History of the hotel: The Plaza Hotel in New York is one of the renowned luxury hotels across America and in the whole world. It had started to serve its guests from 1907. They have usually received great reviews which show their world class hotel facilities and their expertise in hospitality. In 2007, The Plaza turned 100 years and it was greatly celebrated by the people off America as it is considered to be the oldest hotel in the history of New York. At the same time over the hundred years that it has served the people, it has faced several, problems and challenges which are mainly economic in nature or political (Naumik-Gladkaya & Devon, 2018).
The Status Of The Hotel In The Hotel Industry: The Plaza Hotel is seen to be an iconic and timeless hotel where the wealthiest families of the world hold events. Eminent personalities and guests tend to love their stay at the luxurious hotel. The restaurant and the ballrooms have arranged for different public events like fundraisers and balls, benefits, weddings and press events (Naumik-Gladkaya & Devon, 2018). The New York City Landmarks Preservation Commission had claimed the exterior portion of the hotel to be city landmarks.
Consumer Demand: The Plaza in New York is one of the most demanded hotels. It is often used as a set for the purpose of films due to its phenomenal structure and design of the building which was inspired by the aesthetic and artistic elements of French Renaissance (Hossain et al, 2021). It was designed by Henry Janeway Hardenbergh as he transformed it into a chateau styled building. As it had gone through several phases of renovation, it had successfully imbibed the recent elements of the contemporary world architecture and managed to modify it accordingly. (Naumik-Gladkaya & Devon, 2018).
Based on the reviews that have been gathered from Trip advisor, the key issues and challenges will be based on the majority of the problems that are faced by the guests and costumers.
Long Failure Resolution Times: The Plaza in New York is seen to be facing problems with managing the hotel. There have been several reviews where the guests have not been satisfied with the management and the functioning of the hotel (Bagnera et al, 2020). Due to this they have recommended choosing other luxurious hotels than The Plaza which is said to be clearly living off the name and reputation that it has created in the city of New York. The requirements of the customers are not being chronicled or resolved on an immediate basis (Ihsan & Alshibani, 2018).This kind of failure resolution is impacting the name and status of the hotel in the industry .The chances of failures will have to be reduced with the help of effective planning and the staff will have to be trained in order to resolve and reduce the time that is needed to fund the solution. The staff can be trained to fix the problems on time and satisfy the customers with minimal intervention of the manager (Hossain et al, 2021).
Administrative Work: The hotel administrators tend to contribute a lot to provide a great experience to the people. Their job includes greeting the guests and visitors, answering the questions and queries of guests, accepting reservations, helping the guests to checking and out along with recording that in the hotel computer system, processing the payments of the guests (Longart, 2020). There has been several cases faced by the people who visit The Plaza in New York involves the behaviors of the staff ho greet and welcome the guests. Some of them have been victims of the staff who keep asking for money in exchange for basic help or assistance which should be added in the price that was charged of one night. A lot of the customers have felt that they did not receive the service and treatment from the staff (Rahimi et al, 2017). They believed that the staff was aiming to get wealthy guests and celebrities so that they can get good amount of tip from them. The customers coming from different countries had compared the plaza with the luxury hotels of their own country and said that their consumer satisfaction rate was great. They know how to greet customers and have proper etiquettes to welcome guests who come from any background (Bagnera et al, 2020). They are also witnessed to serve them properly with adequate facilities. The guests had described the staff to be inattentive and irresponsible. Some of the guests had faced constant reminders to checking out a particular time. This made the staff look impatient and highly untrained. This is one of the operational challenges which is seen as the greatest obstacle as the overwhelming amount of paper work usually keeps accumulating. This results in the delay of carrying out other urgent tasks (Cingoski & Petrevska, 2018).
Calls and interruptions: The purpose of maintenance calls for the operation of hotels is seen to be extremely crucial. It checks general safety, cleanliness, saves a lot of time of the staff and makes sure that the guests and costumers are being provided with supreme quality service. However, such regular calls for maintenance can act as an interruption for the manager which can affect the overall function of the hotel (Hasanov, 2018). There have been several complaints regarding the performance and the function of the hotel under the manager. Especially during the festive season, the manager of The Plaza is not being able to cope with the pressure if hosting so many guests. Thus, an efficient managerial reformation will have to be established in order to make the hotel function smoothly with the help of maintenance calls (Manjunatha et al, 2018).
Communication between teams: One of the integral factors which can make the operations of the hotel go a lot smoother is proper and sufficient communication between housekeeping, maintenance, management and other teams. Thus can reduce the time of coming up with solutions to solve problems and crucial crisis (Kubickova & Smith, 2019). A smooth process of communication can lead to effective team work during the rush hours and the festive season to keep any kind of managerial chaos as bay .The hotel was seen to be nonchalant and causal about reviews and feedback from the customers. They were not willing to put in the effort to help the guests and provide them with the materials that are required. The staff was seen to be casually roaming around in the hotel property; there were complaints that they were seen to be irresponsible with their duty (Chatzimichael & Liasidou, 2019). The reviews have shown that the guests had to wait for hours to check in and the insufficient and lack of communication was clearly visible. The guests did not expect such service from a five star rated hotel where the staff is suppose to be highly trained. As the hotel is charging a great amount for a night, the guest automatically expect great service considering the reputation of the hotel. Thus, the feedback can help the hotel to improve its ways to serve the people and meet their expectation of service and delivery (Schuckert et al, 2019). Although it is viewed as a huge problem to overcome, several hotels find this aspect to be difficult. A great team with proper communication can speed up the process of reporting any failure of feedback. It becomes convenient to share and exchange messages and even solutions between managers, technician and receptionist (Hasanov, 2018).
High Cost of operations: There are a lot of factors which can lead to high cost of operations. Some of the known reasons include the inability to make use of the resources which are being provided. The Plaza with its current operations team is highly requisite of efficient planning to reduce the unnecessary high cost of (Kubickova & Smith, 2019). The Plaza is a renowned luxury hotel which needs to satisfy its guests and keep its legacy of providing royal treatment. Considering the complaints and the negative feedback of the costumers, the operations of the hotel can be reformed to increase consumer satisfaction along with a reduction in operational cost (Hameed et al, 2021). Labor cost and their training is seen to be a significant part of hotel operational cost so it should be used to its optimum usage instead of underutilizing it and dissatisfying the guest’s with their poor skills. the operational manager at the Plaza will have to think of effective ways of reducing energy consumption, conduct regular maintenance checkup, smoothening the on boarding process of employees, become technologically friendly to upgrade their system of hotel records and the last one of the important points, to regulate the kitchen and beverage section of the hotel to avoid the occurrence of waste by providing the guest with the utmost quality of food and beverages (Kuhn et al, 2018).
Based on the reviews that have been gathered from Trip advisor, the following recommendations will be provided.
The first issue or challenge which was addressed or faced by the guests was the time that was taken to resolve failures. The history of this hotel shows that the ownership has changed over time and this has considerably affected the quality of the service. It has distorted their objective and affected the overall operations of the hotel (Chatzimichael & Liasidou, 2019). Thus, they should be aware as The Plaza is a heritage hotel and its reputation should be protected. They can improve the management and operations in several efficient ways. The first method would be to invest in creating efficient and responsible teams and understanding their ability or strengths .In this way the work can be divided among different departments and teams which are specialized in their own field. By dividing tasks the service failure can be recovered easily (Ihsan & Alshibani, 2018). The staff should be able to analyze the situation and come up with a quick solution. The solution should be offered considering the wellbeing of the guests. The staff will have to follow up to check the impact of the solution and ask if the guests are facing any other kind of problem. This entire process will have to be carefully documented so that it is not repeated late in the future (Rahimi et al, 2017).
The second operational challenge which was observed in the Plaza was the Administration work which did not allow any manager to be available. The guests have complained that the staff was seen engaged in their circles and did not pay attention to the requirements of the guests (Rutherford, 2021).There was also no staff available to help the guests carry their luggage up to their rooms. Such services and responses cannot be expected from a luxurious hotel thus the management will have to implement ways to ensure quality customer service. It is the responsibility of the hotel administrator who should be able to take care of the guests (Rahimi et al, 2017). The authorities will have to invest in ways to educate the staff on good customer services and teach them effective ways to solve problems. The management will have to enable staff training and put them in scenarios so that their skills and techniques of dealing with problems are assessed. Apart from that for checking the impact of the training, supervisors will have to evaluate customer service on a regular basis to make sure that the customers are receiving appropriate facilities and immediate assistance when required (Chang et al, 2020).
The third issue was based on the chaotic situations which are formed during the rush seasons. The guests have noticed the mismanagement which occurs due to the unplanned steps. These are taken during rush seasons like holidays and festivals (Barnes, 2018). Crowded lobbies, unprofessional behavior and the rushed treatment that is provided to the guests should be managed by properly planning and arranging required equipments for the rush season. The management will have to study the environment and take the feedbacks seriously in order to implement the necessary steps during the rush season. They will have to consider using frequent maintenance which will check the hotel and ease its process of operation (Manjunatha et al, 2018). The rush season is seen to be a time when a lot of tourists tend to visit and book hotel rooms. This is when the hotel and tourism industry is seen to be at its prime because they have to attend a lot of people at the same time, serve them and take good care as well (Chang et al, 2020). It can become extremely challenging at times as hotels and tourist agencies to deal with a lot of aspects of the business all at once It does get very difficult to multitask during such times thus hotels have studied the usual patterns during the peak seasons along with their historical record (Longart, 2020). In this way they can identify methods and techniques which can be used to avoid any sign of mismanagement (Rutherford, 2021). The Plaza should take the responsibility to reflect upon their performance as a luxurious hotel and find their area which needs to be improved.
Several guests have mentioned that they had chosen to stay at The Plaza as they were sure of their quality service and outstanding performance in the hospitality sector. However, as they did not meet their expectation, the negative reviews had in a way affected their name in the business of hotel industry (Barnes, 2018). The most important factor to ensure great customer service is constantly communicating with the team members of the hotel. Most of the guests had issues with this as the staffs were not indulged in knowing about their experience. This can be done by systematically building teams according to their skills and allowing the staff to perform to host the guests. Any kind of feedback is extremely crucial in the service industry as that will assist the hotel to understand their strengths and weakness (Schuckert et al, 2019). A recommendation which was mentioned by one of the guests stated that the hotel should have a different department which should be set up to communicate with the guests and show interest so that they can take positive and effective feedback. The staff will have to be encouraged and empowered to help them understand the value of this heritage hotel (Kuhn et al, 2018).
The recommendations for reducing high operational cost and providing the customers with adequate and supreme quality service include making sufficient use of the labor. This requires careful balancing and a creative mind to find the option of cutting down cost while having a productive and skillful set of employee (Manjunatha et al, 2018). To run the hotel smoothly they will have to fid ways to reduce the consumption of electricity which will help them to be sustainable and also reduce the cost of operations. The maintenance will have to be checked to stay away from extra unnecessary expenditure along with that the constant up gradation with the latest technology is required to improve their skills (Schuckert et al, 2019). Lastly, they have to plan out strategies to improve the food services which are one of the essential portions of running a hotel. The waiter and kitchen staff will have to be cautious to interrogate the preferences of the guest and provide them with the dishes made with the best quality of ingredients making sure that they do not adversely affect the health of the guest. Considering the mismanagement which was identified at The Plaza, there has to be appropriate communication between the waiter and the chefs in the kitchen so that the dishes are prepared properly (Hameed et al, 2021). This puts the hotel in the negative light as they are not being able to meet their expectation or live up to the image that they have created for the last 111 years. (Rathore, 2017).
References
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Cingoski, V., & Petrevska, B. (2018). Making hotels more energy efficient: the managerial perception. Economic research-Ekonomska istraživanja, 31(1), 87-101.
Chang, V., Liu, L., Xu, Q., Li, T., & Hsu, C. H. (2020). An improved model for sentiment analysis on luxury hotel review. Expert Systems, e12580.
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