Ritz – Carlton

?The case â€Å"The Ritz- Carlton: Managing the Mystique† deals with the strategic marketing decision of how the hotel chain should continue its operations in order to satisfy its customers more. By overcoming the challenges of being one of the top ranking hotels in the world and hiring the right people to do so, the success of your marketing startegy would be inevitable. In this way Ritz- Carlton could potentially increase its sales and and expand in different countries.Therefore, this case will deal with possible solutions and ways of operating in order to create hotel uniqueness and gain a cometitive advantage compare to other five- stars hotels. Ranked as the best luxury hotel chain in America out of thousands others, for the past years it still provides the same exceptional standard of quality, comfort and fittings (Power, 2012). The essence of the Ritz Carlton experience lies in the quality of the service provided by the company which is also the intangible product the c ompany is selling.The manager makes sure that the service is tailored to the individual and is earnest and helpful. Every guest and employee is treated with respect and the general managers pay special attention to every visitor from the moment of airport picking until the moment the visitor leaves the hotel. An essential part of the service process is the guest recognition procedure, part of the service quality indicators (SQIs) which when implemented â€Å"creates a sticky relationship† between the guest and employee, in particular or the hotel, in general.The staff’s responsibility is to make each â€Å"guest feels well when they leave† and create an unforgettable, personalised experience which satisfies even the most discerning visitors. Moreover, the company also recognize the technology as a key to a high service level. It is something that the customer expects to receive when stays at a five- star hotel. In order for Ritz-Carlton to be a leader in what it is selling, the company has realized the need for continuous improvement of its core competences by placing total quality management (TQM) as a central point in their strategy implementation.It has to concentrate on hiring the right people who enjoy looking after other people, and provide a pleasant environment for them to work in. Moreover, the hotel-chain improves its weak areas based on the feedback it receives from evaluators when applying for awards. Moreover, the ability to satisfy all kind of customer’s claims makes them more loyal. In this situation, the Ritz- Carlton manages to fill the customer gap by providing the customer’s expectations, what he believes should receive, and at the same time his perceptions, what he gets in addition (Wilson, 2012).This rise some challenges for the hotel manager, such as the ability to close the other four gaps called provider gaps. The first one of which is to not knowing what customers expect, which applies the difference between the customers expectations and the company’s understanding of them. In order to overcome this challenge a more direct contact with the guests of the hotel is needed. In particular, establishing strong and long- term relationships with regular customers and satisfying their needs in every moment.To succeed in this, interviews and surveys could be conducted among the customers to establish their requirements and expectations. Afterwards, building a system with all of their responses would contribute to stay closer to them. Therefore, to conduct all the relevant information, the empowered and front line people play an important role. In the hospitality management, the communication between the manager and his employees plays and important role to avoid establishing a gap. As a second provider gap is considered not selecting the right service quality designs and standards.In order to deliver the highest quality service, the service design and the company’s performa nce standards should be developed in a way to reflect the customer expectations and perceptions. The new plan should be focused on customer driven design and together with it meeting the employees needs. The third gap is not delivering service designs and standards. As being developed in the second stage of the customer gap system, now the firm has to succeed in delivering the new way of serving its guests. The employees should be selected effectively to complete their obligations.They should have the right characteristics to complete the job. Conflicts on the workplace should be avoided as well as the inability of team work. Moreover, appropriate systems and facilities should be developed and provided, to follow if all the factors for achieving the high standard level of service are in place. The last but not the least provider gap is not matching performance to promises. The marketing advertisement plays an important role in this stage. By creating an advertisement with promotion of over- promising services, the customer expectations also increase and it is difficult to meet the standards you cannot provide.This interactive marketing strategy might be created together with external companies to communicate effectively with current and potential customers (Wilson, 2012). To create the same policy in every of the Ritz- Carlton hotels, the top manager has to follow the same policy and stick to the same standards in order to create a successful business chain. This will result in customer loyalty concerning every hotel location and will build a better reputation for the company. Therefore, to create a uniquness in its services, the famous luxury hotels are known as the ones who treats its guests as royalties (Michelli, 2008).This something is called â€Å"The Ritz-Carlton Mystique. † Being in any of the seventy worldwide locations gives you the opportunity to see the art of service. By creating a data with all the customers perceptions, Ritz- Carlton wins a high reputation among its competitors. However, in order to collect this data and proceed it in a right way, the company relies on its employees who are the one next to the people and contributing to their memorable experience. The reason for being one of the most successful chains is that Ritz- Carlton look for things that most companies ignore and then uses its findings in a unique way to attract more people.Another characteristic of the company’s policy is the meetings organized to share relevant information for providing better services, this has a positive impact on the whole organizational process as well as the team work within the employees. In the case example of the family in Bali, the impact it has on the work performance is really significant and the easiest way to reach all thousands of employees all around the world. It reinforce the actions in everyone and contributes to the service values.The high quality, standardised service could be considered as an impo rtant factor in the luxurious hotel business. It creates uniquenessness and something that makes people feel valued. That is also the reason why in establishing the company’s key success factors, Ritz- Carlton puts on first place the mystique followed by employee engagement, customer engagement, product service excellence, community involvement, and financial performance. The employeers are playing an important role of the Mystique strategy. The popular chain is really careful in selecting its staff and at the same time training them.Moreover, they expect from them a high engagement with their job because this would result in a lower management turnover, fewer safety incidents, and higher profitability and productivity (Gallup, 2007). As a customer- driven company, the hotel chain builds its success on factors such as service characteristics, where the business meets all customer needs and create a product and competitive advantage. Moreover, it focus on the strategy characte ristics, where the human resource management in the face of the employees take place in the operations.Process and marketplace characteristics are defined as marketing based to establish the best way of presenting the business potential (Wilson, 2012). Therefore, the best hotels in the world started launcing their loyal programmes in order to survive the downturn. Ritz- Carlton aim has always been to build a loyalty in its customers habits. The company is striving for broadening its customer base, increasing the cometitiveness of its service, motivate a profitable behaviour together with increasing its market share . The loyalty program is truly build on the customer feedback in demanding the world- class respect.It provides services from airline tickets to unique traveling experiences and adventures which no other luxury hotel chain would be able to provide. Moreover, the loyal programme is personal for each of Ritz’s clients. It is customised towards his prefernces and expe ctations for experencing a memorable holiday. This is another proof that the company is totally based on the idea of customer- driven policy. The Ritz- Carlton is succeeding in exceeding the guests expectations in every aspect. But the question is how exactly it reaches this success compared to other top brand hotels?It pays attention on its internal resources and by doing that is manages to build a good reputation among the customers and attract new ones. Moreover, by creating programs to train its employees and empower them with the mission to satisfy their guests, contribute to their job satisfaction and the recognition of feeling part of the organization. However, to be known from the people who are potential customers but are not part of the loyal programme, a special marketing communication channel should be created. Nowadays, the marketing communications have become really complex way of reaching customers.The term is part of the whole marketing strategy and could be defined as the promotion aspect of the â€Å"Marketing Mix†. Specifically it applies the practice of advertisement through mass- media, websites, cinemas and etc. Moreover, it is a really important aspect of how the branding image would be build in order to reach the right potential target group. At the moment, Ritz- Carlton is using different, unstandard approach to reach the attention of its future guests. It is going back to old style brochures sent by classic post. It is producing a high quality, perfectly designed cards, honourly signed by the CEO of the company.This is a good way to promote its unique service for luxury chains. However it should straighten its positions according to the services marketing triangle (Wilson, 2012). It applies the theory of the involvement of the employees, customers and the company for the creation of a successful marketing communication. By starting with the external marketing communication, including advertising, corporate websites, sales promo tion and public relations and continuing with interactive ones, for instance, personal selling, customer service interactions or in particular concentrating on the customers habits.In order to avoid miscommunication and successfully create a promotion channel, these two factors should be linked together. The way of doing this is by having a third sector, internal marketing, which assures that the communication line is accurate. The things that are mentioned in the company and explained to the employees should be matching with what are the customer demands. The whole combination is called the services marketing triangle (Wilson, 2012). In order to establish more effective way of promoting its unique services, Ritz- Carlton would meet some challenges in its strategy.Since the service is intangible it is more difficult to reach its consumers and convince them in the uniqueness of what is being offered. The company should assure that they make clear what is differating them from all the competitors and what is the advantage of purchasing their services. Therefore, they should be really accurate in the information which is provided in the promotion material, and assure they would provide the same thing they are claiming in their announcement. Ritz- carlton may use the approach of grabbing the first attention.It could create an advertisement which pop up online and a a link which is going to lead the user to further information. In this way, the company wins an advantage of providing knowledge to the people who are not aware of the luxury services. As a final challenge the marketing communication strategy should be coordinated with the operations of the company to achieve its optimal goal. Employees should be train in a way to meet the company’s requirements. The advantage that Ritz- carlton is providing to its employees is the opportunity of highly educated training program.The program called, The â€Å"Seven Day Countdown† is the training process con ducted by the hotel-chain to familiarize the newly recruited employees with the organizational system and it happens one month after they get hired. The first two days consist of â€Å"orienting employees to the Ritz–Carlton culture and values† as well as having the opportunity to learn more about your department, meet your colleagues and get to know them through various group exercises and activities. Additionally, the importance of self-teaching and guest satisfaction is highlighted and the Gold Standards of the company are presented.The next five days are devoted to the training and development of the specific skills required to perform the job in each division through trial runs or mocking activities which represent a realistic situation an employee might face. Even though this process defines what Ritz-Carlton believes in and has become an integer part of its strategy, Collin expressed his concern that these seven days are too short and suggested to be extended in order for the hotel to open at a higher occupancy rate and â€Å"to reach 80% occupancy in a shorter amount of time†.Four Seasons is a severe competition for Ritz-Carlton and the occupancy rate gap between the two rivals is getting smaller with every year. As is stated in the article even though the company is able to satisfy 92% of its customers, 8% are dissatisfied for certain reasons. Based on customer feedback, the hotel-chain can determine the reasons for this percentage and adjust accordingly. Since both parties’ decisions need to be taken into account I believe that McBride should add one more day to the standard seven day programme.This particular day which can take place before the trial and mocking days, should include a training of new employees on how to deal with people from different cultural backgrounds. This might as well have been one of the reasons why some people were dissatisfied – maybe a person from the stuff acted in a certain way without realizing that he/she offended a guest. Moreover, the employees hired for the job are also from different cultures and have different perceptions of dealing with a problem.These cultural differences could be presented in the form of case studies or group activities. Another thing which should be included in this extra day should be ethics and teaching future staff what is right and wrong as well as what is an acceptable and unacceptable behaviour. The financial implication for Ritz-Carlton of extending the training process would be an increase in the pre-opening budget in the corresponding section. This means more trainers will be required with relevant knowledge on the topics for that extra day or the participating ones will be paid extra.Moreover, by training its employees through its learning programme, Ritz- Carlton wins an advantage in developing new employees’ ideals. However, it causes some internal and external changes in the environment, due to the developing of new culture. The result, however is worth it as trained employees do not require so tight control from a managerial side as they would be aware what is expected from them. Moreover, as feeling part of the team they would optimise their performance and that would result in more benefits for the chain.They are trained in working efficently as well as effectively. The advantages that Ritz- carlton provides to its employees is the opportunity to grow and learn from the best. This contributes to their job performance and commitment. Moreover, this will result in a higher quality service and will create a competitive advantage for the company In conclusion, it could be derived that Ritz- Carlton has to meet some challenges in order to stay on the top of the luxurious hotel chain business. As with its high class service, it manages to satisfy even the most demanding customers.However, in order to keep its positions it has to straighten its marketing communication channels to reach more custom ers. The company could take an action of developing an online marketing campaign to inform about its locations and exclusive offers. It should keep its advantages of providing the Ritz- Carlton Mystique since it creates a uniqueness of being their customer. Moreover, focusing on promoting it as a competitive advantage will higher the company’s turnovers. Overall, the success of the Ritz- Carlton hotel chain will remain the same if it continues its development with the years.

Education for Rizal… Education for me… Essay

Every now and then my parents keep on telling me that my education should be in the number one slot in my list of priorities. They keep on telling me that I should put a great deal on finishing my studies. They say (like every parents say), it is the only thing they could leave to us when they pass away. So, without thinking about it thoroughly, this idea was instilled in my mind right away. But now that we were asked to write our idea about education and relate it with Rizals, this may serve as an opportunity for me to assess and reinforce this thought. As what the books say, the importance of education is quite clear. Education is the knowledge of putting one’s potentials to maximum use. One can safely say that a human being is not in the proper sense till he is educated. The training of a human mind is not complete without education. Education makes man a right thinker. It tells man how to think and how to make decision. Only through the attainment of education, man is enabled to receive information from the external world; to acquaint himself with past history and receive all necessary information regarding the present. Without education, man is as though in a closed room and with education he finds himself in a room with all its windows open towards outside world. The thought that education is indeed very critical for a nation to be at its best is not new to us. Right? Even our national hero has a say on this. In his works and writings, his educational philosophy is the most emphasized. Philosophy may be defined as the study and pursuit of facts which deal with the ultimate reality or causes of things as they affect life. Rizals concept of the importance of education is clearly enunciated in his work entitled Instruction wherein he sought improvements in the schools and in the methods of teaching. He maintained that the backwardness of his country during the Spanish era was not due to the Filipinos indifference, apathy or indolence as claimed by the rulers, but to the neglect of the Spanish authorities in the islands. For Rizal, the mission of education is to elevate the country to the highest seat of glory and to develop the peoples mentality. Since education is the foundation of society and a prerequisite for social progress, Rizal claimed that only through education could the country be saved from domination. Rizals philosophy of education, therefore, centers on the provision of proper motivation in order to strengthen the great social forces that make education a success, to create in the youth an innate desire to cultivate his intelligence and give him life eternal. Another thing, Rizal also sees education as the basis for his idea of an ideal Filipino. We can even observe in all his works and writings education plays a very important role. His characters are greatly shaped by education. For instance, in his Noli Me Tangere, the character of Crisostomo Ibarra, the elements of knowledge and education is clearly depicted. This is the reason why it is said that Ibarra is the character representation of Jose Rizal. He used education as a means towards attaining his aim of Philippine independence. Upon searching for our report in PI which is the Second Wave of Rizals Travels, I came across his letter to the women of Malolos. This letter is a way of extending his admiration to the said women. This also make my previous statements true, Rizal really puts much value on education. In this letter of his, Rizal pleads to the mothers for them to teach their children to love our mother nation and to fight for our liberty. Through this end also, our children will be able to acquire their worthy education. The thoughts of Rizal on education and how he used it as weapon for attaining Philippines independence made me realize its true meaning and importance. I remember, when I was still young, education for me is being able to go to school, nothing more. But it is a whole heap more. Education is a word with too many dimensions, too many to mention. Education plays an important role in the progress of an individuals mind and country. Ignorance and poverty are major speed-breakers in the swift developing country and can be overcome easily through education. You cant really call yourself educated if you can read and write or get flat 1s in every subject. A person who is educated has a certain atmosphere around him, of dignity and wisdom. If you are educated, you dont need to abide by the facts that the book recites, or follow Aristotles philosophy. Like Jose Rizal, an educated person builds on the facts the book says and has his own philosophy. If you are educated, you cant have a wrong philosophy. Education is everything. People are made aware of what is going on in the wide world and can understand these issues and take necessary measures. The quality of human resource of a nation is easily judged by the number of literate population living in it. This is to say that education is a must if a nation aspires to achieve growth and development and more importantly sustain it. This may well explain the fact that rich and developed nations of the world have very high literacy rate and productive human resource. In fact these nations have started imparting selective training and education programs so as to meet the new technical and business demands of the 21st century. The importance of education cannot be neglected by any nation. And in todays world, the role of education has become even more vital. It is an absolute necessity for economic and social development of any nation. Source:Life, Ideas, and Works or Rizal by Zalde.

Human Population Growth and the Environment Essay

Human Population Growth and the Environment - Essay Example of humans on earth, population increase has always been attributed to a number of factors namely: fertility, longevity infact mortality, animal domestication plus agriculture, industrial revolution, nutrition, and medicine. In the past, human population on the surface of the earth was scarce. According to Hunter (2000), the above factors contributed greatly to increase in population in the past 200 years. Human population was constantly kept small due to occurrence of diseases that were incurable, natural disasters that could not be avoided, high infant mortality rate, poor fertility rates, poor agricultural farming, poor nutrition, and poor knowledge in medicine. With human beings becoming more revolutionized and discovering tools which could help them in increasing their production, a lot of changes made in the field of agriculture contributed to increase in food production and hence longevity. Majority of groups whom were pastoralists on seeing the benefits of agriculture, settled in various placed, coupled with the technological know-how of the given art, specialization led to growing up of various fields which encouraged a given population to be concentrated in a town center in order to benefit fr om the given activity. Trade came hand in hand with agriculture and humans diversified in their search to get more stability in their lives. With stability, came the need to research on common problems that faced the given population and provide remedies. These are some of the things that led into research in technological and medical advancements that resulted in increased cure rate and less death rate in all ages. Around 200 years ago, with the coming of industrial revolution, human beings population started to grown as they discovered that the world offered more resources. Around that time, infant mortality had been reduced as research in medicine had been advanced. In addition, mortality in general reduced based on more diseases getting cured. As human

Relationship between mothers age , birth weight and gestation Essay

Relationship between mothers age , birth weight and gestation - Essay Example post natal weight loss.The mothers socio-economic status has been listed as a major factor underlying low birth weights though other factors have been documented. While there is a strong correlation between birth weight and gestation period, the birth weight and age correlation seem to be an interesting as we would like to know at which age are mothers more healthy at giving birth. Age and parity affects the weight of the fetus though there is low correlation between the mother’s age and weight of fetus (Jen, 1969 p.187). It has also been shown that the birth weight average for first born babies in very young couples is low (Mary and Perose n.d. p.150). It is known that the age of the mother will affect the conditions necessary for good fetal birth weights. Hypothesis; mothers age greater than 35 give low birth weight 50 sets of data containing age of mothers and the birth weight of their corresponding babies were systematically sampled from a sample of 1148 entries at the oxford street hospital. Samples were picked at intervals of 23 to constitute a representative sample. The samples were analyzed using Microsoft excel software. Table 1 is a representative sample of the data collected for the analysis. From figure 1 and figure 2 it can be observed that the sample is normal distribution and therefore statistical methods of analyzing the data can be applied. From the stem and leaf diagram we can tell that most mothers were in their 20’s whereas only two mothers were below 20years of age. From table 1 we can estimade that the mean, mode and median will likely fall within the 20’s age group. The mean birth weight was 3.46 Kg whereas the mean age for the mothers was 29.16 years. The median for the birth weights of the population was 3.42 Kg and the median age was 28 years. The most common birth weight was 3.32Kg and the common mother’s age 23 years. 25% of the birth weights were below 3.19, whereas half of the birth weights were below3.42 and 75% of the

Human Resources Project 1&2 Assignment Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1500 words

Human Resources Project 1 - Assignment Example This information can be used to understand the career opportunities in the company. A deeper analysis reveals that the HR policies are guided by the main HR policy statement of Nestec Ltd (2002). This is the Nestle Human Resources Policy, implemental to all subsidiaries of the company including those in USA. 2. The company is Nestle Waters North America, and its HR policies appear to be based on the Nestle Human Resources Policy document. I think some updating is needed for this set of HR policies. 3. In order to update the set of HR policies of Nestle Waters North America to optimize its North American operations flexibly with respect to the main policy framework of Nestec Ltd, it is mandatory to embark on a qualitative research followed by a number of activities for drafting and proposing some viable HR policy updates. The activities are described below: I. Interview of the current employees II. Interview of and discussion with the HR managers III. Analysis of current policies with regard to existing academic and business literature IV. Preparation and presentation of the new and/or updated policies in a proposal format V. Briefing the top HR managers 4. In this section, a proposal that describes the types of policies that are to be prepared and/or changed will be discussed. A close examination of Nestle Waters NA’s (2006) HR policies reveals that they are highly dependent on the HR policy manual of Nestec Ltd. First of all, one of the biggest drawbacks of these policies is that they put certain restrictions on the role of the HR managers. According to Nestec Ltd (2002, p. 4), â€Å"HR managers and their staff are there to provide professional support in handling people matters but should not substitute themselves to the responsible manager.† This sort of approach is rather traditionalistic. The second point is that Nestle Waters NA (2006) maintains strict control over its all hiring and training operations. However, relatively recent experience of certain companies shows that outsourcing the HR responsibilities can bring about more concentration on the vertical specialties of the company (Tornbohm and Da Rold 2005). So these two HR approaches need to be changed. A tentative timeline of the proposed HR policy updating and implementation task is provided in Table – 1. Table – 1 A Tentative Timeline of HR Policy Update and Implementation Program Task Time Task – 1: Interview of current employees (at least 20 to 30 employees randomly selected) 7 days Task – 2: Interview of and discussion with the company’s current HR managers. This will involve one to one interaction 7 days Task – 3: Existing policies are to be analyzed. This will involve correlating the existing practices with external case studies as available in different business journals, magazines, etc. 4 days Task – 4: Preparation and presentation of new policies (final draft) 3 days Task – 5: Briefing the HR mana gers before the plan is rolled out. 2 days Total time taken +2 reserve days to compensate loss of time (if any) in the course of the project Total 3 weeks and 4 days (approx) Project Part 2 Updating the existing HR policies First, HR managers must not be constrained in their HR specific roles only with such a strict regulatory approach. At the first place this makes the hierarchic system of the corporation too strong. The HR managers must be given some of the company’s specialties based training. For example, HR managers can be given some basic training on mineral water processing and manufacturing at

RELIGION IN PROMETHEUS Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 1000 words

RELIGION IN PROMETHEUS - Essay Example We are then prompted to ask, what is the connection between science and religion? The key to Prometheus is the spoiler alert. In its proposition, the engineers with their religion of self-sacrifice are said to have seeded life on earth and elsewhere. Inferring from the film, the crucifixion of Jesus about 2000 years ago is said to have prompted a civil war among the engineers. The theme of the war was founded on the meaning of the Cross Event as practised on earth. Ridley Scotts Prometheus has become the most debated film of the summer. It is beautiful and significant and presents human questions that appear the most primary of the time (Hey, 2008). However, whether the questions are asked well in the film and if the responses given out of that are satisfactory is debatable. One of the most controversial and intriguing thematic concern of the films is the involvement of an overt discussion of faith and science. The character of Dr Elizabeth is a scientist whose father was a missionary in the Catholic Church. The controversy arises in her character. The argument is pegged on the fact that she maintains her religious faith despite her argument for the evidence that an alien ancient species had used genetic engineering to create humanity in its image. Instead of questioning the concept of a supernatural creator, Elizabeth shifts her belief to the credence of an intergalactic God who made the creator species. The 1968 ‘Chariots of the Gods book by Erich Daniken promotes the pseudoscience ‘ancient astronaut theory (Juhant & ZÃŒÅ'alec, 2011). It is quite interesting to imagine how the scientific community would react to Scotts move to embrace this approach. However, it would be more interesting to contemplate the reaction of the religious communities to its plotline. The belief in an external force that plays a role in the creation of humanity could be a concept that has the potential for both anger and delight among the religious groups. It should be

Article review Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 250 words - 3

Article review - Essay Example Students with different forms of disabilities present similar characteristics on the factors explored. According to the findings of the article, children with special needs have lesser and poorer social relations as compared to those with no special needs. The option of regular education for students with special needs is in this case beneficial. In essence, these students can interrelate with those without special needs to enhance positive social interrelations. However, it does not automatically mean a fruitful social interaction, since it always depends on how naturally social a person is, and the way they settle into their class setting. The information from the article is applicable in a class setting. From the article, I learned that it is necessary to instruct students with special needs in an inclusive classroom and provide opportunities for social interactions. They should not be secluded and taught or treated differently. There are increased social opportunities for special needs students in an inclusive class setting, but there is always a need to understand the individual characteristics of each student so that negative outcomes from introverts, such as loneliness, do not