Introduction
Keeping an organization running and meeting the increasingly demanding quality standards while also introducing innovative services and products is a tremendous challenge for most organizations. However, for companies with years of market presence and a well-built brand, the specified requirement is an absolute necessity. Marriott Hotels is one of those companies that must accommodate the most demanding request of its customers with impeccable quality and speed of delivery. However, due to recent hurdles in the implementation of innovative techniques and tools for keeping information management consistent, Marriott Hotels needs an urgent revisiting of its approaches toward inventory management. In addition, Marriott Hotels needs to update its approach toward integrating technology into its project management and the delivery of key hospitality-related services to its customers. By incorporating the tools such as
Analysis: Project Management and Technology
Current Business Operations: Evaluation
Cost
There is no need to emphasize the devastating effect that the Covid-19 pandemic has had on the hospitality industry worldwide. Unfortunately, Marriott Hotel has been no exception to the observed trend, as the range of expenses suffered by the company has increased exponentially over the past two years (Mooney, 2020). Given the corresponding tremendous drop in the number of customers and the changes in the flight schedules, Marriott Hotel’s current cost-related prospects are far from being bright (Mooney, 2020). Specifically, Marriott’s CEO, Sonerson noted a “full-year minus-50% RevPAR number,” which is expected to develop into an even force second quarter (Mooney, 2020). According to Sonerson, “A full-year minus-50% RevPAR number” (Mooney, 2020).
Production
Regarding the production, specifically, the creation of the setting in which the required services are delivered, one should mention Marriott Hotel’s inability to adapt its leadership framework toward the specifics of other countries. As a result, the corporate values and standards currently promoted at Marriott Hotel are not translated properly into the setting of other cultural environments, which hampers the provision of essential services, including booking, room service, transportation, feedback, and other options, to the target audiences (Ramphal & Nicolaides, 2018).
Delivery of Products or Services
The issue of service delivery presently poses the greatest issue for Marriott Hotels, mostly due to the company’s dismissal of the opportunities that IT and ICT tools provide. Specifically, the current rates of information management at Marriott Hotels are quite low, according to recent reports. For instance, the 2019 statistical data concerning the extent of customers’ satisfaction with the provided services, while being rather stable, still represents a noticeable dive since 2018, during which, in turn, the company saw a tangible decline after the stellar performance in 2013 (“American customer satisfaction index scores for Marriott hotels in the United States from 2008 to 2020,” 2021). Therefore, it is strongly recommended that Marriott Hotel should revisit its approach to providing customer services.
When considering the problems in the current management of customers’ needs at Marriott Hotel, one should explore the issue form three main perspectives. These are the delivery of room services and the related processes, the management of feedback obtained from customers, and the processing of the information that travels across the company in the process of project management and the delivery of said services to customers in question. Due to Marriott’s almost deliberate neglect of the opportunities that technological advances provide, problems start to emerge at the point of locating customers’ data and setting key objectives for the emergent project.
Technology Enhancement: Benefits
Managing Inventory
Despite the gloomy prospects that Marriot Hotels has been witnessing, there is a chance for the organization to manage the current challenge and introduce a more suitable approach. The proposed framework will require paying closer attention to the technological opportunities and performing a complete update of Marriot Hotels’ technological inventory, from information management tools to the key equipment used for internal tasks, such a room services. The fact that Marriott has been adhering to the principles of the FIFO (first in, first out) framework has been allowing the company to minimize costs by ensuring that the key tasks are prioritized and that services are performed in the set order (Sanchez & Terlizzi, 2017). Additionally, the FIFO framework has led to minimizing waste while maintaining to provide luxury services to the target audience (Sagawa et al., 2021). As a result, Marriott Hotels has become more sustainable in its management of resources and the available inventory.
Resource Planning
Similarly, the principle of sustainability has also seeped into the strategy that Marriot Hotels has been deploying to plan its resources. At the same time, one should note the drastic lack of technological innovations in the list of inventory at Marriot Hotels. Despite the fact that the company’s services have been consistently luxurious and exquisite, the application of IT and ICT devices to the management of customers’ need has been, at best, passable. The issue of resource planning could be linked to the recent concerns associated with the manner in which the organization has been managing its security.
Namely, due to the poor arrangement of the existing tools for data management and information control, Marriot Hotels has allowed an instance of Wi-Fi blockage and the resulting exposure of customers’ data (Ho et al., 2017). The specified situation could have been avoided, had the organization utilized its resources for data management properly and scheduled a maintenance process accordingly. With a timely and thorough update of the existing system, Marriot Hotels will be able to address the issues of resource management and planning, particularly, in relation to the appropriate usage of tools for minimizing the risks of data leakage and ensuring the security and safety of its visitors.
Scheduling
The issue of scheduling also deserves a mentioning as one of the core reasons for concern. Specifically, Marriot Hotels has been noticed for its issues with the management of time constraints (Tshehla, 2019). The introduction of digital tools for time management could help to prevent the cases of delays from happening (van Besouw & Bond-Barnard, 2021). Specifically, the GTD methodology, which allows for mental decluttering and compartmentalizing of key tasks within the project management structure (Gan et al., 2020). At Marriott, the specified tool would involve streamlining the tasks associated with the processing of customer data, setting goals for meeting the identified demands, implementing the said goals while controlling quality, and providing the specified services to the customer (Lee et al., 2020). Thus, the issues with delays could be addressed accordingly and avoided in the future.
Mitigating Performance Gap with Technology
The observed gap in Marriott’s current approach toward managing its costs and keeping its performance rates positive in the wake of the global crisis will become possible once the current technological standards are updated. Specifically, Marriot Hotels will have to focus on integrating digital tools into its process of procuring key services, as well as managing communication at all stages of its project management. The issue of customer communication and processing of the provided feedback is of particular value to the company. Therefore, it is strongly suggested that Marriot Hotels should develop an application that would allow customers to communicate with the organization’s representatives directly. Thus, the quality of communication will be improved, and the available technological advances will be utilized to the best of their potential. Therefore, it is strongly advised that Marriot Hotels should start its foray into the ICT environment by building a digital application for quality management and communication enhancement.
Conclusion
Although Marriott has a comparatively positive reputation and a long-established history of operating in the hospitality industry, the organization has been delivering rather subpar results recently due to the lack of innovative technology and the resulting mismanagement of information during project management. In order to address the specified concern, Marriott Hotels will require an elaborate approach toward its project management implementation. So that the company could meet the increasingly high quality requirements. For this reason, the principles of agile project management will be required. Specifically, the introduction of the agile techniques will contribute to the enhancement of information management and, therefore, will lead to an improvement in the quality and speed of requests management. As a result, Marriott Hotels will be able to process customers’ requests with greater diligence and efficacy, which, in turn, will lead to higher customer satisfaction rates and build customer loyalty toward the brand.
References
American customer satisfaction index scores for Marriott hotels in the United States from 2008 to 2020. (2021). Web.
Gan, Y., Jiang, A., & Heng, L. (2020). Interaction design of office supplies based on GTD. E3S Web of Conferences, 179, p. 1.
Ho, T., Zhao, J., & Dooley, B. (2017). Hotel crimes: An unexplored victimization in the hospitality industry. Security Journal, 30(4), 1097-1111.
Lee, A. Y., Moon, K. M., & Kim, S. C. (2020). Barriers to success of project management. Journal of the Society of Korea Industrial and Systems Engineering, 43(3), 179-190.
Mooney, J. (2020). Marriott CEO details ‘heart-wrenching’ cost cutting in COVID-19 response. Web.
Ramphal, R. R., & Nicolaides, A. (2018). Intelligent consistency-Ethical practices of Lean Six Sigma in quality service provision in the hospitality industry. African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure, 7(3).
Sagawa, K., Shimakawa, Y., & Goto, H. (2021). Two-level priority scheduling framework in a max-plus linear representation. SICE Journal of Control, Measurement, and System Integration, 1-7.
Sanchez, O. P., & Terlizzi, M. A. (2017). Cost and time project management success factors for information systems development projects. International Journal of Project Management, 35(8), 1608-1626.
Tshehla, M. F. (2019). Determining critical success factors of construction projects in the hospitality industry: A conceptual framework. African Journal of Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure, 8(5), 1-9.
van Besouw, J., & Bond-Barnard, T. (2021). Smart project management information systems (SPMIS) for engineering projects–project performance monitoring & reporting. International Journal of Information Systems and Project Management, 9(1), 78-97.