allergy information, bedding preferences and the optimum room temperature especially customized according to the wish of the guests. However, these kind of customization for the which is provided to each of the guests are based on the collection of data is possible through the sophisticated data analytics (Ihg.com 2018). The concept of home can be further elaborated through the induction of features that a person experiences or cherishes when he stays in his or her own home. there are other hotels that have all the lavish interiors and the exteriors, but they lack very feeling of home when a person stays for a week or two. The sense of the homeliness is reflected in the design of the room itself. When a person is staying in his or her own home, then that person will definitely use all the facilities that are made available for the purpose of daily sustainability, comfort and rest. It is obvious that, to attract guests to a hotel, this very homely atmosphere is needed that will provide all the basic amenities and the facilities. The promotion of the concept of home is based on the option of attracting and advertising on the homely atmosphere of the rooms of these hotels. Other than the tangibles, there are other intangible sources like the homely feeling, the togetherness with the other members staying in the same room and feeling the warmth and the connection (Home2suites3.hilton.com 2018). According to the Mallett (2004), the term home can be described as a repository of inter-related complex and at the same time even speaks about the relationships with the other people. These relationships focus on the things, spaces and places. Home is a dwelling place which takes into account the interaction between the people, things and places. Home can be fixed, or plural or singular and is associated with the feelings of security, relaxation, intimacy, ease and comfort. Home is also a place which facilitate analysis of practices and ideas about the sexuality, age, class, ethnicity, gender, kinship and intimacy.

Hotels can lure guests with their unusual amnesties. People feel stressed after long travel and hotels when provide home like environment, it is blessing in disguise. With the help of home concept, travelers can smell home in the hotels. For instance, Jo and Joe are known as open house. People can get together, dream, chat, cook, have fun, listen music through hotel’s iPod docking station and do anything that makes them happy. People are free to carry out their daily routine. It called as open house as one can create and recreate to make it comfortable.  Similarly, Accor hotels are more than a bar, hotel and hostel (Accorhotels.group 2018). Similarly, the JK place, Florence, Italy gives the homey feeling with the crisp linen, free minibars, room service menu with organic dishes. Guests can have gleaming chest nut table in the interior on which the buffet breakfast is served and large pillow piled couches in the ground floor (JK place 2018).

Different Types of Hotel Facilities and Services

Hyatt house have some signature services to demonstrate the homey culture. One of the main services that make one feel like home is having their own kitchen. Both Marriott’s and Hyatt’s extended stay, gives grocery shopping service. If a guest or traveler has exceptional list of favorite food items, then he or she may drop a list at grocery store and all the shopping would be stocked in kitchen like in home (Hyatt 2018). There are rooms perfectly set out for carrying daily work out sessions. Such facilities make one living in home, performing their daily activities at same time as they do their home. The inviting guestrooms of hotel INDIGO are designed with flexible work spaces, hand surface flooring and artworks. One gets the ambience of unique culture and feels the geography of the surrounding neighborhood (Ihg.com 2018).  The extraordinary feature of these popular hotels is food. One can have good eats anytime.  These hotels provide wide range of premium quality cocktails that are carefully crafted. Whenever hunger strikes one can have the shareable and meals.  Talking about Hyatt it provides food that can satisfy every kind of mood and palate. One can expect anything from grain bowls to quesadillas, street tacos to charcuterie boards. Just like in home one can enjoy the free breakfast or have well trained chef to round out the meal with favorite items (Kate 2018). Healthy food keeps people healthy and feels at home. Just like in home these hotels gives the flexibility to move the furniture in the rooms that suits personal taste of layout.

The common strategy used by these grand hotels is open door approach. This approach adds comfort, safety, convenience. These hotels have been successful in adopting the home like concept because they have customer’s experience at the top of the mind. The staffs are well trained to deliver hospitality that is the perfect blend of the tangible and intangible factors that satisfy the psychological and physiological comfort (Lashley and Morrison 2013). These accommodations provider develop creative connections by giving personalized service and intimate atmosphere.  The home concept helps the customers have lifelong memory of the grand hotels after the price has been forgotten. There are other accommodators who are trying out home swapping as the distinctive alternative for vacation, buy building on new technology and old virtues (Andriotis and Agiomirgianakis 2014).

According to McIntosh et al. (2011) these hotels are able to provide the homely environment by conducting key exercises. It includes use of data to identify the customer needs, understanding the need for different segments, and prioritizing and testing programs. They are thus able to develop distinctive and competitive customer experience in the hospitality industry. These hotels are well acquainted with the elements that can satisfy the customer’s expectations. They judge the customer’s needs, without asking for it. For, instance, if a family is staying at the hotel, the hotel must serve the children related facilities such as pram without being demanded for it. These grand hotels are good at measuring the customer mood and fulfil the quest to experience local authenticity.

For Oasis Hotels, a creative approach would be used to develop home like concept.

Hotel aspects	Strategies
Food	Classic cocktails with high quality ingredients, cover the liquors with house-made honey tarragon syrup, restaurant with food of all types of local dishes, breakfast will be served throughout the day, self cooking services
Service	Room service, currency exchange, valet parking, business centre, baby sitting, multilingual staff, sightseeing arrangements,  immediate access to health care facilities, regular dinner and dance breaks, work out stations,
Interior design, decor, Music lighting, Colour, Art, Furniture	Furniture will be mobile and easily adjustable, spacious rooms,  private rooms, share sleeping area, large kitchen, private garden for overnight guests, Personalized and accessible guest rooms, LED lightening system, sleep aids, use of aroma, TV and other audio visual equipments, walker and wheel chairs for physically disabled
Lobby	Lobby represent living  rooms, equipped with sofas,  club chairs, club stools, and movable poufs, different times of games such as billiard rooms, rooms can be converted to meeting rooms for business travellers, calming effect in lobby,
Rooms	Cool and caring rooms, designed with animations and colorful  themes, filled with light, intimate atmosphere with  smells of candles favorite to customers, flexibility for the customers to change the curtains and bed sheets of their favorite colors
Entertainment	Allow free WiFi in all the lobbies, music system, build the   hotel with premium quality audio system, play of music of all types old and latest, live music facilities,
Technology	Technology lounge, provide laptops to work on the communal tables  Music system to announce the car parking, banquette music system, restaurant music system, Receive input from the iPods or iPhones, digital musk files will be stored in the  n a USB memory,

• The rooms provided with the perfect plans for the stay of night or for a week. The bedroom is either single or double with all the other set of furniture like the table, chair. Customized spaces that stretch the throughout the room and includes the drawer spaces and the extra shelves. The human scale ergonomic chair, table with wheels. The suites are provided with the full sized sofa, nesting tables. The bed rooms must have the provision of TV with the Bluetooth capabilities mounted on the wall.
• The kitchens must include a full size energy efficient freezer and refrigerator, along with the dishwasher, sink, microwave. Plus, the kitchen must include toaster, microwave and the cookware (Ihg.com 2018).
• Along with the provision homely atmosphere, the hotels must also have the provision of bringing and keeping pets within the room.
• Building a homely environment within a hotel suite involves a rich taste of interior designing, that incorporates the usage of basic amenities that will bind with the taste and likeliness of the visiting guests. Starting from the mattress to the curtains, and bed sheets needs to facilitate and promote a feeling of homely environment. Thus, Oasis company must emphasize on the interior designing that will be neither very flashy nor too dull.
• The hotel rooms must also have the provision spin cycling, walking trail, saline swimming pool, free Wi-Fi, business center, outdoor lounge area, oasis.
• The bathrooms that will available for the guests, will include the provision of furnished toiletry and basins.
• People of different ethnicity, culture and race will visit and stay in Oasis hotel. Thus, a personalized and customized room service, that will match the tastes of the diversified guests. This will greatly help the Oasis hotel company to attract guests based on the hotels exhibiting the home concept (McIntosh et al. 2011).
• There should be adequate staffs in the hostels that will carry out all the basic functions of and the maintenance of the hotel rooms. Interior decoration also plays a major role in adding the aesthetics to the room. Thus, having interior decorators is a must for such hotels that want to promote the concept of home (Home2suites3.hilton.com 2018).

Conclusion

Thus, from the above discussion it can be concluded that, concept of home is pretty new to the market and it includes providing the necessary home like atmosphere and environment to the guests of the hotel. For the purpose of implementing the concept, a wide range of changes needs to be applied to the hotel to give it a more personalized and customized touch to the users of the service. The concept is gaining acclamation recently and is adopted by various industries like the Joe and Joe Accor, Hyatt house, Home2 Hilton, Hotel indigo IHG, Airbnb

References

Accorhotels.group 2018. Join Jo&Joe hotels through a management contract. [online] Accorhotels.group. Available at: https://www.accorhotels.group/en/hotel-development/brands/jo-and-joe [Accessed 31 Jan. 2018].

Andriotis, K. and Agiomirgianakis, G., 2014. Market escape through exchange: Home swap as a form of non-commercial hospitality. Current Issues in Tourism, 17(7), pp.576-591.

Buhalis, D. and Crotts, J., 2013. Global alliances in tourism and hospitality management. Routledge.

Home2suites3.hilton.com, 2018. Home2 Suites by Hilton | About Our Hip Extended Stay Hotels & Suites. [online] Home2suites3.hilton.com. Available at: https://home2suites3.hilton.com/en/about/index.html [Accessed 31 Jan. 2018].

Hyatt 2018. Extended Stay Hotel Locations | Hyatt House. [online] House.hyatt.com. Available at: https://house.hyatt.com/en/hyatthouse/locations.html [Accessed 31 Jan. 2018].

Ihg.com 2018. About Us | Hotel Indigo. [online] Ihg.com. Available at: https://www.ihg.com/hotelindigo/content/us/en/explore-hotels/our-story# [Accessed 31 Jan. 2018].

Ihg.com, 2018. About Us | Hotel Indigo. [online] Ihg.com. Available at: https://www.ihg.com/hotelindigo/content/us/en/explore-hotels/our-story# [Accessed 31 Jan. 2018].

JK place 2018. J.K.Place Firenze OFFICIAL SITE – Luxury Hotel Florence – Central Boutique Hotel Florence. [online] J.K. PLACE, FIRENZE | Hotel 5 stars Piazza Santa Maria Novella. Available at: https://www.jkplace.com/en/ [Accessed 31 Jan. 2018].

Kate, S. 2018. Welcome to HYATT house. [online] YouTube. Available at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6Xvf4D1WP2M [Accessed 31 Jan. 2018].

Lashley, C. and Morrison, A. eds., 2013. In search of hospitality. Routledge.

Mallett, S., 2004. Understanding home: a critical review of the literature. The sociological review, 52(1), pp.62-89.

McIntosh, A.J., Lynch, P. and Sweeney, M., 2011. “My Home Is My Castle” Defiance of the Commercial Homestay Host in Tourism. Journal of Travel Research, 50(5), pp.509-519.

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

Skandrani, H. and Kamoun, M., 2014. Hospitality meanings and consequences among hotels employees and guests. In Tourists’ Perceptions and Assessments (pp. 147-156). Emerald Group Publishing Limited.