Ritz Carlton Essay

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is one of the premier hotel management companies in the world today. Their goal of providing world-class service to its guests is rooted in tradition.

“The responsibility for ensuring high-quality guest services and accommodations rests primarily with employees” (Partlow, 1993). Both companies use this motto to guide their team in TQM. The Strategic Group and the Ritz-Carlton understand and implement the TQM concept of managing organizations with a set of tools, policies and procedures that ensure quality production and services. These set of tools are given to employees to succeed and to create and recreate the excellence of the culture in the companies. Stakeholders and top management come to agreement of minds that employees are the backbone of the companies because they are the ones that are representing the company in reflection to what has taught in training and seen by example of upper management. Both companies also believe that when involving employees in the decision making process instead of governing them, employees have a sense autonomy that generates pride in what they do in turn will be present in the way of work and they eyes of customers.

Marriott is renowned for its elegant and comfortable hotels and resorts. The company caters to a targeted customer base, ranging from the frequent corporate business traveler to the family enjoying their occasional weekend get-away. Marriott has continued its rise in the lodging, contract services, and restaurant industries. The company continuously strives to meet the needs and wants of its customers while strategically maneuvering the rigors of today’s competitive and ever-evolving market of glamorous destinations and convenient services. In order to remain relevant in a highly-competitive environment, Marriott must strike that successful balance of minimizing costs, and gaining and effectively

The Hotel Monaco achieves their desired organizational effectiveness by being conscience of goal accomplishments, satisfaction of constituencies, and acquisition of necessary resources. The Hotel Monaco claims its three most vital assets are its customers, its employees, and its investors. Their customers’ expectation and satisfaction of the hotel’s top-level of service offerings, and its unmatched customer service, is what keeps them in business and at the top.

The Ritz-Carlton likes to engender relationships between staff and customers, and allows their staff enough space to enhance the customer experience. An example of this is when a chef at one of their resorts had his own mother fly in a special product for some guests that were staying at the hotel for an extended period.

Ritz Carlton management contract is with Marriott International. 80% of Ritz-Carlton is owned by the Kwee Brothers, namely Kwee Liong Keng, Kwee Liong Tek, Kwee Liong Seen and Kwee Liong Phing. The other 20% is owned by the Singapore Airlines.

The President Ralph Larsen has realized that Wengart has some major problems with the quality however he is focusing on the profitability instead of the longevity of the company. He needs to have the team focus on improving the quality problem or the company’s profits will continue to decrease. Larsen in the effort to improve the quality has decided to seek out help from an OD practitioner who suggests to Ralph to implement Top Quality Management (TQM). Larsen feels that this should be easy to implement and hands it off to Kent Kelly the Vice President. He feels that the TQM program was a matter of common sense (Brown, 2011, p. 365).

Maverick Lodging is a hotel management company that manages the day-to-day operations of third party franchisees of the Marriott Corporation. The company has recently implemented a balanced scorecard in an effort to align company strategy, structure, performance measurements, and incentives. The organization strategy involves growth in revenue and customer base with the use of differentiation. Issues with the current scorecard and its measures have been identified. Alternative solutions have been researched. A recommended course of action is presented that will allow Maverick Lodging to achieve its strategic goals and objectives.

The Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award was established by the U.S. Congress in 1987 to raise awareness of quality management and recognize U.S. companies that have implemented successful quality management systems (Knowledge Center, 2010). The criteria for the Baldrige criteria for performance of excellence consist of 7 key components. (1) Leadership: How upper management leads organizations, and how the organization leads within the community (2) Strategic planning: How the organization establishes and plans to implement strategic direction (3) Customer and focus market: How the organization builds and maintains strong, lasting relationships with customers (4) Measurement, analysis, and knowledge management: How the organization uses data to support key processes and manage performance (5) Human resources focus: How the organization empowers and involves its workforce (6) Process management: How the organisation designs, manages and improves key processes (7) Business/ organizational performance results: How the organization performs in terms of customer satisfaction, finances, human resources, supplier and partner performance, operations, governance, and social responsibility, and how the organization compares to its competitors (Core Value Partners, 2012).

Dave Sinclair, vice-president of human resources at Blue Mountain Resort (BMR), was considering his options concerning the company's service quality program. He gathered together a team of 25 BMR managers to identify opportunities to improve service quality. They had provided Dave with a number of specific proposals he wanted to evaluate and decide on a course of action. From all, Dave identified three proposals that required careful consideration: costumer flow, speed of service and information technology (IT).

The following is an attempt to analyze AT&T's use of Total Quality Management throughout its organization. Since AT&T is an elaborately enormous corporation I will focus my study to AT&T Power Systems/Lucent Technologies. This division of AT&T has been the industry standard for excellence since TQM was first introduced to the company. AT&T Power Systems has become one the world's most dynamic companies because of its use of TQM. I will provide a brief description of who AT&T Power Systems is, a description of the events that lead up to its use of TQM, AT&T's TQM philosophy, and how this philosophy was implemented. Finally I will discuss the benefits AT&T Power Systems realized through their use

Hospitality Management is a difficult and competitive market, and any lack in customer service can result in defecting customers or the termination of a relationship between a customer and a service provider. In this paper we will look at Hilton a company that has continually ranked amongst the top ranking hotels and continues to improve. Hilton’s customer service ranks as one of the top hospitality providers in the United States. We will look at the history of how Hilton came to be the name brand it is today and some of their process the used to narrow the customer service gaps such as Hilton Honors, the Hiltons Reservation Customer Care, and RESMAX. We will look at how they look at how Hilton manages the customer expectations through the use of employee training and their decreased the customer service gap through employee retention. We will also look as how Hilton co-partnered with Citibank in order to offer its Hilton Honors member additional benefits in order to keep in line with the customer service that the customers have come to expect.

At Ritz-Carlton, electronic databases are used to track guest’s preferences and tastes enabling them to provide express check-in for their regular guests. Legal and political conditions, such as war or political strife between countries, limit international travel which can have a detrimental impact on international locations. In addition to these extreme circumstances, legal restrictions, such as zoning restrictions, may force Ritz to limit the height or size of their hotels in certain regions. Specific international events, such as the current economic recession, have had major impacts on the demand for luxury accommodations. Lastly demographics play a role in site location for a luxury hotel. The population surrounding a hotel can often dictate the type and amount of clientele the hotel will receive. (Exhibit 1)

The organization has explicitly kept this advantageous environment over other organizations by improving its service capacity. Additionally, the organization ensures that it stays ahead of its rivals by engaging in research and development that focuses on luxury products and markets analysis. The Ritz-Carlton hotel uses data from its research to predict the future of the industry; therefore able to dictate what and how the market will trend in the foreseeable future. Another factor that keeps the organization’s advantage over its rivals is that while rivals tend to become a hotel brand in the industry, Ritz-Carlton has rather position itself to be a leader and lifestyle brand that constantly develop new properties and ensure that customers live the culture of the hotel. The final factor that has kept the advantage of the organization intact is the culture of trust that exists between the management and employees. The leadership of the hotel lives and communicates the organization’s value to its employees who in turn satisfy customers in a way that they often anticipate a return visit. These are some of the reasons that the Ritz-Carlton hotel continued advantageous environment over its rivals has persisted in the hotel and resort industry (Reiss,

special attention should be given to maintain quality in the case of the Hotel and