Hilton Hotel Case Study : harvard business review Essay

Conrad Hilton (Figure 1.1), the man who started Hilton hotels. He was born on December 25, 1887 in San Antonio, New Mexico and died on January 3, 1979 in Santa Monica, California. Conrad Hilton was famous as American hotelier and businessman. For instance, he was also the founder of Hilton hotel chain (Figure 1.2A - Figure 1.2C) and in 1925, he built his first hotel in Dallas Hilton and it costs $1million. Conrad Hilton was deep faith in God and country. Not only that, he belief in hard work and has the ability to dream big. Thus, he was influenced by his mum’s Catholic beliefs and told by his mum prayer was the best investment ever. Furthermore, “digging for gold” and “esprit de corps” are his golden principles of being successful. He published his autobiography,”Be My Guest” in 1957.

Diamond Cluster Entertainment is trying to build a solid relationship with their loyal customers. For the past few year customer satisfaction have declined

The hotel industry is a very hard industry to enter into, due to one of the biggest obstacles, which is brand recognition. Right now there are a few large hotel chains that make a large footprint in the market. It is hard for a new entrant to come into the industry and compete with these large hotel chains without bringing something new to the table. Many large chains in the industry dominate the industry due to economies of scale due to franchising.

Hilton Hotels is one of the biggest players in the US lodging industry. It contributes to about 9% of the total rooms in US lodging market. It has presence in over 78 countries with more than 2500 hotels. Lodging industry is highly capital intensive industry, so to reduce capital expenditure Hilton Hotels opted for self-owned Hotels as well as franchising model with the real estate owners. One of the key features of lodging industry is low switching costs for customers. There is very little margin to differentiate from the major competitors in the industry which include Marriott international, IHG, Accor etc.

Hilton Hotel is founded by Conrad Hilton, they started their operation since 1919 and since then, they become one of the well-respected premier hospitality organizations with diverse employees worldwide. Currently, they have more than 4,600 owned and franchised hotels and resort chain in 100 countries. It has more than 200,000 rooms to accommodate guests from different parts of the world. It has more than 400,000 employees and team members to answers the needs of their guests (Hiltonhotelworldwide.com, 2016). In most of their branches their organizational structure is simple, with managers and supervisors from a different department, including admin, marketing, finance, human resource, concierge, food and beverages, housekeeping and etc.

An effective Customer Relationship Management (CRM) program can be used to identify, retain, satisfy and obtain customers by using technology to optimize strategies for understanding customers’ needs to manage business interactions with current, former, and prospective customers. Additionally, CRM also enables companies to maximize internal, external, marketing and customer service operations to better address the needs of the customer building a better relationship with customers that a more profitable. (Ahmad & Buttle, 2001)

In addition, Hilton Hotels Corporation is supporting its portfolio of commitments in a number of ways, by:

Hilton Hotels Corporation – Hilton was founded in 1946 and headquartered in Beverly Hills, California. It has 2,838 hotels worldwide under the brands Conrad, Doubletree, Embassy Suites etc. HTL operates upscale full-service and limited service hotels in urban, airport, resort and suburban locations. It ranks third in the number of employees (105,000) and revenues ($8.6 billion) but second in net income of $552 million.

Managers who doubt this financial IT investment should ask themselves if they can afford loosing a customer on the grounds of not satisfying his needs. Since the rare resource of a company is its capabilities that create value with the technology, while actively implementing the CRM technology, on top of all the current capabilities and expertise already employed by Wyndham, it would be beneficial to add additional supporting business processes such as Newsletters, that can be published weekly or monthly, making sure not to bore the reader with regular issues of nonsense, but highlight the special program services and the company’s new moves in the field, Regular follow up calls to identify with the customers and find out how they are doing and regular market/satisfaction surveys that can be sent by e-mail, post online and most important, reviewed regularly by the company. An online guest feedback system can be implemented to help track customer service levels. Believing that taking care of the hotel’s employees will result in them taking care of the guests, a natural extension would be to implement an online employee opinion system as well, where employees can complete an online survey to measure their satisfaction and provide an immediate feedback. A key driver of guest satisfaction is how well employees handle issues that arise during a guest`s stay. It

Hilton Hotels is one of the biggest players in the hospitality industry with over 2900 (as of September 2007) hotels worldwide consisting of numerous brands and products. The hospitality industry is service centered and highly competitive. The challenge for Hilton is to create and deliver value better than its competitors. Hilton understand that it is important to improve customer experience and build strong relationships with the customers. Hilton Hotels adopted a Customer Really Matter (CRM) strategy out of necessity to cater for

Hilton has applied Hilton Worldwide Leadership as their leading strategy for success organizational goals. The founder of Hilton Hotels, Conrad Hilton was a great and visionary leader who referred as “the inn keeper of the world” and his values still applied on the current leadership practices at Hilton. Hilton Worldwide President and Chief Executive Officer (CEO), Christopher J. Nassetta has been recognized as the CEO of the Year at the year of 2014 for his remarkable approach to motivational leadership style (Washington Business Journal, 2014). Nassetta said that practical approach is another important aspect of leadership at Hilton. For example, an initiative known as immersion, he stated that

Hilton was established nearly 100 years ago in Cisco, Texas (USA) in 1919 by Conrad Hilton and has since continued to grow and remained a leader in the hotel industry. Hilton has expanded its hotel family brand in 1997 by acquiring the Promus Corporation which added the Doubletree, Embassy Suites, Hampton Inn and Homewood Suites (Hilton, n.d.). Hiltons Brand, now either through direct ownership, or franchises is

Today, customer relationship management is very important to the business world. Most of the companies established a department and the programs to manage their relationship with the customers. Customer relationship management (CRM) is a business strategy which designed to help a company to understand and look forward to the needs of its potential and current customers (Anderson & Stang, 2000). Customer data is being collected in several different areas of the company, stored in a central database, analyzed, and distributed to key points (Anderson & Stang, 2000).The business world once was “product-centric”, the companies just provided what they could produce. However, it is now become “customer-centric”, they provide products and service

The report focused particularly on the following hotel chain Hilton Worldwide. Hilton legacy began in 1925, it was founded by Conrad N. Hilton. The first hotel was built in Texas and had 40 rooms; today Hilton is one of the most respected brands in the world. The company owns, manages or franchises a hotel group of some of the most famous and highly regarded hospitality brands worldwide, including Hilton, Conrad Hotels & Resorts, Double Tree by Hilton, Embassy Suites Hotels, Hampton, Hilton Grant Vacations, Homewood Suites by Hilton and the Waldorf Astoria Hotels & Resorts. With 4000 hotels and 650,000 rooms in 90 countries Hilton Worldwide is one of the world’s leading hotel. (Hilton Worldwide, 2013)

Marriott International within their respective market segments are one of the largest hotel groups globally.