Service Management in Langham Hotel Auckland
Introduction
Quality customer service is the key to add value on products and services thereby making customer satisfaction the highest priority. Quality means to deliver a service or services in a way that the customer would experience superb satisfaction before, during and after transactions. As such, the joy of servanthood reflects an individual experience of service. The goal is to ‘delight the customers or to provide them not just what their needs are but also what their wants are. However, to effectively delight the customers, there should be a lucid understanding that customers are the reason for survival of companies and therefore give them reasons to return. Such process can effectively build relationships with customers and build profit in return. This concept is especially true for the hospitality industry. In this paper, the case of Langham Hotel Auckland will be considered.
Description of Organisation
The legendary heritage of Langham dated back to 1865 with the opening of Europe’s first grand hotel in London, believed to be the forefront of hospitality sophistication and graciousness. The legacy that the flagship store bestowed all Lanham Hotels includes the philosophy of elegance in design, innovation in hospitality, genuine service and sense of unique hotel experience. Today, Langham Hotels International anchors its place on five gateway cities including London, Boston, Hong Kong and Melbourne and Auckland.
Dubbed as one of ‘The Leading Hotels in the World’, Langham Hotel Auckland situates at the heart of New Zealand, offering proximity to many key attractions that includes the Art Gallery, Museum, Domain and waterfront. In January 2005, the Langham brand penetrated the New Zealand and had since become one of the most top performing among the five-star hotels in the country. This fiver-star hotel hosts several special events such as conferences, meetings and weddings among others. A full-service hotel that is, Langham Hotel has 410 rooms which offer exclusive service privileges as well as complimentary shuttle and limousine services. The four business centres, two ballrooms and 18 function/meeting rooms are among the facilities that the business takes pride on.
Description of Target Market
Primarily, Langham Hotels claim that the target market for the hotels comprises 60% business and 40% leisure travelers. Langham Hotels serve guests who desire pampering and authentic luxury experience; the brand purports on reaching a group of customers who are audacious, fun-loving and young at heart. Langham Hotel Auckland has been a popular leisure and business option for local and international visitors. Langham caters to tourists that demand the highest quality services possible and that usual customers are corporate travelers whom are very particular with privacy, efficiency and service delivery. Moreover, the organisation invests heavily on technological advancements to provide for technologically savvy business travelers for the purpose of showing that Langham Hotels have the technology needed to do modern businesses. For them:
“establishing a relationship with frequent guests requires firm knowledge of guests’ preferences, behaviour and profile.”
Service Design
Aside from the valet parking, self-parking, shuttle and limousine services, Langham Hotel Auckland offers room services in four categories: superior, executive, Langham Hotel Club Room and Passionate about Prada Club Room. In total, there are 396 rooms and 14 suites spread over ten floors with guestroom size at 28 square meters. Rooms and suites are equipped with high premium bedding, high speed internet access, pay movies and minibars. These are also outfitted with unique room amenities consisting of sewing kit, hairdryer, coffee/tea maker, in-room safe that accommodates laptop and climate control. In addition, all windows and air conditioning are self-controlled.
Langham Hotels also engross its customers with the Langham signatures: flavours of Langham, amazement, change of the day, service stylist, blissful sleep, Langham Hotel club and Tiffin at the Langham. Langham hotels vows to attend to each of the five senses as part of the Langham experience. As claimed also, “the Langham Hotel is an oasis far from the madding crowd where guests are pampered by gracious hospitality.” The Langham identity of creating traditions while also building on the culture of innovation in hospitality is of highest regards. By anticipating and delivering services in sophisticated manner is the priority of the service stylists from modern conveniences to afternoon teas to luxuriating sleep times.
Classy services are not complete with the contribution of the people whom are ‘central to the strength’ of Langham Hotels. Investing on advanced qualities of its people is governed by human resource values consisting of flexibility and responsiveness; emphasis on training and development; personal and professional well-being and growth; believing and practicing principles of fairness, trust, integrity and respect; efficiency through the spirit of teamworking, ownership and effective organisation structure; demonstrating innovation and creativity as value-adding activities; diversity of people and culture; and ethical conduct of business.
Discussion of Customer Participation in Service Encounter
The decision-making process of Langham Hotels patrons lies is a multifaceted aspect. There are many stimuli that affects since Langham Hotels are very particular with customers’ service expectations. This, however, affects the customer participation which incorporates service activities carried out by the customers (Brotherton, 2003, p. 1936). Principally, guests are exposed to wider selection of hotel amenities and services at the time of booking, facilitating customers to customise their stay through add-ons and upgrades. To respond to the demands of the customers in return, Langham Hotels empower people to provide genuine hospitality at the base while also equipping them with specific customer-service skills to ensure professionalism as part of the service package. Service package takes into consideration: supporting facilities, facilitating goods, information, explicit services and implicit services (Lovelock, 1993). At Langham too, customers are encouraged to celebrate the transition from ‘work to play’ from ‘day to night’ through daily rituals that stimulate the senses. Guests are also given confidence to indulge in primary services especially for the clubs as a welcome break from the everyday burden of work.
At the service encounter stage, between Langham Hotel service stylists and customers, service encounters are very high. Service stylists can be considered as “butlers of the past” wherein they provide one-stop service. Though this room service affects the customer participation, high customer satisfaction is being achieved (Bowen and Jones, 1996; Laws, 2004)). At Langham Hotels, customers contact service facility prompting eventual service delivery. Such process accounts for active contact between customers and service personnel and includes most people processing services (Kelemen, n.d.).
Impact of Literature Review Information
As such, the service encounter processes are critical to the overall service experience in Langham Hotels (Matila and Enz, 2002). Langham Hotels is well aware that their customers are the drivers of the business as it envisions itself to achieve the highest people through providing for the needs of the guests. Customer oriented bureaucracy also transcends beyond the employees and the owners of the Langham Hotels through prioritizing customer relationship and partnership marketing. Customer-driven systems are established at each hotel coupled with “a strong platform for customer retention through individual recognition, enhanced rewards and targeted communications to desired customers.” Apparent to Langham Hotel is the combination of standardisation and customisation. Standardisation happens through key long term priorities like the Langham Advantage Club, for example. While customers with worldwide benefits at Langham Hotel, as part of room services loyalty programmes are provided for food and beverage facilities. Customisation is evident also since this loyalty programme could be individually designed. In allowing the individual needs of the customers to be met, service standardisation is a crucial element. Langham Hotels are very committed in retaining and developing internal talent pool (Bitner, 1990). The performance management system
“focuses on planning and managing the career path of Butlers and service stylists at different levels and supports them with a specific training and development plan.”
Conclusion
From the onset, Langham Hotels serve as an emblem of elegance in design, innovation, genuine servicing and captivating the senses. Primarily targeting the business travelers, the Langham Hotels draw strength from these pillars as well as its people and technology. Standardisation and customisation are achieved based on strategic prioritisation wherein the people are at the center, both the guests and the employees. Customer participation, though, it can be lessened because of the presence of Butler or service stylists, is rather low while Service encounter is relatively high.
Reference
Bitner, M. J. (1990). Evaluating Service Encounters: The Effects of Physical Surroundings and Employee Responses. Journal of Marketing, 54(2), 69-82.
Brotherton, B. (2003). The International Hospitality Industry: Structure, Characteristics and Issues. Butterworth-Heinemann.
Bowen, D. E. and Jones, G. R. (1996). Transaction Cost Analysis of Service Organization-Customer Exchange. The Academy of Management Review, 11(2), 428-441.
Kelemen, Z. (n.d.). Marketing of Services – Customer Decision Process.
Laws, E. (2004). Improving Tourism and Hospitality Services. CABI Publishing.
Lovelock, C. H. (1993). Classifying Services to Gain Strategic Marketing Insights. Journal of Marketing, 47(3).
Matila, A. S. and Enz, C. A. (2002). The Role of Emotions in Service Encounters. Journal of Service Research, 4(4), 268-277.
Internet Sources
Langham Hotels. (n.d.). Retrieved on 29 August 2008 from http://www.langhamhotels.com/pdf/DB_Dec2007.pdf.
Langham Hotel Auckland Wins New Zealand’s Top Visitor Accommodation Award. (2007). Retrieved on 29 August 2008 from http://www.tourismawards.co.nz/files/Langham-media-release.pdf.
Langham Hotel boosts efficiency and guest services with leading-edge IP Telephony. Cisco Systems. Retrieved on 29 August 2008 from http://www.cisco.com/web/AP/uc/assets/docs/apcs_hk_langham_plc.pdf.
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