A Case Study on the Operations Objectives at the Penang Mutiara

Synopsis and Purpose

Penang Mutiara is one of the most prominent hotels in South East Asia. Indeed, they were able to secure a position in this highly competitive industry. The hotel's management has the vision and very clear focused beliefs about the importance of running an effective operation where customers have every right to demand for first class service which they have to give them.

There are five operation objectives in Penang Mutiara which is quantity, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost. They aim at providing impeccable quality and customer orientated strategy to provide a personal touch as part of its uniqueness to retain customers.

Analysis

The hotel's general manager mentioned that their quality of service just have to be impeccable. That is exactly what they needed in order to compete for this kind of business and to keep up-to-date with stiff competition in the hotel industry. He recognized that "it is impeccable customer service which gives them their competitive advantage, not price." Indeed, retaining regular guests is a lot cheaper that attracting new ones. And how would they do this? Of course, by providing flawless services which will, in some way retain high occupancy rates to keep costs down while achieving reasonable profitability. That is, the more guest the hotel have, the higher utilization of room and restaurants, and this keep cost per guest down.

That being said, the manager has to set standards for their staff. They should be well trained, knowledgeable and sensitive enough to think ahead in order to provide excellent customer service/satisfaction.

The hotel's management should also measure the performance based on five performance objectives of quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost. Even though Penang Mutiara managed to maintain its competitiveness with their current strategy, it is still not sufficient to remain competitive due to unstable market demand. Moreover, with the rise of the global tourism, hospitality industry and globalization with competition from around the world, they need to promptly address their need to enhance existing and new strategies. Hotel's management should introduce new strategies to supplement and implement further changes to enhance the existing strategy. Perhaps they could adopt proactive approach to enhance and maintain consistency in quality and level of services by conducting staff training to improve the standard quality of services, communication, handling new automatic system and internet using, as well as retraining and upgrading of skills to meet the unpredictable market demand and customers' expectations. To supplement the informal channels of communication, however, they could conduct customer surveys to monitor the quality of its services.

Moreover,