The Portman Hotel Company: Case Analysis

The Portman Hotel Company: Case analysis

Introduction

John C. Portman's, Jr. Architecture and developer: a world famous designer of luxury hotels, first creation was Portman Hotel Company and was also managed by him. The hotel was relatively small with 348 rooms and 21 floors in San Francisco as a niche in luxury hotel market. It was influenced by the Asian philosophy of services with the Asian standard of hospitality maintained. From its inception the objective of the hotel was to be a company providing high quality at affordable rates, and to do this against strong competition. The motto was not to only provide service to the guest but also a great experience.

With these objectives they implemented a 5 star system which comprised of 15 groups with 5 personal valets each.1 team was assigned each floor to look upon with guaranteed hours of works per week. Personal valets were involved from receiving the customer to their departure. They were assigned the task of serving the customer at their personal level.

Problem

The main problem was the dilemma of Patrick Mene on the final decision to be taken for 5 star systems. With increasing occupancy and thus to manage service with hiring at much faster rate than ever before what should be direction for the future.

The other issues in the organization were as below:

1) High employee's turnover with the implementation of 5 star systems.

2) Difficulty faced by PVs to manage their work which included from cleaning the rooms to serving the customer at personal level. Pvs were dissatisfied with the job content assigned.

3) Frequent tension and conflict among the different group for worker due to lack of synchronization and coordination which led to poor services to the occupant.

4) Assigning floater caused the lost of team loyalty, and they were considered to be careless and not up to date with day to day information which was causing wasted time and lowered responsiveness to the guest.

5) The lack of discipline and supervision. Unlike other organizations where employees were given thirty days to prove them and fire them, in Portman there was constant trial to improve individual performance within the organizations.

6) Demotivated Floaters and slouches were prevalent and this was leading the dissatisfactions among the PVs and supervisors as good people were made to work comparatively extra than the required.

External analysis:

1) High labor cost in U.S compared to Asian market. There were cultural differences also between U.S and Asian regions which made it difficult to follow Asian standard of services.

2) American traveler's lack of understanding about the Personal valets which was the reason for lower tips and dissatisfaction among PVs as well as the customers.

3) Portman competed with San Francisco finest luxury hotels like the mandarian and Nikko. The rates of Portman were slightly higher than these two. Where In general all the hotels offered similar features to the guests so the difference in service was the major concern to achieve.

4) With 5 star system the job was described broadly and that made it difficult for employees to have multiple unions reducing the conflict between higher authorities and labors.

5) Pvs were given extra advantages compared to maids in other hotels like less numbers of room allocated, liberal reimbursement for outside courses, access to an excellent cafeteria, party's luncheon and other rewards and recognitions.

6) Seasonality and trends in occupancy of the rooms were major concern to hold same larger employee base during low time as high time.

Internal analysis:

1) There was no deep hierarchy