Hotel Operation Management - Singapore Tourism Market - Case Study Example

Hotel Operation Management Name Institution Course Date 1.0 Introduction Fairmont Singapore Hotel is located at the core of the Raffle City specifically at the crossroads of Singapore’s CBD. The hotel is conveniently situated above a train station and a few minutes away from Singapore Changi Airport (Pregarz, 2011). It was formerly known as the Raffles The Plaza and it is the sister hotel to the Swissotel The Stamford that is located in Singapore. It is a 26-storey tower that houses up to 769 rooms as well as suites. In the year 1986, the hotel was opened as The Westin Plaza thereafter it was refurbished hand in hand with Swissotel The Stamford (Pregarz, 2011). On January 1, 2002 its name was changed to Raffles The Plaza and later changed to Fairmont Singapore in the year 2007 with a consequent change in branding. Currently, Fairmont Singapore is housing one of the largest spa in Asia and it shares similar recreational activities as well as some sports facilities with its sister hotel (Pregarz, 2011). In 2005, Fairmont Singapore Hotel also hosted the most of the IOC members who were in Raffles City during the 117th IOC session conducted in Raffles City Conventional Centre (Pregarz, 2011). Furthermore, in the year 2006, Fairmont Singapore Hotel expanded retail area of Raffles City with 50 shops in their basement 1 hotel’s service area. Therefore, this report will highlight the 5 major departments in the hotel together with their duties and responsibilities. In addition, it will discuss the various facilities offered by the hotel. Finally, this report will identify two direct competitors and their advantages over this hotel. 2.0 Departments in Fairmont Singapore Hotel There are various departments within the Fairmont Singapore Hotel and each department has its own duties and responsibilities in delivering quality services to their hotel guests. These departments includes: front office, housekeeping, sales and marketing, food and beverage and the security department. 2.1 Front Office Department 2.1.1 Duties and Responsibilities Fairmont Singapore Hotel has a front office department that caters to every hotel guest needs. The front desk team at the hotel are always the first to offer necessary and relevant information to any guest that visit the hotel regarding the accommodation as well as the facilities offered in the hotel (Fallon and Rutherford, 2011). Furthermore, the front desk department is often the last team members the hotel guests see when they check out of the hotel. 2.2 Housekeeping Department 2.2.1 Duties and Responsibilities This department as recognized as the Kings and Queens of cleanliness within the hotel. This is because they work behind the scenes effortlessly in order to maintain the hotel rooms clean, sparkling and shiny (Fallon and Rutherford, 2011). Housekeeping department within Fairmont Singapore Hotel ensure that the required amount of towels and fresh linens are available for the exact number of rooms to be cleaned. Another duty of the housekeeping department within the hotel is taking the garbage from every room within the hotel. They always ensure that garbage is removed and emptied daily and replaced with a cleaner bin for the next guest (Slogan, Legrand and Chen, 2013). They also make the beds, dust the rooms and perform finishing touches on the rooms through spraying air fresheners. 2.3 Sales and Marketing Department 2.3.1 Duties and Responsibilities The sales and marketing department within Fairmont Singapore Hotel has a team comprised of qualified employees as well as managers who are responsible for development as well as promotion and advertising of the services and products offered by the hotel (Barrows, Powers and Reynolds, 2012). The marketing director within the department overseas every marketing, advertising and promotional staff within the hotel. Their duties involves the budgeting of every marketing operation, overseeing corporate communication operations and facilitating yearly marketing plan for the hotel (Fallon and Rutherford, 2011). 2.4 Food and Beverage Department 2.4.1 Duties and Responsibilities The food and beverage department of Fairmont Singapore Hotel has a large full-service team that values the taste of their hotel guests. They are responsible for every dining rooms, clean up as well as restaurants and bars within the hotel (Barrows, Powers and Reynolds, 2012). Within the hotel, the food and beverage department are responsible for the overall supervision of the entire foods within the hotel. In addition, the managers within this department monitor the performance of the subsidiary management level position in the department. Also, this department is responsible in ensuring competent management as well as the highest probable degree of every food and beverage within this hotel (Siguaw and Smith, 2010). 2.5 Security Department 2.5.1 Duties and Responsibilities The security department within Fairmont Singapore Hotel has a dedicated team that is focused on maintaining security and safety within the establishment. The hotel has an advanced security technology, which alleviates safeguarding within the hotel such as integrated surveillance systems (Siguaw and Smith, 2010). Also, they are in charge of a comprehensive emergency response plan with which they train their employees. They also have trained staff who are specifically trained to be accountable and responsible after the security of their hotel guests. 3.0 Facilities at Fairmont Singapore Hotel Fairmont Singapore Hotel features a 769 lavish guest rooms as well as suites, which are well furnished with specific amenities which are designed to cater for sharp travelers and at the same time offers them a level of pampering. The hotel has facilities such as exquisite rooms and suites, restaurant outlets, conventions rooms, business centres and fitness centres to name a few. 3.1 Types of Rooms The hotel has various ranges of rooms for their guests. They include: deluxe rooms and Fairmont premier rooms. The hotel’s deluxe rooms offer absolute satisfaction with a simple touch of elegance which is particularly designed to readily luxuriate the senses (The Strait Times, 2000). It provides guests with a private balcony, lounge chairs, bathrooms designed to pamper, BOSE entertainment system as well as a completely equipped office desk. It accommodates a maximum of two adults with a floor space of about 45 square meters (The Strait Times, 2000). It both has one king or two twin beds and is located at the South Tower with a fantastic view of either the City or the Pool. On the other hand, Fairmont premier rooms draw their inspiration from their local heritage which showcase cultural accents of the iconic Straits Chinese in a luxurious yet contemporary setting (The Strait Times, 2000). In addition, these rooms provide their guests with a breathtaking vantage point of the city from a private balcony. The room also accommodates a maximum of two adults. It has a floor space of 49 square meters. It has one king bed with a spectacular view of either the city or the pool. It is located in the North Tower (The Strait Times, 2000). 3.2 Restaurants Outlets Fairmont Singapore Hotel has 15 distinctive restaurants and bars ranging from exquisite signature Japanese offerings at Mikuni, Chinese delicacies at Szechuan Court, original Italian cuisine at Prego and a healthy cuisine at Alligator Pear (Viljoen and Dann, 2003). The hotel offers purely gastronomic pleasure which includes both dining and entertainment. In addition, guests visiting the hotel have the privilege to access and enjoy the convenience of cross-property signing privileges (Tripathi and Suri, 2010). These are billed to their rooms whenever a guest dines at their premier food and beverage outlets of Swissotel The Stamford and Raffles Hotel. The cuisine offered at the hotel are created using both fresh and nutritionally balanced ingredients. The restaurants have Lifestyle Cuisine Plus which are prepared for guests with diet-dependent conditions. 3.3 Convention or Meeting Rooms Fairmont Singapore Hotel offers professional meeting facilities which is backed up by a wide-ranging array of both professional and state-of-the-art services. They have experts who provide necessary information regarding event planning (Viljoen and Dann, 2003). The hotel has a Convention Services Team who take care of accommodation to entertainment as well as videoconferencing to even the most complex presentation set-ups. Their conventional centre has a space of 70,000 square feet with 27 meeting rooms. In addition, it has a closed-circuit which can permit joint discussion among the 27 rooms if needs be. Furthermore, meetings conducted at the hotel can enjoy high-powered sessions utilizing the state-of-the-art technological equipment (Viljoen and Dann, 2003). For example, icon-based touch screen and satellite system which is used for global conferences are among the few mentioned advanced facilities. 3.4 Executive Lounges The hotel has an executive lounge access with executive benefits including food and beverage, complimentary computers with internet access as well as secretarial services. They offer continental breakfast for the guests with their access. They also have a business centre facilities such as fax and emails (The Strait Times, 2000). In addition, they offer their guests with a selection of daily newspapers, access to premier health club, complimentary pressing and shoe shine and evening drinks as well as canapés to name a few. 3.5 Fitness Centre and Swimming Pool Fairmont Singapore Hotel has a newly improved Fitness Centre which is equipped with pioneering concepts that provide their guests with top-of-the-range gym experience. It features a complete set of advanced equipment integrated with the most recent technology for an inspiring workout session (Tripathi and Suri, 2010). The fitness centre has a strength training area equipped with benches, 1 Smith machine, and complete set of dumbbells and complete range of stack weights. It also has a cardio theatre equipped with 9 treadmills 4 bikes, 3 elliptical machines and 2 water rowers. It also has a fitness studio equipped with a highly interactive fitness program such as the SMARTfit training program (Viljoen and Dann, 2003). Additionally, Fairmont President Club members are provided with complementary use of running shoes, shorts, socks and t-shirts during their stay at the hotel. 4.0 Competitors of Fairmont Singapore Hotel Fairmont Singapore Hotel faces a number of competitors, particularly within Singapore such as Intercontinental Singapore and Raffles Hotel. 4.1 Raffles Hotel 4.1.1 Hotel Background This is one of the direct competitors to Fairmont Singapore Hotel. It was established by Armenian hoteliers in the year 1887and was considered a colonial luxury hotel (Invernizzi, Gay and Liu, 2003). The hotel was completed in 1899 and it provided its customers with the state-of-the-art facilities at the time. It was also considered to be the first hotel to have electricity light in the region. It expanded immensely over the years with an addition of both a ballroom, bar and other buildings and rooms (Invernizzi, Gay and Liu, 2003). In the year 1987, Raffles Hotel was pronounced a National Monument by the government of Singapore. 4.1.2 Better Facilities Raffles Hotel has been able to accurately gather valuable guest data and at the same time make it available to its staff members (Invernizzi, Gay and Liu, 2003). It has been able to satisfy the needs of their guests while at the same time offer consistent services across both their brand as well as their global culture. They have been able to compartmentalize all their departments. Furthermore, Raffles Hotel has enculturated initiatives which has led to reduced costs and increased employee jobs as well as guest satisfaction and corporate profitability (Invernizzi, Gay and Liu, 2003). 4.2 Intercontinental Singapore 4.2.1 Hotel Background Intercontinental Singapore is among the Intercontinental Hotels Group that has its headquarters in Denmark and has over 742,000 rooms and 5,028 hotels all over the world in more than 100 countries (Hoque, 2000). 4.2.2 Better Facilities Intercontinental Singapore Hotel has come up as a competition to Fairmont Singapore Hotel due to the rate at which it has invested in technology and expanded into new frontiers (Hoque, 2000). First, the hotel has heavily invested in building new data warehouse which has permitted the matching of data with via third party sources to their customers. In addition, the hotel has expanded into new frontiers in order to grow revenue, satisfy customer’s needs and increase loyalty through right-time marketing, non-member marketing, glocal communication and extended traditional campaigns (Sloan, Legrand and Chen, 2013). 5.0 Conclusion To sum up, the Singapore travel as well as their tourism market indicates a high growth having an occupancy rate of about 90 per cent in the past year. The efforts put in by the Singapore government in offering low cost services airlines as well as their efforts of increasing the number of tourists accessing the country by almost three times the coming years. The 30 per cent increase in the trade meetings and exhibitions carried out in Singapore has shown that the hotel industry in Singapore has a promising business opportunities in the subsequent years and therefore, if appropriate and properly developed strategies are put in place by the hotels, there might have the capability to earn a large share of the market hence more profits. 6.0 References Barrows, C., Powers, T & Reynolds, D 2012, Introduction to Management in the Hospitality Industry, Hoboken, New Jersey, Wiley. Fallon, M. & Rutherford, D 2011, Hotel management and operations, Hoboken, N.J: John Wiley & Sons, Inc Hoque, K 2000, Human resource management in the hotel industry: strategy, innovation, and performance, New York, Routledge. Invernizzi, L., Gay, G. & Liu, G 2003, The Raffles Hotel cookbook, Singapore, Raffles Hotel. Pregarz, R 2011, The heritage of hospitality: a history of the Singapore hotel industry, Singapore, Singapore Hotel Association. Siguaw, J & Smith, R 2010, Strategic Hospitality Leadership The Asian Initiative, New York, NY: John Wiley & Sons. Sloan, P., Legrand, W & Chen, J 2013, Sustainability in the hospitality industry principles of sustainable operations, New York, Routledge. The Strait Times 2000, Singapore hotels need to lift quality of service, Singapore. Tripathi, P and Suri, R 2010, "Development of Competence based management and Performance Assessment System for Academic Management: Empirical Investigation," International Journal of Innovation, Management and Technology, vol. 1, no.4, pp. 357-361. Viljoen, J and Dann, S 2003, Strategy Management—Environment turbulent and strategic management. Frenchs Forest, NSW, Prentice Hall. Read More