Harbour View Hotel Human Capital Dilemma Case study

Assignment Task

Questions

• What systems should Brian implement to start changing the human resources practices in the Harbour View Hotel?
• What could Brian learn from Joe in terms of appreciating his internal customers and the human resources aspects of running a hotel?
• Explain how training and development programmes could assist the Harbour View Hotel with staff turnover and occupancy rates and suggest
• Suggest two (2) HR initiatives NOT mentioned before and fully explain their benefits in assisting with the overall performance of the two hotels.

Harbour View Hotel's Human Capital Dilemma

This is a case of two competing hotels, The Mount Hotel and Harbour View Hotel (both fictitious) that are both located in a medium-sized, tourism-based town in the Bay of Plenty. The hotels are both competing for the same set of guests, as well as the same set of potential employees. They are budget hotels, right next door to each other, with 60 guest rooms each and a view of the beach. The occupancy during peak season for the Mount Hotel is 98%, but during the winter months goes down to 65%. The Harbour View Hotel has peak season occupancy of 90% and off-peak occupancy of 50%.

Joe is the General Manager of The Mount Hotel and has been in his current position for 5 years. He has been with The Mount Hotel for a total of 10 years. He worked his way up at The Mount Hotel from front desk agent to front desk supervisor, and finally to Assistant General Manager before he became the General Manager. He does a good job of screening potential employees for his front desk area of the hotel because he realises the importance of that area of the hotel, especially in tourist areas. He also has incentives set up for excellent performance of the front desk agents and training and development programmes designed to give everyone information that will help them do their jobs better. There is a sense of teamwork at The Mount Hotel and that helps everyone want to do a good job. His guest satisfaction ratings for his hotel are overall excellent. On a rating scale of 1–10, his hotel averages a 9.

The average length of tenure of his employees is 4 years, and his current front desk supervisor was promoted from within, along with his Assistant General Manager. Because of the small size of the hotel, Joe is involved with all of the hiring decisions and helps to give training programmes himself, along with his leadership team. The employee turnover at the Mount Hotel is 25% overall and that is primarily when “casual” employees graduate high school or Polytechnic and leave the Mount Hotel for a career somewhere else.

Brian is the General Manager of the Harbour View Hotel and deals with a very different situation. Brian was brought in from another hotel in the same hotel group about 6 months ago. He was told by his boss that he needed to “fix” this hotel so that it would start having better customer satisfaction ratings and more return guests. Despite the fairly high occupancy noted during peak seasons, the off-peak season occupancy is only 50%. Also noted by his boss, the occupancy should be as good as the Mount Hotel. Brian has been with his hotel group now for 2 years and he came out of the accounting and finance department in his old hotel. He has a great understanding of the numbers in the accommodation industry but has not been involved with the human resource aspects of the job.

The annual turnover of hourly employees at Harbour View Hotel is 120% and that means that Brian is constantly running the hotel shorthanded and with new employees. The Harbour View Hotel has been doing the hiring through a human resource practitioner in the hotel who was put in the position because she really could not handle serving guests at the front desk very well. Mary was promoted to human resources a year ago after she had one too many altercations with the guests at the front desk. The owner of the hotel wanted to make sure that she would not make any of the other guests angry, so he promoted her to a human resources practitioner. Since that time, she has been busy trying to keep up with hiring and she has had no time for training employees. Because Mary is so busy, pay often goes into the employees’ bank account a day late, there are no policies written down for employees to use as a guide for performance, customers are mistreated by new and poorly trained employees, and the departments of the hotel do not communicate very effectively. Therefore, everyone blames everyone else when things go wrong.

The average length of tenure of the front desk agents at the Harbour View Hotel is 3 months and the customer satisfaction rating at the Harbour View is a 6 out of 10 possible rating. Most of the front desk agents that are hired come from other hotels in the area after they quit or are fired. Brian is not involved in the hiring for the hotel at all and does not get involved with training and development. He spends most of his days looking at the financial reports for the hotel and analysing average daily rates, occupancy rates, and comparing charts.

Brian and Joe attend the New Zealand Hotel Industry Conference in Auckland; coincidently they are both assigned to the same workshop and forge a good-humoured relationship. Brian knows that he has many problems to deal with and spends the evening sharing the issues of his hotel with Joe. Rather than come up with solutions Joe suggests that Brian spend a day at the Mount Hotel once back in the Bay of Plenty. Brian accepts the invitation with enthusiasm.

Once back at work, Brian goes to the Mount Hotel to observe things over there for a while. He sees a happy crew and talks to Joe about how he is making that happen. Joe is happy to help but wants Brian to go back and observe his employees first and come up with ways that he specifically can help guide Brian.

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