SERVICE PROVIDER OF HOSPITALITY

INTRODUCTION
Arriving at the beautiful Shangri-La Hotel, leave the city stress as peace awaits
you. One of its beauties of attraction is its 15 acres of luxurious greenery; there
is no other place like Shangri-La, the experience is legendary. Constantly has
been voted as one of the best hotels in the world, this is where the legendary
history of Asian hospitality of Shangri-La began more than 40 years ago.
With luxurious guestrooms and suites in three distinctive wings, serviced
apartments and residences in four-storey villas, this is where you will find your
own Shangri-La. Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts is a reputed and distinguished
brand in the hotel industry has earned its reputation through excellence of
service provided to the customers in their past years
http://www.shangri-la.com/corporate/about-us/shangri-la-culture/

Company Overview:
Shangri-La Asia, A Hong Kong based company is involved in ownership. The
Management and operation of the hotel and connected properties with over
26,000 people as employers. Their group is investment oriented based which
offers specifically in Asia (Shangri-La, 2012)

The Legendary group Shangri-La has about 65 companies from which 47 are
hotels and 17 are being managed and one of them is under operating lease these
have spread in Asia pacific , European region, North America and Middle East.
The Geographical Segmentations of Shangri-La, They have segmented their
business into seven geographic locations. Which are Philippians, Japan,
Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, People republic of China and other countries
like (Myanmar, Fiji, Maldives and Indonesia). The brand names that work under

this group are Shangri-la, Trader, Summer Palace, Shang Palace and Rasa
(Datamonitor, 2010).

Background To The Essay Topic

Before going into detail it is important that an explanation of strategic
management is understood the reason behind saying this is without
understanding strategic management it is very hard to speak about concepts.
Strategic management can be defined as the art and science of formulating,
implementing, and evaluating cross-functional decisions that enable an
organization to achieve its objectives. As this definition implies, strategic
management
focuses
on
integrating
management,
marketing,
finance/accounting, production/operations, research and development, and
information systems to achieve organizational success(David, 2014).
Objectives of the Essay:

Strategic analysis of the hotel which will recommend on performance and

implementation choice of strategies and evaluation of business and the
organisational problems.
To implement changes and problems for business decisions
Customer Loyalty as a Key asset for the business.
Needs for the Vision and Mission Statement for Shangri-La
Commitment towards financial success of the firm as well as employees.
Create a friendly environment where the staff can achieve their career
goals as well as personal objectives.
Creating social responsibilities and staying committed towards it by
building a positive communities, employees, business guests and
environment

Service Strategies:

According to (Johnson, Scholes, & Whittington, 2012) Strategy is the direction

and scope of an organisation over long term, which achieves advantage in a
changing environment through its configuration of resources and competencies
with the aim of fulfilling stakeholder expectations. And Strategic management
includes understanding the strategic position of an organisation, strategic
choices for the future and managing strategy in action (Johnson, Scholes, &
Whittington, 2012).
Service strategies consist of three main aspects which are Strategic position,
Strategic choices and Strategy in action (Johnson, Scholes, & Whittington,
2012).
Strategic Position
Strategic Choices
Strategy in Action.

Strategic Position:
To find out a strategic position of the company the various elements affecting
are strategic capabilities, environmental factors and influence and expectations
of Stakeholders. To find out the companys strategic position they have to know
the key factors affecting their strategic position which is their strengths,
weakness, threats and knowing the environment, culture, people affecting them
these all points comes into consideration while knowing the companys strategic
position. The analysis can be done through a SWOT or a PESTEL analysis.
With help of the tools used the company can identify its areas and sectors which
need evaluation or improvement and to make certain of increasing profitability
margin for their company.

Strategic Choices
Strategic choices are used to identify weather the company is going on the right
track and to check if their strategies might work and the processes by which the
strategies can be applied to the company. The company when they decide of
launching new products and markets into their business so they use this tool
which will help them succeed in the business. The tools used to evaluate are
Product life cycle, Ansofs model and five porters analysis. Five porters
analysis gives us a clear idea about the present market so than similar strategies

can be used by the company to put this into picture and the product life cycle is
used to check the growth of the company which speaks about the current stage
of the company (Johnson, Scholes, & Whittington, 2012).

Strategy used in action by the company.

A strategy in action helps us to determine the techniques which should be

implemented to the present strategy according to the existing market and how to
manage them adequately. The strategy in action tells us basically how we
evaluate our strategies and how we put them into action.
For the past respective years, Service quality has been taken into consideration
and being noted to improvise/innovate. The reason being said is to regulate
customer expectations on service quality and applying various measures for
meeting their demands and goals. The role of a hotel is to provide service to
world-wide travellers as they are service providers. As the competitions in
todays world is rapid and increasing in a fast pace, understanding the social
effects of culture on services transforms into an all the more segregating issue
for hospitality firms. According to the author (Kandampully & Suhartanto,
2000)The advantages of service product quality include the improvement of
customer being satisfied during their stay and keeping customer relationship,
having a positive word of mouth, the decline in staff turnover and operating
costs, the enlargement of market share, and the growth of profitability
(Kandampully & Suhartanto, 2000).
There are variations which differ from hotel to hotel with regards to service
quality, service cultures and service strategies. Each hotel has their own formed
service strategies and standards to ensure the guests are satisfied. The mission
statement of the company states that:
The Shangri-La Mission
To satisfy our guest time after time and by creating attractive experiences
straight from our hearts.

Hospitality Straight From The Heart

Shangri-Las history and their philosophy has always been SHANGRI-LA

HOSPITALITY from a caring family. Shangri-La in their Asian hospitality
history has always come across the unique characteristics enclosed.
With Shangri-Las Asian standards of hospitality their commitment to provide
guests with services enables them to stand out amongst our competitors.
Shangri-La holds the reputation of a world class hotel group as a foundation to
their quality. Shangri-La believes in pride without arrogance and is important to
them. Shangri-La takes pride in their achievements while being seemingly
humble.
Making an attempt to delighting customers always so they stay with us, aiming
to exceed expectations and overcoming consistency in value and quality in
products and services. Shangri-La hires professionals who lead their team and
sets up the latest trends in the market that are motivated by innovation and are
driven by excellence and have a good practice in achieving goals.
The Shangri-La Vision
To be the first choice for guests, business partners, colleagues and shareholders.
http://www.shangri-la.com/corporate/about-us/shangri-la-culture/our-visionmission/
During induction period proper training is given to the staff for the
understanding of the code of conduct for the development of their respective
departments. During induction period proper training is given to the staff for the
understanding of the code of conduct for the development of their respective
departments. While the induction program is going on the human resource
manager passes the new employees a booklet of the hotel which shows all the
department managers and followed by each department to itself. By providing
the manual guide provided to the new employees it gives them an idea about the
standards they have to follow in their day to day operational activity this give
the hotels a boost in effectiveness and performance in their job which
contributes to guest satisfaction.
Marketing is a technique/ strategy used for selling and advertising a product.
However, marketing does not mean exchange of goods but it also consists of
several other functions which decide the value of the products (Kotler &
Armstrong, 2004). Hotel profitability is based on various marketing strategies.
Segmentation is a necessity on different types of guests who visit the hotel to

understand the hotels demand in the current market. Marketing is the activity,
set of institutions, and processes for creating, communicating, delivering and
exchanging offerings that have value for customers, clients, partners and society
at large.
Target Market:
Marketing is the art and science of finding, retaining and growing profitable
customers (Kotler, Bowen, & Makens, 2014). Target market is known as the
overall term for gathering marketing which is under process towards a group
of people. A market segmentation is divided into groups with having an
intension of selling your product by promotion or promoting a product in a
different way to attract customers by marketing about their quality and the
key features about it. With the help of market segmentation it allows us to
target the market more specifically. It divides wider range of markets such as
male, female, teen, corporate, event organiser, price sensitive, quality sensity,
high class tourists which are divided into smaller segments in which the
people
are
differentiated
by
shared
characteristics.
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/discuss-difference-between-market-segmentation-target-marketing-1480.html

A target market process is basically linking customers needs to a marketing

strategic plan. A target market involves initially 3 stages which are
Segmentation, Targeting and positioning and in the later stages the hotel targets
the general population, Potential market, qualified market, Target market which
are all linked to customers (Carrara, 2006). Market segmentation has a link to
market needs to the hotels marketing plan. There is a process in segmentation
and target markets which are identifying what the market needs are and an
executive programme of marketing. According to (Oliver, 1980) What a market
basically looks for is Quality, Product quality and features, the expense for the
product, time consumption and convenience. An executive programme of
marketing consists of the 4 Ps Product, price, promotion and place.

(Kotler & Armstrong, 2004)

Shangri-La have 4 major segments in business i.e. Hotel ownerships and

operations, Development in properties this feature includes commercial
buildings and services, Hospitality services to third party hotels and group
owned hotels and the latest trend by Shangri-la in marketing is their private
Spa-suites which help the travellers to relax and restore their body and
balancing their mind.
http://www.ukessays.com/essays/marketing/marketing-analysis-for-shangri-lahotels-and-resorts-marketing-essay.php
Shangri-La is a 5 star luxury hotel its major target market comes from business
travellers and higher income travellers because it is located at a high class city.
Shangri-La aims to target families and business travellers the environment and
physical evidence offered by them is legendary and is just a spot for a good
relaxing vacation and Shangri-la is located in one of the major exotic
destinations in the world. Shangri-La always tries to create new strategies for
the existing market as per my personal experience when I had the honour to
work at Shangri-La throughout the whole week span the hotel is busy and
Shangri-La targets Business class guests as you will find the conference rooms
mostly busy and Shangri-La targets the international travellers as they have
various functions Like Weddings, Cocktail parties, Various events like
Company anniversarys Traditional weddings and Shangri-La have a very
demanding food menu and the guest love the environment and the physical
evidence provided to them for their value of money spent so the overall target
market by Shangri-La is achieved and the Customer Satisfaction level is also
fulfilled by Shangri-La (Lei & Justin). Shangri-La also targets families and they
have a separate section for the children play park and a childrens pool and
Shangri-La have many kinds of attractions like Underwater Aquarium, Water
Sports, Beach Parties, Beautiful lights etc.
The Key Stakeholders of Shangri-La:

(Shangri-La, 2012)
The Shangri-La group is dedicated towards its stakeholders the group always
seeks to engage its stakeholders in a peace and sound and respectful way (Sam,
2013). As we can see in the above diagram, the internal and the external stakeholders have been divided according to their importance; i.e; business,
environment, public, communities. This indicates how these stakeholders play a
vital role in the services provided by Shangri-la
http://www.shangri-la.com/corporate/about-us/corporate-socialresponsibility/focus-areas/stakeholder-relations/
Service experience:
In my experience at Shangri-la Rasa Sentosa, I had an overwhelming experience
in regards to working as well as experiencing the service provided to the guest.
From the time of arrival the guests are welcomed with a porter and they are
taken care of with an amazing experience of a Mercedes travel direct to the
hotel with comfort and complete satisfaction of a WOW service. Friendliness of
staff will be witnessed and help for any kind of assistance the hotel itself has a
legendary view which has about 15 acres of pure greenery around the hotel and
a beautiful sentosa beach and Shangri-La also has various activities like water
sports and an amazingly beautiful underwater aquarium. Shangri-La also
provides a tour bus for the guests to experience the greenery and beauty around
the premium city there is a bus arranged by the hotel every 30 minutes. Visiting
the grand Shangri-la is a beautiful and delightful experience all together with
complete satisfaction towards the end and a guest would definitely want to
come back to the hotel as they maintain their vision of guests being their first
choice of hotel. In terms of Shangri-Las service provided they have a beautiful

beach facing speciality restaurant where there is a music band every evenings
from 7pm to night 10 pm which gives a wonderful feeling for the Resort hotel
and every guest is treated with care and affection as they are part of our family.
During Christmas time there is a big Christmas tree at the lobby the General
Manager along with the sales and marketing staff along with the managers and
the employees sing Christmas carols and every guest in the hotel is invited for
the party and every guests are given a special discount voucher for Christmas
which the guest did not expect and they were more than happy. The service
provided and the expected outcome received by the customer always exceeds
their expectation and that is what makes Shangri-La special and unique
maintaining and creating a friendly atmosphere and fulfilling their concept
towards customers as well as internal and external stakeholders. Shangri-La
staff are professional and they can predict what a guest expects and this
professionalism is highly commended by guests as in my experience i had an
incident where there was a guest who just checked in and i was assisting the
guest to the room along with my manager the guest was not feeling to well as
soon as she predicted that the guest was not well she straight away called for
medicines and the guest was extremely happy and overwhelmed by the service
provided to her which was unexpected she even wanted to tip the manager but
she refused to take and she told her to have a wonderful stay at the hotel with a
beautiful smile and the guest was thankful with all her heart. The recent service
added at Shangri-La was the private spa service this delighted the customers and
gave them a good peace of mind and enjoyed the feeling of being at a luxury
hotel.

Service Outcome
The outcome received by the guest was over their expectations because
Shangri-La provides service straight from the heart and they mean it. ShangriLa staff follows the Asian hospitality trend which is being followed from over
40 years. As a first time guest to be at Shangri-La he/she will be at a total
surprise at my experience because when i started my work there i did not expect
the city of sentosa to be so rich and premium so the outcome is definitely going
to be excellent. My outcome was excellent with no negative feedback towards
the hotel because the hotel was more than helpful with me with all my problems
and if requested the hotel even provided a drop facility if in any problem.

Shangri-La does not have shortage of staff they do not compromise a single bit
in terms of guest satisfaction because they wish to keep a personal relationship
with their guests and ensure that the guest is always welcome to the hotel. There
was no kind of dissatisfaction towards employees because as the employees
were promised regarding to work and their schedule they were no changes made
to their agreement comparing to the Indian hotels in my past experience when i
was working we did not have a fixed time to leave that resulted in total
dissatisfaction towards work and excellence in service could not be fulfilled this
is one of the reasons why Shangri-La are perfect in all aspects of Hospitality.

Points of Failure:
Certain points of failure can be their pricing towards their rooms and deluxe
room as well s suites. High prices in restaurant can be a negative factor towards
hotels. Souvenirs are also highly priced in the store in the hotel. There have
been many mistakes in dockets where they charge to the room rate and at the
end of the checkout the price come very high so a balance is pricing and the
guest should be informed for every payment made. A renovation must be taken
care of because this can lead to customer expectation because of the regular
guest expect something new in the hotel because they keep visiting and may
think at the back of their minds that the hotel need renovation since they still
have their old design to the hotel that factor makes it unique but not all the guest
would accept it. From the list of Shangri-La groups according to my research
the Shangri-La located at Fiji have and had the most complains which result in
complete dissatisfaction towards guests this is a big point of failure in my point
of view as well as the costs of rooms cost of restaurant is over the roof.
Housekeeping also is a slow process in the Fiji outlet and customers who visit
the Fiji Shangri-La are mostly dissatisfied because of no improvements done to
the hotel and the pricing of the hotel. Complains like leaking of roof, Food not
being good at the Fiji outlet and pricing was skyrocketing.
Service Level Benchmarks:
Shangri-La offers a high value and quality of service and products which
increase the brand value of the hotel and provides maximum customer
satisfaction. Products and services are differentiated due to target marketing.
Huge advertising in commercials. Reward employees for their high standard
services making employees valuable and motivating them so they can work

more efficiently. Fast process management to give fast services to guests to

attain guest satisfaction. Creating a loyalty programme which creates a better
relationship. Having a special programme for culture training specifically for
the hotel. A Shangri-La 2000 programme was to be launched where this was
suppose to change the companys organisation structure which are classification
of values of the hotel, Increased emphasis on measuring performance of the
company in different areas.
Recommendations:
Shangri-La hotels need to make some investments to their firm because they are
still in the developing process. In order to expand the new market for a
particular product or for the product line offerings it is important for the hotels
to include the advanced facilities and services in their market plan with the
growing trends in the hotels. Shangri-La is at a growing stage so PLC need to
expand and develop them to gain in the US and UK markets as in todays
generation the scope for hotel industry is high. Shangri-La should refine their
strategies to get more market value. The organization should concentrate on its
economic condition as the companys debt increases from year to year which
could directly affect the operational values of the hotel. This would also affect
their expansion power to various places as they wont have any adequate
amount to invest. They should also consider concentrating on their occupancy
rates as the revenue also demoralizes due to the impact of low-occupancy which
is a very critical issue when it comes to operations or business of the hotel. They
should be aiming at the neighboring developed countries as the flow of business
from their would have a great impact on their financial status globally thus
impacting in a positive way on their brand name. Also, the labor costs have
increased the margin of rise in overall costs affecting the group in whole. Since
recession has taken a toll, the slow progress in global economy have thus
affected its market share. Since it is a resort close to the sea, it should take
safety precautionary measures to safeguard themselves and be prepared for any
natural calamities. The guests have a lot of options due to high performing
competitors they should make sure that the pricing and the service quality and
standards. They should try and expand across the western countries as there are
no laws on prostitution, nightclubs, and strip clubs. They need to ensure
sustainability in different country as the law and regulations are different
everywhere.

I would like to conclude by sharing that Shangri-la being one of the best resorts
across the globe has reached a level where guests would enjoy going and having
fun or spend their leisure time.
The provided service by Shangri-La this author concludes is one which provides
satisfaction to both lower, mid and upper class. This being said, the hotel itself
still is in need of improvement. Shangri-la is seemingly lacking in interpersonal
face to face customer interaction. There is a distinct lack of an inability to
measure and understand customer personality.

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