Case Study Analysis: Boutique Hotel
Introduction
With the stiff competition in the marketplace, different business and organizations are trying to reinvent themselves to provide the specific needs of the people. In this regard, service industries or more commonly known as boutique hotel are able to establish different types of providing business to specific customers. One of the emerging businesses in the market environment is boutique hotel. Accordingly, boutique hotels provide different approach in providing services to their clients. Herein, the hotels tend to provide unique experiences to their clients than the traditional hotel services. However, even if boutique hotels seem to have greater potentials, there are still some factors and issues that affect the entire operation of this industry. Primarily, the goal of this paper is to analyze the operational challenges linked with developing new boutique hotels and to determine how boutique hotels can maintain consistent/standard level of service without compromising their unique/personalized service mission.
Operational Challenges Boutique Hotel
Commonly known as the lifestyle hotels, boutique hotels vary in sizes and shape; but, all lifestyle hotels heavily rely on creative energy as well as highly customized service to compete in the entire hotel industry. Furthermore, boutique hotels aim on providing unique and unforgettable experience for guests and it can also be both enjoyable and profitable. However, there are still some challenges which boutique hotel may encounter.
One of the challenges faced by the boutique hotel is in terms of the tremendous amount of investment needed. Since boutique hotels aims on providing unique services and experience for their clients, the new boutique hotels may have difficulties in identifying which specific target to be given services. Psychographics can be considered to help the management determine the specific target to be given their unique services.
Moreover, another operational challenges faced by boutique hotel is in terms of being creative to provide unique services for their target market. Accordingly, since competition in boutique hotel is very stiffly, the management need to constantly improve their business and as well as service management skills, keep up with new changing trends within the lifestyle hotels, and develop good business contacts as well as partnerships to ensure stronger market demands (Galliard, 1998).
Access to the company resources are needed to be able can assist hotel operators with market/industry research, service offering development and improving standards, professional training as well as education for their employees. This development, the management can be able to increase revenues and profit for boutique hotel operators; foster sustainable, high quality and unique experience across the hotel, increase the capability of these resort operators to be globally competitive (Zeithamal, 1990).
Lastly, another operational challenge of the boutique hotel is in line with maximizing their profit. Since lifestyle hotels tend to be more expensive than ordinary hotels, customers are mostly hesitant to have this unique experience. In this regard, the management are being pressured to ensure that they only give satisfying services and unique experiences to their customers to ensure that they will be considering repeat purchase.
Learning from Mass Customization
Being able to ensure that different companies are able to provide specific needs of the clients, the management of the company is trying to make their products more personalized and customized (Griffin & Herres 2002). Mass customization is now the latest trend in this industry and major companies are trying to adhere to this trend because they wanted to gain loyal customers. Through mass customization of products, different industries, even in the service industries has been able to put extra effort to ensure that they provide more personalized service to offer. The lessons that can be learned from mass customization are it allows the business to have more satisfied clients. Mass customization of products like for example what telecommunications and computer companies have done paved the way for hotel industries to do the same in customizing the services provided on their clients.
In line with the service industries, like boutique hotel, the management is able to learn from mass customization in a way that they provide specific needs of clients in line with their lifestyles. In order to achieve customer satisfaction, the boutique hotel has been able to consider individual customer demands and needs. As every customer need varies from one to another, customization is very essential. In applying customization, two factors must be taken into account. First, one must consider whether customization is possible based on the services’ characteristics and delivery systems. Second, one must determine the amount of judgment that can be exercised by the customer contact personnel in defining the nature of service individual customers receive in the boutique hotel. This is necessary as some service concepts are standardized while others are able to provide various alternatives and options (Newsome, 2000).
Some types of services do not only require a high level of customization but also needs customer contact personnel to deliver the services to the customers. This type of service provision is also known as prescriptive in the hotel industries, where the focus of control is transferred from the customers to the provider. Professional services of the boutique hotel are included in this category. These service industries need to have sufficient education and training so as to satisfy individual customer needs. This is one of the reasons why different studies on service industry pertains to the interaction between the service provider and the customer as this relation determines the degree of customer satisfaction. This in particular is applicable to the boutique hotel (Mariger and Miller, 1999).
Maintaining Standards in Boutique Hotel
In general, boutique hotel should be able to involved planning, organizing directing and regulating human and material resources to be able to maintain consistent and standard level of service.
The boutique hotel calls for the requirements to provide a suitable environment in order to deliver standard and consistent services efficiently. Hence, this means that most boutique hotel must allocate considerable investments in terms of their architectural designs and also the way they provide quality service to their clients. Aside from this the management of boutique hotel should also consider customer satisfaction by providing the needs of the clients with regards to their demographic and psychographic aspects.
According to (Min, Min, Chung, 2002), service industries, specifically in boutique hotel are dependent on the contact as well as the reception they receive from the customers. Hence, boutique hotel staffs must have a certain degree of availability towards the clients, a substantial margin of initiative and a strong sense personal responsibility to maintain consistent and standard level of providing service. In a boutique hotel, employees in fact serve as a mediator between the clientele and the structure of the industry. This role is very much significant in obtaining the desired results of both the customers and the business, specifically in customization of their services. In satisfying the wishes of the customers, the ethical and psychological factors must also be involved among boutique hotel staffs. There is considerable evidence that clients appreciate actual interaction with people; thus, the treatment clients should receive from service providers must be different from what they receive on daily routines.
Key Issues Identification
Based on the analysis of the case with regards to boutique hotel, the five key issues that will be given emphasis include the following:
Marketing challenges issues of boutique hotel based on the study conducted by Kandampully and Suhartanto (2000) with regards to the customer satisfaction. In this article it helps hotel industries to extend knowledge on the relationship between loyalty, satisfaction and image of the company. The second issue that can be considered is the issue of brand loyalty and brand image which is noted in the article by Tepeci (1999). Herein, the article provides recommendation on how to improve the brand image of the hotel industries. The next issue that must be considered is with regards to the service management to ensure customer retention providing in hotel industries like boutique hotel which is studied in the article by Barnett (2005). In addition, another key issue that has been noted in the case includes the service quality of the boutique hotel. Herein, such aspect was considered in the study of Ladhari (2009). And lastly, another issue that should be considered is about the service experience and service designs which is considered as essential in boutique hotels which was highlighted in the article by Zehrer (2009).
Conclusion
Indeed, boutique hotel faces different problems and issues which should be given attention. The emergence of this kind of hotel service are not being the trend in the market and they must identify better business approach to achieve competitive advantage.
Reference
Galliard, Flora (1998). The hospitality industry. (career opportunities) Industry Reports). The Black Collegian
Mariger, H, & Miller, J, 1999, Distance education evaluation: the next step, Proceedings of the 4thannual graduate education and graduate students’ research conference in hospitality and tourism, USA, 4, 428-437
Min, H., Min, H. & Chung, K. (2002). Dynamic benchmarking of hotel service quality. Journal of Service Marketing, 16(4), 302-321
Newsome, D. (2000). Think Small One Customer at a Time, One Associate at a Time. Business Perspectives, 12(4), 20.
Tepeci, M (1999). Increasing brand loyalty in the hospitality industry. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. Volume: 11 Issue: 5 Page: 223 – 230
Zeithaml, V 1990, In D. Bowen, Service Management Effectiveness: Balancing Strategy, Organization and Human Resources, Operations and Marketing (pp. 369-381), Jossey-Bass, Inc. Publishing.
Bibliography
Jay Kandampully, Dwi Suhartanto (2000). Customer loyalty in the hotel industry: the role of customer satisfaction and image. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Volume: 12 Issue: 6, 346 – 351
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