Assignment Details
The following Course Outcome is assessed in this assignment:
TH206-5: Develop a solution to a hotel department challenge.
Assignment: Solving Departmental Problems
Introduction: As the manager of a hotel property department, you are responsible for ensuring that your area runs smoothly and that appropriate guest services are being delivered. Daily issues can arise when the guest needs are not met, or when things go awry. In this assignment, you will address two of the four scenarios provided regarding the various departmental challenges and respond to all the checklist items below.
Choose two of the four departmental challenges below and, using the problem-solving steps from the reading, propose solutions for the scenarios.
Challenge Scenario 1: The hotel’s website is down for the second time this week. When operational, the website is showing old room rates, and customers registering online are upset at getting a higher rate at check-in. Many guests seem frustrated and abandon their online bookings. The hotel is losing customers, and the daily rate is skewed because the ADR is not accurate. There is no record of customer registration, and many guests have complained this week on Facebook, Twitter, and Yelp that they did not feel safe due to the use of hotel keys. One guest reported an intruder, and the company is concerned that video of the intruder could go viral over social media.
Challenge Scenario 2: It is Monday morning, and guests are flooding the front desk with calls complaining that the water pressure is insufficient for showering. In addition, there was a fire drill at 4:00 a.m. and some of the stairwell lighting was not working, causing multiple complaints to the front desk as guests could not see sufficiently to evacuate the building in a timely manner. Two of the guests fell on the stairwell during the evacuation and had to be hospitalized. The fire chief cited the hotel due to improper lighting. It is now 7:00 a.m. and the new MOD is overwhelmed and is not sure what to do.
Challenge Scenario 3: Customers are complaining that their luggage is arriving late to their rooms. In a few cases, the luggage has been lost altogether. The hotel elevators are jammed and slow and the business clientele are complaining. It is Wednesday morning, and there is a crowd of over 100 guests in the lobby waiting for elevators to take them to the conference center on the 5th floor. This morning there are also long check-in lines, and the staff look stressed out. The FOM just had a call from a guest complaining about their bill. The men’s restroom has a plumbing leak that is now starting to spill out into the main hall.
Challenge Scenario 4: It is Saturday night and three guests’ cars, parked in the hotel parking structure, were broken into during an event held in the hotel ballroom, and personal items were taken. A member of the valet staff who had parked one of the cars became ill right before the incident was reported, and two other valets called in sick for their shifts. The overhead lights in the parking structure were knocked out during the theft, and guests cannot see their way to their vehicles. The food and beverage staff report items missing from storage and inventory that were needed for this event. In addition, earlier this evening, in an unrelated incident, several guests reported that their room service orders were not delivered.
Checklist: Choose two of the four available scenario challenges above and complete this checklist for each challenge:
Using each of the problem-solving steps, analyze the problems. (Make sure to designate which scenario problems you chose).
Explain what other departments are involved and the necessary information needed to better address the problems.
Develop solutions based on priorities.
Explain how these solutions would be enacted and any help or cooperation that would be necessary from other departments to resolve the situation.
Make sure to designate which two problems you chose.
Submit your minimum 2-page paper (i.e., 500 words) in 7th edition APA format with an additional title page to the assignment Dropbox.
