The Portman Hotel Company - Evaluation Essay

Introduction

The Portman Hotel is a five-star brand new company that imports the Asian service style to America. The company adopts the Personal Valets system (PVs) to improve customer satisfaction and service quality. To improve the performance of a business and attract and improve customer loyalty customer satisfaction plays a major role because if a customer is satisfied, chances are that he would come back. The company also aims at minimizing completion since there was no other hotel operating under the new Asian style during the 1980's when overseas tourism began to develop (Jeong, 2018). The Portman Hotel was seeking to eliminate competition through service innovation.

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How Original Design of the PV System Was Supposed to Work

The PV system was designed to provide open services to the customers whenever they need it as long as they were legal and of good moral. The personal valet's work was not specialized, and therefore they would perform different tasks such as welcome the guest at registration, direct them to their rooms, and elaborate how they shall provide services to the visitors (Jeong, 2018)).

They also offered personal services to the customers such as buying a book, buy theatre tickets, finding a jogging route, draw a bath or make them drinks in their rooms. The Personal valets were trained in a way that they could anticipate a customer's personality and needs. They could also judge the kind of relationship the client wants. Apart from these butler-like duties, the personal valets perform other tasks like room cleaning rooms, doing minor maintenance, paint, clean highways, and restock minibars.

What Were the Problems With the System? Were the Problems of Implementation or Design?

When the PV system was implemented, the employees were initially excited but their morale and quality of work begun to diminish afterward. There were several problems that caused the system to fail during implementation despite the fact that it was properly designed by the management. These problems include disharmony among the employees, low employee efforts, and morale, lack of a disciplined system by the management to deal with this drawbacks. Employees are disorganized and they do not know who to report their problems. The other employees regard the PVs as maids, and therefore they are not willing to work together for a common goal. The PVs expected to make $200 per week but instead, they only made $40 making them lose morale to work.

To deal with the problems, the 5-star system opted to fire the PVs because they caused the 16% turnover during the first month. The number of PVs was reduced from 85 to 50, and they were organized into groups of five which would work on the same floor (Jeong, 2018)). The management that is, Patrick Mene and Spencer Scott became more involved in assigning and supervising duties than before. Working hours were assured on the basis of seniority. PVs built more relationship with customers working on the same floor, and it earned them best tips.

I would propose a team captain program to be implemented in the five groups of PVs who would report and delegate duties to the PVs. The director of rooms, Scott should be stick and avail himself every day to supervise the PVs. Newly recruited PVs should be intensively trained in small groups and they should also undergo an internship to determine how skilled they are in the field. To motivate the workers a 'team of the month' award should be given to the best team. The consequences would be high returns as a result of increased employees' performance.

My plan is feasible with the budget constraint since it only involves a job restructuring. The estimated cost will be $500 and the company is able to cover this cost.

When implementing my proposals I would take the following steps. First, ensure that I involve the workers in nominating their team captain who they feel would lead them well. Second, ensure that the management is actively involved in the implementation and are available whenever needed. There are no winners and losers in my proposals since all the workers retain their jobs.

Reference

Jeong, s. (2018): The Portman Hotel Company. Harvard