INTRODUCTION
High Valley hotel is the multinational business located at Snowdonia national park at Wales. The major type of customers of the hotel is couples and families. Furthermore, the interested group among these customers are hikers, climbers, ramblers and other sports enthusiasts. In order to meet the demand of two national Companies, this report will provide the approved plan for the expansion of the park. The report will also cover the other aspects of business in hospitality with reference to High valley hotel such as the way the quality is managed in the hotel, factors affecting revenue and profits of the operations, different methods utilized for fixing the price and responsibilities of a manager in the organization of various activities of a hotel.
TASK 1
AC1.1
Hospitality refers to serving of guest and visitors with the number of approaches and possesses a welcoming nature. Products in hotels can be food and beverages which are perishable. On the basis of different criteria the products of a hotel such as High Valley hospitality products are here given below:-
Perishable- Food and beverages are perishable products and are also not much durable.
Intangible and Tangible products- The quality of service of the hotel includes two aspects along with strength and weakness (Oskam and Boswijk, 2016). Tangible service includes exterior and interior design of the hotel, equipment of hotel and ambient condition of the hotel which is clearly visible to customers. Intangible service factors include responsiveness of customer, empathy, reliability, and assurance which are not visible.
Area of Services- Main services of a hotel includes food, beverages, dividing customers, conference hall and discussion in banquet system in order to assist customers in the arrangement of lunch, dinner and the big feast. The services also include air tickets, traveling facilities and also providing travel technology.
AC1.2
The business of a hotel does not have one demand all days within a week or all over year. There are several factors which vary the demand of the customer. The four influential factors are described as below: -
- Seasonality- The customers of High Valley hotel are more climber, hiker, and ramblers etc. (Zikmund, et. al., 2013). These customers prefer warmer season to come to enjoy holidays and thus demand increases in this season than other seasons.
- Time of Week- Many of customers of High Valley such as couple and families choose a weekend for traveling and thus these days in the week has high demand.
- Healthy living- Demand of customers also get affected when they are highly concern about the health and want to live a happy and healthy life which can provide them standard level sanitation.
- Economic factors- Any national or regional crisis also affects the economy and income of major customers and thus decreases the demand.
- Living and culture- Some customers do not get adjusted with different cultures and living and hence choose only the location for traveling which matches with their living and which ultimately affects the demand.
AC1.3
Different customers have different requirements and expectations and which differentiate the profile and expectation of customer which are here presented below:-
Hospitality business types- There are three types of hotel business such as food and beverage purposes, accommodation, travel, and tourism (Xu, 2010). Customers accommodate the hotel and come mainly to meet the purpose of accommodation in case of High valley hotel.
Consideration of pricing- Since families and couple are the major types of the customer of High valley hotel. These customers mainly focus on services rather on its cost and which ultimately lead to high price for services.
Experience of the meal- Meal standards is generally high for the customer. When there are different customers such as sportsman and its team then the menu of the meal is always high and not include heavy food.
Expectation requirements- Customers come with different expectations and demand. With this difference in demand, High valley hotel is successful in meeting their high demand.
Spending power- Some customer has a profile of traveling frequently in a month or three months and does not bother in spending too much and some customers prefer more saving even while traveling.
AC1.4
The number of services is provided in the hospitality business and at the different level of price which brings the average spending power of the customer. The average spending power of customer reveals the sum of expectation of customer including whims and impulse. Factors affecting average spending power of customer are here discussed below:-
Size of income- High-income level leads to up gradation in average spending power and vice versa.
Status- Customers who are royal will not be able to minimize the cost merely rather pay a high cost for better service which will affect the average spending power.
Social and cultural influence- Culture and society also influence the spending power of customer such as spending more on the festival (Shaw et. al., 2011).
Situation of the economy- With the lower condition of economy customer pay less and which decreases the average spending power of the customer.
AC2.1
The development of product can be followed with the following steps discussed below:-
Idea generation and screening- Idea can be generated after conducting proper market research. After generation, the product of High Valley can be tested with the existing new opportunities and threats. Screening of idea can be done by ensuring from the experts and guidance from senior level manager.
Business analysis- Proper analysis of business will be made considering the strength and weakness. The utilization of strength of High Valley will be ensuring for making the product successful and working on weakness to prevent any failure. The market will also be analyzed and matching with rival firms.
Test Marketing- New products will be tested as per customer preference and the market will be segmented (Lovelock and Patterson, 2015). For instance is the other hotels are price taking initiative or differentiating cost then High valley can attract more customers by reducing cost.
Commercialization and launch- After the development of the product, the product needs to be commercialized through the good platform such as social media in order to pursue customers for purchasing goods.
AC2.2
There are many factors which will contribute towards customer perception and these are here discussed below: -
- The strong brand image can draw positive perception of customers.
- Quality in food menu and utmost care is given to nutrition and taste in food and also dietary then it attracts the customer.
- Special facility and arrangement for persons who are disabled will enhance the positive perception of High Valley hotel.
- Proper availability of resources is a requirement for making the customer happy and must also be easily accessible.
- Style of services such as service for male and female differently will attract customer and holding them with good perception.
- Standardization in the food menu and accommodation is much desirable.
- Space utilization must be good and also enable the customer to use will lead to positive perception.
AC2.3
Opportunities for the hotel will be those which can boost up business and can increase the revenue and profits. Constraints restrict the business to grow and prosper and decrease the profits (Hassanien, et. al., 2010). For making the progress in the development of the product, there will be need of performing SWOT analysis for High Valley which is provided below: -
- Under new planning, High Valley can provide a similar and large type of facilities to compete better with its competitors.
- The hotel can also grasp a number of customers ranging from couple, single person, couple and sports person and lead to a better position in the market.
- Limited accommodation facilities in a hotel create a constraint as the hotel is not able to provide extra service which can further attract many customers and turns a difficulty to gain competitive advantage.
- Another constraint is less opportunity from local people and the small number of local opportunities for business around the business park.
AC2.4
Merchandising is a retail selling and visual displaying of the design of product, packaging, pricing and displaying to the consumer. In this era of globalization at a high level, people travel frequently from one nation to other for business and recreation purpose and affect the business of hospitality positively. The business of hospitality gets many different merchandise opportunities over other business. The aspects of merchandise for High Valley hotel are here discussed below: -
- Based on the purchasing power of customers, they prefer more or less quality of service and this is why the hotel will have the opportunity to create a more premium charge (P. Crick and Spencer, 2011).
- Good merchandise advantage also becomes possible with the good economic condition of both traveller and traveller’s country.
- The business also receives the benefits of foreign currency if the currency rates received by the Company from travellers are appreciating.
- High Valley has visual merchandising where it can see the customer outside and inside store and can include displays, signs, decorations and layout of space. This is helping Company in enhancing its sales.
TASK 2
AC3.1
Question 1
A. Hospitality business uses a different method of pricing such as cost-plus pricing, competition based pricing and market orientation pricing etc. High valley utilizes the two major pricing methods which are here discussed below: -
- Cost-oriented pricing- Price in this method is based on production cost. Here the percentage of profit is added to the cost for determination of selling price for the customer.
- Marketing oriented pricing- Under this method, proper research is done on market and price is fixed on the basis of the price of a competitor (Manhas and Tukamushaba, 2015). Thus the price includes the cost of production and high price then this if charge by rival firms.
B.
The above methods are applicable to the High Valley hotel and thus no need to specify any reason thereof.
AC3.2
Question 2
There are different types of revenue-generating factors such as customer turnover, average spending power, sales mix and turnover of the customer (Buhalis and Crotts, 2013). The profitability factors include shelf life, standardization, and the intensity of labor and elasticity of demand. Revenue of hospitality business is affected via many factors which are here discussed below:-
High Valley Hotel |
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Appraisal of revenue and profitability factors |
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Factors to be considered |
Observation |
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Amount of capital and labor used. |
The hospitality industry is more based on labor than capital. Capital is less utilized and labor is required every time. Hence the industry can be called labor intensive. |
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Value of brand name, satisfaction of the customer, number of customers, Level of initiative positively taken by the management of High Valley. |
The good and new product can enhance the sustainability of the firm in the market. The degree of satisfaction of customer will be increased with a better development plan (Chang, et. al., 2011). |
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The elasticity of demand of product will depend on the price and demand of the product. |
It is inelastic in the demand of products of High Valley. Hence the demand of customers gets less affected with the change in prices of products of High Valley. |
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Royal customers coming in the hotel, sanitary issue, and selection of the menu. |
The sanitary is highly managed in High valley hotel and also preferable highly by rich people. There is also a high level of standard in menu selection and another type of services. |
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Reasonable prices and as per the market level |
The prices of services and products of High Valley is also appropriate and is not leading to dissatisfaction to the customer. |
TASK 3
Appraising of performance is very significant for any firm to examine how the whole organization is working and further in the right direction or not (Oskam and Boswijk, 2016). It is measuring the performance of not only the organization but also of the employees. The operational manager of High Valley will consider the quality of products and cost of products as well as the time management of performance appraisal.
AC4.1
The pros and cons of the whole working of High Valley hotel will be measured by use of different techniques of performance appraisal which are as follows:-
- Quality management- The quality management technique is wonderful in not only measuring the performance but also in the evaluation of waste and reduction of the overall cost of business. The quality management process will include the four components namely quality assurance, planning, control, and improvement (Shaw, et. al., 2011). The quality management will also focus on the means to achieve quality. The customer satisfaction will be ensured as the process will create the method of statistical process control and work together for enhancing the process of providing services to customers, products, culture, and services of the Company itself.
- The speed of delivery- In serving the speed of delivery should be quick as the customers evaluate the services of any hotel on how fast the orders are delivered to them. The speed of delivery will also be measured for assessment of the performance of an overall organization.
- Development of qualitative and quantitative data- Overall performance of an organization can be measured with the development of qualitative data such as the satisfaction of customer, reliability, quality of service etc. Customer feedback will play a major role in discovering the desires and want of customers and in this way Company will also able to compare its own service with the expectation of the customer. Among all 360 degrees feedback is one of the effective ways of measurement of performance of customers. It enhances the communication with employees and customers and also reveals any misconduct and fraud happening in the organization. Feedback distributed to all staff and employees and then further evaluated and delivered to the staffs that have been claimed in the feedback. This way the person can hide its personality and open share his or her views towards its colleagues. Quantitative data will include customer per week, pricing of the product in relation to the customer, number of royal customers etc.
- Evaluation of data and analysis- After collection of different qualitative and quantitative data accumulated from the previous performance and the present performance of the hotel will be evaluated with the past performance (Zikmund, et. al., 2013). Quantitative data will be further measure with the use of graph, bar and pie chart.
- External comparison- Internal comparison of business can be made with the external comparisons. Under this, the peer hotel will be set as a benchmark for hotel and further pricing and service quality will be compared with the target business.
- Sales performance- Further the sales performance will also indicate the performance of the High Valley hotel. If there is an increase in gross profit, net profit and an overall increase in sales then it can be said that the Hotel is performing better.
AC4.2
Although, there is a number of appraisal techniques for measurement of performance the techniques also have limitations. For instance, the quality of labor, attitude of employees may not be measured by these techniques (Bernardin and Wiatrowski, 2013). These factors are measured with the use of qualitative appraisal methods. These factors can also be ascertained by use of questionnaire and interviews which can be applied to the wide population. The results from the qualitative approach cannot be applied considering the wider population.
360-degree feedback as discussed above is useful in understanding the employees and also their opinion towards various aspects. This feedback gives the opportunity to people to see others with their skills and styles and enhances the communication between the people. Cooperation with other staff of other department and further taking help from them towards customer and vendors will not be much rewarded then this type of appraisal. The process of feedback gives employees and other staff a chance to spoke for others or their colleagues which might be uncomfortable openly. The recipient of feedback understands the views of others towards them and has the opportunity to adjust the behavior accordingly and further enhance skills and learning to beat their expectations.
At the same time, 360 feedback processes may not always turn out to be a good idea due to the chances of having indifferences and conflicts between one employee with other employee or the whole staff. Performance reviews and measurement are sometimes unclear to the objective of the organization (Sudin, 2011). After the evaluation of the performance of employees the motivation and satisfaction level of employees may drop. It has been found that when employees are satisfied they do not bother in making some improvement in their current practices. This can decrease the morale of employees and will also make interpersonal relations. Development of objectives under quality measurement techniques can be time-consuming and can also lead to a downfall in the availability of opportunities.
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AC4.3
Business analysis is the practice which is followed in the organization for adapting to change. It is defining of needs and recommendation of the better solution with the aim of delivering better value to stakeholders.
Business evaluation is a valuation of the business in terms of economic, social and owner's interest in the business (Legrand, et. al., 2013). This helps to evaluate the value of the business in the market and earning per share.
Business planning is written document formally framed for the attainment of goals and objectives of the business. The document tells on how plans are going to be fulfilled with business strategy.
While applying different approaches to the business of hospitality, there will be a difficulty for considering the right approach for hospitality business and catering to all needs of customers (Shaw, et. al., 2011). There is a need to accommodate the market and also the demand of the generating source. A case in India of treating customers with only lodging facilities is a great example. Later, the facilities will enhance with more value added services such as Safari. This also indicates the concentration of the market on catering is equally important than any other services of a hotel. The major categories of hotel services which can generate profit for the hospitality industry are guests and non-residents and thus the Company needs to focus on these areas of services. Although there are different sources of generation of revenue such as recreational, institutional transit etc but the above discusses sources plays a major role in earning. These all sources have a good impression on the building of renowned image of business in the market and enhance the demand in the market. All these services can be proposed for further expansion of High Valley hotel.
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CONCLUSION
The hospitality industry is one of significant contribution to GDP and the whole economy which needs to prosper and enhanced with effective services. High Valley hotel is one of the great hotels in terms of providing services and keeping customers highly satisfied. The hospitality industry is also generating huge employment which is developing the economy of the world. High Valley hotel running a multinational hospitality business is presently focusing on developing new product and the report has provided with the planning of the business.