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Introduction - Operational Challenges and Customer Experience in the UK Hospitality Industry: A Case Study of The Lowry Hotel
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In any sort of industry, the functional or operational problems ate those kinds of issues which come when a company is not able to manage its work in addition to face tremendous loss. Thus, it is clear from this that one of the main notions behind conducting this study is to highlight the operational issues faced by the hotel industry in UK. In order to go deep into the study a 5-start hotel has been selected namely the Lowry Hotel which is located in Manchester. The Lowry Hotel is an associated hotel of "The Leading Hotels of the World” The Lowry Hotel is possessed by The Rocco Collections. The hotel was established in the year 2001 and is managed by the Westmont Hospitality Group (Poulston, 2008). The study will provide focus on the operational issues faced by this hotel and, also based on that to get better the operational issues few suggestions will also be provided.
Operational challenges in the hospitality industry
The ongoing epidemic situation has created a lot of tough issues within the hospitality sector. Because of the pandemic, the hotel and tourism industry are confronting a severe transformation. Due to the lockdown in different counties across the world, the hotel and tourism sector is confronting a massive drip in bookings. In addition to this keeping in mind the COVID-19 Situation a lot of operational issues the hotel and tourism industry is facing a will have to face this year which are described below.
Figure 1:Operational challenges in the hospitality industry
Source: Created
- The first operational challenge which the hotel and tourism facing is reclaiming the customer confidence. Due to this COVID-19 tourist are going to these high-class hotels and, they are avoiding roaming and vacationing. As a result, they are losing the customer base due to which they are facing huge loss and, also almost every department operation has also becoming stagnant.
- Creative advancement in the technology is also becoming one of the major operational challenge for the hotel and tourism industry. At the point when new innovations are introduced in the lodging as a result it lessens the occasions of contacting with individuals. For this, speculations are needed in addition to these numerous inns are confronting difficulties in organizing money.
- Fund administration is again one of the major operational challenges which the hospitality industry in UK is facing these days. Till the year 2019 the hotel fund executives might depend on the chronological facts while creating the price related settlements. However, due to unforeseen situation for pandemic the chronological facts are not helping so much. Nations for assessing request follow different countries or states that are certain periods of periods or work week forward in the COVID-19 bend. In addition to this the workface has also became limited as a result managing the funds is a big operational issue(Kritika,Akanksha , 2020).
- Proper flow of interaction within the team is also a noticeable operational issue which the entire hotel industry face in UK. Communication within the team happens when the team manager is not efficient in managing the employees properly. In addition to this when diverse cultures of people work together that time also communication issues arises in the hotel for which the customer have to suffer ultimately.
- Last but not the least identifying the appropriate staff is also another major operational challenges for the hospitality sector. In order to work under hospitality sector a worker must possess the quality of handling tremendous pressure and also listening to client arguments. But sadly, very less employee are like this who is capable of handling immense pressure and due to which hospitality sector lacks in this segment of operation badly(Jones, 2009).
Operational challenges in the Lowry Hotel
Though Lowry Hotel is one of famous and most expensive 5-star hotel in Manchester still due to pandemic and also different other internal issues the hotel is facing some of the noticeable operational issues. Though the hotel used to face a lot of issues in their operation still out of the many issues mostly common 5 issues they are till date facing in its operations. Those common five operational issues are described in detail below.
Figure 2: Operational challenges in the Lowry Hotel
Source: Gazprom Marketing
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Administering the costs |
Evaluating the work |
Listening to the criticism |
Reacting to the competition |
Standards and accordance |
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The first operational issue that Lowry Hotel is related to administering the expenses. |
For big hotels like Lowry, it is exceedingly difficult to evaluate the work of the employees in a proper manner. |
In the cutting-edge industry world, the Lowry hotels picture and goodwill might be with an ease be influenced by negative audits on the web. |
Reacting to the competitors and the competition from them is also one serious operational issues which the Lowry Hotel is facing currently. |
Guideline and consistence can be a significant issue if not managed appropriately. As business sectors and innovations develop, they carry with them another arrangement of rules and guidelines. |
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It has been identified in the Lowry Hotel that Exorbitant expenses might be especially harming in the event that they aren't overseen in a convenient style, as a result there exist a genuinely huge issue for independent ventures to fight with |
In case of Lowry hotel, it has been seen that because of the ingoing pandemic the workforce has become half and proper work is also not going on the hotel. |
Similarly, clients expect brisk, powerful client assistance. It is dependent upon organizations to tune in to the input they get, so they can set themselves in a place to convey acceptable support of their main viewers. |
Firstly, due to pandemic half of the business has been stopped and the small hotels in this situation has taken over the UK market due to which bog hotels like Lowry are not able to find solution to react to those competitors. |
Sadly, organizations like Lowry hotels are frequently ignorant of, or don't comprehend, what's being requested from them. Now, fines and punishments become an integral factor, and something that could without much of a stretch have been settled turns into an issue. |
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This operational issue is mainly identified in the segment of calculation of the payments, office gears as well as falling apart lease. |
This is the reason where the managers are facing to properly monitor the work because now, they are also responsible for working the work of two person at a single time (Nain, 2018). |
As the staff are less these days due to which the client service department is also facing huge difficulty that, and the hotel is facing huge criticism. It has been also noticed that There's been a grievance concerning the ease of use of the Lowry hotels site, which has created a drip in the rush hour gridlock and business it has gotten currently (zhao, 2009). |
This is because small hotels are also giving more or less same services with half of the price due to which they are taking most of the bookings. |
And due to COVID-19 the UK government has introduced a lot of new rules and compliances which are very suddenly difficult to apply and manage by big brand name like Lowry Hotels (Jones P. , 2009). |
Customer experience in the Lowry Hotel
In any sort of business client experience can be defined as the item of creating a communication among the company and a client over the course of their association. In addition to this client or customer experience is also defined as the client's holistic notion of their understanding with the industry or with the trademark. Customer experience is the outcome of each communication a client has with the industry from traversing the online site to communicate to the client amenity as well as getting the item and amenities they take from them.
Figure 3: Customer Experience
Source: Google
It can be identified from the above given diagram that customer experience can be grouped under three heads starting from excellent, average to poor. Based on the service offered by the companies' clients give their revies based on which their experience is identified.
Customer experience in the Lowry Hotel is considered to be their utmost priority. Though the hotel is known for its superior class of services and providing the best experience to its customers still they always work on to create modification to hold the best position in the industry. With the ongoing pandemic situation, from the UK government all the hospitality industry in August 2020 got a nod to reopen their business again (Konar, 2018). Keeping in mind the month Lowry Hotel reopened their nosiness from 1st of August and became ready to greet their clients with additionally developed protection aspects throughout the entire hotel. In order to provide the best client experience in prior to restarting, the Lowry hotel has gone through a full sanitization of the hotel comprises the entrance hall, restaurant, drinking areas, salon, all the rooms as well as the crossways too (MCR,I Love , 2020).
Figure 4: Sanitized Lobby Area
Source: Internet
In addition to this, the management of the Lowry Hotel has also recruited a new room-auditor who will be responsible to chased very stringent checklist to facilitate the hotel's fresh bookings as well as examine the room standards is followed in addition to this that all the rooms are perfect, protective and clean when the guest will arrive. In order to provide the best customer experience, the hotel is also following the norms of social distancing with the guest touch point decreased wherever it is possible (Konar, 2018). With an intention to decrease the touch point of the guest Lowry Hotel has introduced different digitalised system through which no person will come in direct contact of each other. Just the customers `from the alike reservation will be permitted in the lift that too only one point of time. In addition to this the lift will be called as well as administered by the front desk department only. To lessen further contact and likely lines at gathering, visitors will have the option to get entry in the hotel by means of their cell phone with the Lowry application and utilize their telephone as a key for entering the rooms (Khan, 2015).
Figure 5: Sanitized Front Desk
Source: Internet
The lodging has likewise refreshed its adaptable booking measure so clients would now be able to drop their appointments for nothing out of pocket until 1pm the preceding coming date. The morning food will be served individually instead of smorgasbord style. Notwithstanding a profound clean preceding resuming utilizing a sanitization fog splash, all arrangements will follow a 20-minute hole so treatment rooms and hardware might be profoundly cleaned between utilization (MCR,I Love , 2020).
Plan to overcome the operational challenges
It has already been identified in the report what sort of operational challenges the Lowry Hotel is facing these days. For every problem there is solution in every industry in the same manner there are solutions to the challenges which has been identified above. In order to deal with the operational issues, it is important to create a proper plan to overcome those challenges. The plan for the Lowry Hotel is framed below.
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Administering the costs |
Evaluating the work |
Listening to the criticism |
Reacting to the competition |
Standards and accordance |
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What to do In order to deal with the problem of administering cost it will be important for the finance management to create new sheets and also making the entire process digitalised. |
What to do Evaluation of work need more concentration and, also need more than two teams who will be responsible for handling those team and their work on a daily basis. |
What to do In order to overcome this problem, the employees as well as the whole management need to work over those feedback to get better the service of the hotel. |
What to do To overcome the problem of reacting to the competition the Lowry Hotel's management need to make the operation system more flexible so as to compete with the other small hotels who are giving the same services in much lower prices in this pandemic situation. |
What to do This segment is one such segment which no industry can't ignore because its fully created by the government. As a result, the Lowry Hotel require to mould themselves in such a manner so that they can easily implement those regulations and compliance in their working system. |
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What to avoid The most important thing in this case is to avoid using the historical based data along with that avoid using manual entry of data. |
What to avoid Need to avoid providing pressure on one individual person because in those case it is become impossible to evaluate employees work on a regular basis. |
What to avoid In this case they need to avoid the negativities so as to work on positive things. |
What to avoid The most important thing which needed to be avoid dealing with the problem is taking the negative comment as an experience to learn more. |
What to avoid For this segment nothing much can't be avoided because in order to run the industry they are bound to follow the regulations and compliances of the UK government. |
Conclusion and Recommendation
So, it can be concluded from the above done study that if any kind of operational issues stays in the company in return they have to huge problem. In case of Lowry Hotel, it has been identified that they are facing operational issues in five main segments due to which they are losing their clients and also facing huge competition from the other small hotels. Based on the study it has also been identified that due to the pandemic situation not only the Lowry Hotel, but the entire hotel and tourism industry is facing issues. Below given are some of the important recommendation in order to deal with the problem:
- It will be important for the company t seek the expenditures as well as look what might cut from those expenditures. Any service which s additional that might be removed from the service list so as to cut the expenditure.
- Need to create a arrangement of performance parameter which will represent and will also tell in what manner the different department are working.
- Need to create a data base management system which will record the feedback of the employees and based on that they will work upon it.
- Properly following the rivals move will help in gaining an idea about in which part they are lacking.
- Need to comprehend the complicated norms which might be a bit problematic but in the long run it will help in go with the rules.
References
Jones, P. (2009). Operational issues and trends in the hospitality industry. International Journal of Hospitality Management.
Jones, P. (2009). Operational issues and trends in thehospitality industry. University of Surrey.
Khan, I. (2015). Customer Service Experience in Hotel Operations: An Empirical Analysis. XVIII Annual International Conference of the Society of Operations Management (SOM-14) , 266 – 274 .
Konar, R. (2018). Empowerment in Hospitality Service Leadership: A Moderated Mediation Approach. Taylor's University.
Kritika,Akanksha . (2020, Jue 8). Challenges in the Hospitality Industry in the year 2020. Retrieved from qloapps.com: https://qloapps.com/challenges-in-the-hospitality-industry-in-the-year-2020/
MCR,I Love . (2020, March 30). The Lowry Hotel is reopening with new safety measures in place. Retrieved from ilovemanchester.com: https://ilovemanchester.com/the-lowry-hotel-reopening-august
Nain, A. (2018). A Study on Major Challenges Faced by Hotel Industry Globally. Amity University.
Poulston, J. ( 2008). Hospitality workplace problems and poor training: A close relationship. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 20(4), 412-427.
zhao, W. J. (2009). Issues, Challenges, and Trends, that Facing Hospitality Industry. Management Science and Engineering ISSN 1913-0341 Vol.3 No.4.
