The HERMES Amenities division has its headquarters in Paris. For 30 years Hermes

Question

The HERMES Amenities division has its headquarters in Paris. For 30 years Hermes has decided to create this new division with the objective of finding a very specific target audience: luxury and exclusive hotels. Its objective was to encourage the clients of these hotels to test the Hermes cosmetic product. Then these customers could consider Hermes cosmetic consumer products when choosing among several options of top cosmetic brands. On the other hand Hermes wanted to associate the presence of its brand in these hotels to a positioning of high quality and differentiation of its essences and aromas

Luís was the sales representative of the Hermes amenities division in Spain and twice a year he met with the division's sales and marketing managers in Paris to evaluate the campaign, sales evolution, new customers and the competitors in the Spanish market, like L'Occitane which had increased market share in one year.

Luís had a lot of experience in the cosmetics sector and as an executive he had worked in various cosmetic companies. Luis was very committed to the company, although it is true that in recent years he has had to travel very frequently throughout Spain, which had caused some troubles with his family.

Now Luis has to travel to Paris. The truth is that he is excited to travel to one of his favorite cities, however he has been sick for a few days. He doesn’t feel very well and he has a headache and a fever. He hopes that the meeting will not last too long and that he will soon be able to arrive at the hotel that he has booked in Concorde Square. In fact, HERMES facilitates his stay in this hotel.

Today is a gloomy day, rather cloudy and cold. Luis has just arrived in Paris and a chauffeur from the company has come to pick him up at the train station. But the AVE train has been delayed and he does not have enough time to drop his luggage at the hotel. He knows that this is a very important meeting, as it is the beginning of a new year and this meeting must serve especially to evaluate his results from the previous year. Last year has been very positive despite the competition of l'Occitane, increasing sales and gaining several major hotels in Barcelona and Palma de Mallorca.

He knows it's an important meeting. He expects that everything will go very well and that the company will pay him his bonus and that the company will assign him to the North African Region where the company already has a representative. This would be an upgrade for Luis because now the company will assign an additional employee to help him with his tasks in Spain, allowing him to develop its new functions as the director of sales of the company in the Region of Southern Europe and Africa. He is under a lot of pressure, he has not rested for many months and now he hopes to get his reward. So, he is trying to relax, muster strength and breathe deeply.

Finally, the meeting is over; it went great and Luis is super happy. Everything has gone according to plan and his bosses congratulated him a lot. Anyway, the pressure is lifted off Luis he feels very tired and exhausted. He would love to be able to take a trip around Paris city but the fever has exhausted him. So he asks the driver to take him to his hotel where he will rest. He is staying in a new hotel with whom the company has signed an agreement. This new chain comes highly recommended by other commercials of the company. Its location is great and his stay has also been organized by his company.

He thinks that in the hotel he would be able to rest and relax. Then he calls his wife to tell her the details of the meeting. His expectations for the hotel are high, as he saw in an advertisement on a billboard in the train station. Also, his wife, who works in a tourist reservation center, had mentioned that this hotel chain had made a very powerful communication campaign with several tour operators. This campaign has had a high impact and has positioned them as hotels of very high quality

This time the company changed the usual hotel for this brand-new hotel. The hotel is called Café de Paris and has 5 stars GL. It’s located in the center of the city and has a Spa, an excellent restaurant, gym and room service, among others. It seems to be that their menu is one of the best in Paris, and from what Luis read on the Internet their rooms are very cozy, super comfortable, spacious and with lots of natural light. It is an old building that has been completely restored.

He thinks that when he arrives at his room he will have a glass of white wine while taking a warm bath with HERMES bath salts, that will relax him a lot. He is sure that he will feel much better, and he will be encouraged to call an old friend of the company and he will invite him to have dinner in the hotel restaurant. But first he wants to relax a little.

When he arrives, he realizes that the hotel is better than he thought and that the company had made a great decision. A large reception area perfectly acclimated, increases his expectations about the room that awaits him. The receptionist is friendly and the check-in is smooth and very fast. Luis is very satisfied.

He goes up to the room and opens the door, and at first glance, he observes the small details of the room and he immediately feels better. That's right, his room has a lounge with super-comfortable sofas where Luis can imagine drinking his wine after a hot bath with the salts of the company that he likes so much. He leaves his luggage at the entrance, and looks for the minibar. He doesn’t like the wine too cold so while he prepares and calls his friend, he will leave it on the table in the living room.

He finds the fridge perfectly camouflaged between the furniture, but when he goes to grab the bottle, he realizes that something is not right. The wine is not cold, it seems that the minibar is broken. He thinks that a hotel of this category will solve any problem that customers have with ease.

Then, he calls reception, and as he had imagined, the receptionist assures him that a technician will go to his room in less than 10 minutes. He has to delay his bath but he takes advantage of his free time to call his wife

Perfect! Not even 5 minutes have passed and suddenly there is a knock on the door of his room. Luis thinks "how effective" that the technician arrives so quickly. When he opened the door he was sure that he was the technician because the man was wearing a blue jumpsuit. Then the technician approaches the minibar and checks that everything is correct. The technician tells Luis that the problem is that it was unplugged.

The operator tells Luis: "Sir, I'm sorry, I'm a little tired of all this, it's always the same. The customers insist on plugging in the mobile phone chargers here, and although we have repeatedly told the housekeeping department to tell the housekeepers to check the rooms well, but you know … they don’t pay attention to this.

Luis cannot believe it, the man who had not even introduced himself was blaming his colleagues for what happened to customers like him. Luis thought, "What a lack of professionalism" , "this man probably has nothing to do with the hotel and the hotel has outsourced the maintenance service."

The technician leaves the room and Luis realizes that he had not been able to drink his wine, He is determined not to give up his reward for the job well done and calls the reception back to tell them what has happened, requesting that they bring a bottle to his room. Again, the receptionist is very kind and friendly, and Luís who is very optimistic regains his confidence in the hotel service. He waits patiently while he prepares his dinner clothes and calls his wife back. Although the time seems to be passing quickly Luis realizes that he has been in the room more than half an hour and still has not been able to either take a bath or have a glass of wine.

Fifteen minutes later someone knocks on the door; "It's about time," Luis thinks. The person at the door was a waiter, a very educated middle-aged man, very well dressed. He asks permission to come in and leaves the wine bottle and his glass on the table in the living room. Luis asks that when he must pay for the service, and the waiter’s answer leaves him astonished: "I do not know, sir, ask at reception, they will tell you”. Luís cannot believe it, he starts to feel bad, he gets angry, and politely dismisses the waiter and he is now ready to drink his wine that he has waited so long for, but he checks it and ... it's hot !!!!! He does not believe it. He does not want to be rude but he makes a new effort and calls the reception back but they had changed shifts and now there is a new receptionist so he had to tell his whole story again. The new receptionist apologized and told him that they would immediately bring another bottle of wine to his room, but Luis no longer knew if he wanted it.

It had been more than an hour since he had arrived. He waited for his bottle of wine and 8 minutes later someone knocked again at his door. This time, the waiter did not enter the room, and he simply handed over the cold bottle without a glass, and he apologized for the delay. He also explained to him that there had been a confusion. This waiter told him that he supposed the bottle had already been delivered by his fellow waiter and left.

Then Luís could drink his cold wine and he wanted to forget the chain of errors that had occurred in the hotel, that was a client of Hermes, as soon as possible. Then he could take his bath with his salts, dressed and went down to dinner. The issue is that the reception no longer seemed a pleasant and welcoming place, and the restaurant ... he had dined in better places.

The next day, the check-out reaffirmed his decision not to ever return to this hotel. He had to speak urgently with HERMES and explain what had happened but he had to be careful as the hotel was a client of HERMES. Another shift change forced him to recount everything that had happened last night. To top it off, He could not believe it because they wanted to bill the two bottles of wine !!!

COMPREHENSION QUESTIONS: Human resources and quality management in a service become key elements in operations

1) DETERMINE THE QUALITY FAILURES AND ANALYZE THE MISTAKES COMMITTED BY THE HOTEL

2) INDICATE HOW THE HOTEL SHOULD ACT ON QUALITY MANAGEMENT TO AVOID THESE MISTAKES AND WHAT IMPROVEMENTS AND CHANGES SHOULD BE MADE WITH REGARDS TO THE MANAGEMENT OF HUMAN RESOURCES.

3) HOW WOULD YOU BUILD A CULTURE OF QUALITY IN THIS HOTEL?

4) WHAT SHOULD THE HOTEL HAVE DONE IN LUIS’S SITUATION?

Explanation / Answer

1. Quality can be defined in many ways and easily acceptable definition is adherence to pre determined standards and outcomes. In a service Industry like hotels quality service play vital role in achieving customer delight. In this case, though the hotel has taken lot of care on the external ambience, there is negligence on the part of the hotel staff on mini bar, which is an important selling point for a luxury suite or room in a costly hotel. Customer visiting luxury room will have set of expectations on minibar along with other ambience. Mini refrigerators are often used in hotel rooms and can be placed in guest rooms as well. It’s very important to set water, wine and other appropriate glasses on a serving tray. 2. Going by the way the technician behaved with Luis, it’s clearly evident that there is a communication gap and technician though an outsourced employee is not properly trained by the hotel management on how to talk to the high end customers.

2. Customer will never accept internal conflict he will not differentiate between regular housekeeping staff and outsourced technician. This is where the Hotel management has to take centerstage in training and building communication gap and improve co-ordination and collaboration between the two concerned parties. This could be determining factor for the customer in forming a bad opinion about the reputed hotel, it may make him feel even things like this can happen here too.....Some of the other Human Resource Management measures like setting up an effective communication channel to constantly stay in touch not only with the workers and customers but also with other key stakeholders like suppliers, security service providers, media and potential customers. Another aspect is Personnel training and appraisal which will ensure effective engagement. Training of personnel really goes a long way in improving the quality of customer service in a hotel set up. This is because it ensures specialization in such a way that every personnel do only what they are best at. A reputed hotel should not gamble with service delivery, This is what happened in Lius case and lead to service delivery failure

3. Hospitality service in hotel can be very sensitive, the real problem is customer expectations of a reputed chain of hotels where a customer can have his own perception about the hotel and if something is not matching with his/her expectations, it can lead to dissatisfaction. So utmost care should be taken to ensure customer delight especially in reputed and luxury hotels. There should be quality assurance programs in place and a focus on service excellence will lead to a competitive advantage. This calls for effective complaint management system. Standard operating procedures should include comprehensive training for guest contact employees to help to recognize potential problems and conflicts before the situation gets to the point of no resolution. When a failure occurs, service personnel should be trained rigorously to identify potential problems or concerns, and they should know when they are not properly executing service processes.On the other side, hotel should encourage customers to complain when they are not happy, they should vent out their feelings and concerns. It’s very important. Implementing a culture of quality in service is going to take time with measures which were mentioned above, it does take time and money to effectively build a quality assurance programme, once the staff get used to this and customer experience this there will not be any looking back.

4. In Lius case, the hotel could have give more emphasis on setting up minibar, to reiterate minibar is one of the major selling points for luxury room, the customer wants to relax and relax properly when he finds a deviation, it will upset him, the first impression is gone..This is very care could have been taken. Hotel management could have trained the staff be it technician or service executive in a proper manner. Already the customer is upset, you cannot inflict more pain..It’s also important to realise the mistake quicky and provide apology and give extra service to compensate him. The reception should have given him good customer service by finding his requirements and serving him promptly. In contrary he was billed for two wine bottles which is unacceptable he deserves complimentary services to compensate for the mistakes. Co-ordination and communication could have solved most of the customer service issues.

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