New Delhi, June 23, 2016:
Issues:
- Operating Issues: Labor shortages, cost containment, increased competition.
- Marketing Issues: Market segmentation and overlapping brands, increased guest sophistication.
- Technological Issues: Interactive reservation systems, guest-room innovations, data mining, yield management.
- Economic Issues: Dependence upon the nation’s economy, globalization.
Trends:
- Rapid growth of vacation ownership.
- Integration and globalization.
- New management.
The most challenge for the hotel is operating issues pertaining human resource management which is to retain qualified hotel employees thus lower down the turnover in the hotel. Issues regarding employees include low motivation causing low quality service delivered to the customers.
I suggest that giving more empowerment to the employees helps to increase motivation, productivity and burnout. Improvement on working environment is being suggested to give satisfactory organizational environment to the employees.
In terms of challenges in marketing, the changing customer preferences and demand put a test on the hotel to deliver high quality service in satisfying them. Regular audits can identify errors and prevent mistakes or low quality services. The other key point here is increasing usage of market segmentation by not only hotels but F&B restaurants which target on niche travelers for example F&B restaurants diversify menus based on region where they operated.
Next, it is undeniable that technological innovations improve customer service level and hotel operations in many ways. Among the challenges of keeping up with fast changing technology includes the usage of interactive reservation system which enables reservation through internet and so far approximately 30% of the reservations made through internet. Other innovations include guest-room innovation. Despite the high costs involve in installing the technology, computerized yield management help to maximize hotel’s profitability and database systems can be used for effective planning.
Then, many researchers emphasized that current practice of training and education does not meet the needs of hospitality industry in terms of providing high quality candidates. The educator has to give realistic pictures on how the working environment would be in hospitality industry. Frequently, the student’s perception is unrealistic when they want to secure the corporate-level position after graduation, whilst in reality an executive at a hotel starts his/her career at the operations level. The gap between what is expect and reality, always bring the motivation down for new employee which lead to low quality service and high turnover.
One of the reasons is the low numbers and poor transfer rate of graduates into the industry. This is perhaps due to the perception of new hospitality students who have an unrealistic image of working life in the industry and expect a different working environment from what the hotel can offer. Thus the industry and government have to educate the students sufficiently about careers and working conditions in the hospitality industry. This will reduce high expectation of a hotel careers from the prospective employees.
Employee Motivation
Hotel industry is not only suffering from shortage of labor but they also suffer from low motivation of the hotel employee. The industry should deliver more information, educate and create awareness on the working environment of hotel industry to the school students. Awareness on the working environment and condition while working in the hotels has to be highlighted to the Hospitality Collage students so that they will have clear picture on the commitment level they need to show in the hotels. However, hotels at micro level too have to improve their training programme, orientation programme and improve remuneration to their employees as these steps can increase retention rate of hotel employees. Number of hotels is not paying attention on the emotional and information needs of the newly employed staff. Hotels should emphasize on ongoing training and education, employee empowerment, open communication with management, and appreciation for accomplishment.
CONCLUSION
In general, hotels in India are being challenged in maximizing revenue, government regulations which lead to new and old hotel dilemma and human resource management especially on employee motivation and shortage of labor. Among the issues found in this study are firstly, increasing demand on Green hotel, secondly, the usage of technology specifically online reservation system.
Competition in hospitality is stiff at national level, universities and colleges should create awareness on hotel working environment for fresh graduates so as to improve labor shortages and supply of highly skilled employee in hotels.
Corporate Comm India (CCI Newswire)
