Case Study: Penang Mutiara

BACKGROUD OF THE STUDY

Mutiara Beach Resort Penang heralds a new standard for Asian resort hotels. Located on a prime beachfront at Teluk Bahang, otherwise known as the 'glowing bay', it nestles in 7.3 hectares (18 acres) of landscaped tropical greenery. All 438 of its spacious rooms enjoy sea and garden views. Here in this paradise of comfort and luxury, it has been claimed that nothing is unusual.

The name Mutiara means 'pearl' and is also a term of endearment in the Malay language.  A perfect description for an extraordinary resort with a lively Malaysian personality.

Penang Mutiara is one the luxurious hotels in South-East Asia. Owned by Pernas-OUE of Malaysia and managed by Singapore Mandarin International Hotels.Penang Mutiara wants to give to its customer the quality of service. And it also wants to give everything what its guests’ wants and needs.

Penang Mutiara’s objectives are to give fast response to every customer request (SPEED), to keep its promise to be of service to their guests (DEPENDABILITY), and to be flexible to every guest request.  The hotel believes that it is the impeccable customer service they are giving to their guests which gives them competitive advantage.

The hotel is very careful never to compromise the quality of its service in order to cut costs. Good service means that guest s return again and again. The more guests, the higher utilization of rooms and restaurants, so in the end, it’s the quality of our service which keeps the hotel’s volume high and costs low.

STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM

How to improve the operations and sustain the competitiveness of   Penang Mutiara as a leading hotel in Southeast Asia.

OBJECTIVES

1.     To be able to identify new operation strategies for Penang Mutiara to continuously give its guests the quality hotel service.

2.     To be able to identify areas in operations wherein improvements can be done.

3.     To be able to describe how quality, speed, dependability, flexibility and cost impact on the hotel’s external customers and its benefits internally.

ASSUMPTIONS OF THE STUDY

1.     Implement and develop long term strategies to be able to compete with the other premier hotel.

2.   Develop the internal strategies to ensure the  quality of service and low costs of operations

3.     Build a long term relationship to its new and old customers.

AREAS OF CONSIDERATION

1.     Training and development of staff

2.     Planning & Staffing

3.     Marketing & Service innovations

4.     Operations and management improvement

5.     Welfare and motivation to employees

ANALYSIS

Strengths                                                                       

1.     Luxury hotel (top-of-the-market-hotel)

2.     High-quality service

3.     Multi-skilled employees

4.     Very relaxing atmosphere

5.     High utilization of rooms

6.     Stylish and top class facilities

7.     Experienced management

Weaknesses           

1.    Small number of employees

2.    High-cost (especially on food and beverages)

3.    Lack of long term plans

4.    Weak marketing strategy

Opportunities

1.    Service Innovation s( use of internet)

2.    Maximum  utilization of resources

3.    Partnership with other firms such as airlines

                                                                                           

Threats 
               1.        Emergence of new hotels 
              2. Tourism  related issues 
             3. High expectations of customer 
             4. Globalization of markets 
             5.    Social responsibility

ANALYSIS ON HOW SPEED, DEPENDABILITY, FLEXIBILITY AND QUALITY AFFECT THE SERVICE TO CUSTOMERS AND ITS INTERNAL BENEFITS

Speed

Speed means do thing fast. Speed means fast response to requirements of external customers or new conditions, speedy decision making and speedy movement of materials and information inside the operation. It’s benefit are:

1.   Speed reduces inventories - reducing i inventories mean increasing the utilization of rooms and restaurant, that fast cleaning and preparing the available rooms and dinner tables for external customers adds revenue for organization, and improving the efficient of working.

2.   Speed adds flexibility - fast response adds the capability for operations to the flexibility dealing with urgent things.

3. Speed adds dependability - fast delivering for the latest information among other department of operations, such as the newest customer entrance information, available room information, adds the dependability for each internal operation’s coordination and communication.

Dependability

Dependability means do things on time. Dependability means well management and coordination with each operation ensuring other process. are reliable, such as delivering right material or information on time, correct foreseeing and planning the facilities, reorder and workforce. It leads to more effective operation. It effectively arranging the facilities, information, material, workforce, money and time to ensure all of them can be available at any time, saves the time to wait or to look for the other substitutes. Dependability arrangement reduces the chance of repeating input resources or some resources leaving unused increasing the cost of maintain or store fee, or labor cost.

Flexibility

Flexibility means change what you do. It means according different requirements or things to fast handle with, making change or decisions , flexibility arranging and coordinating operations’ work.

1.      Flexibility saves resources - can prevent unnecessarily repeating planning, spending, and using resources such as time, money, workforce, to follow the traditional ways to do things done.

2.      Flexibility increase speed of response - being able to give fast service for customers depends on the operation being flexible. Flexible operations speedily transfer extra skilled staff and equipment to the urgent conditions and emergencies will provide the service with other customer’s needs.

Quality

Quality means ‘doing things right’. For Mutiara, quality means consistently producing impeccable services, using top-class and durable materials to create the right impression and environment, and anticipating and preventing all potential problems in advance. It is benefit to make life easier inside the operation.

1. Good quality leads to stable and efficient processes that less mistake, easy for coordination for matching the standard of processes, dependable and advance equipments and tools to use adds dependability for internal customer.

2.   It reduces cost for Mutiara due to it is fewer the chance to make mistakes. Redoing or correcting mistakes, or to reducing confusion or irritation for each people; second, it also reduces the labor cost. Dispelling some serious troubles or problem always needs more staff or more time to do it, thus, it results in the labor cost added, such as part-time salary, overtime compensation. The more minimizing mistakes, the more minimize the excess labor costs to pay for doing excess works; third, less mistake and using top-class and durable materials also result in saving expenditures such as maintaining fee, cost of materials resulted by mistakes, transporting fees, and other excess expenditures.

ALTERNATIVE COURSES OF ACTION

1. Expand its business in other areas to acquire more market shares against other high-class and strong competitors in the whole Asia region, or even in the world.
2. Through concession and alliance with other business such as tour companies, ocean & safari theme park, movie companies, golf or car club, complete set of hotel industry which is gathering tour, amusement, business and relaxation together.
3. Upgrade technology such as wireless internet, website, including introduction of hotel services, traffic map, resource and promotion information, booking on line and e-payments
4. Develop marketing strategies to widen up market share, such as offering difference holiday traveling packages, discounts and loyalty cards.
5. Continues improvement internally by developing Total Quality Management (TQM), Kaizen, and 5S system and ISO standards.
6. Monitor customer’s feedback by developing centralized customer relation office which conducts satisfaction survey.
7. Offer continual training for staff to improve the standard quality of services, English and Foreign language speaking, handling these new automatic  system and internet using.

8.   Adding the advertisement through TV, internet, high-income reader journal or fashion magazines and newspaper.

CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATION

To conclude, even though Penang Mutiara managed to maintain its competitiveness with their current strategy, however it is not sufficient to remain competitiveness due to volatile market demand. Moreover, with the emergence of the global tourism, hospitality industry and globalization with competition from all over the hotel industry, the need to augment existing and new strategies need to be address speedily.

In order to compete for business and to keep abreast with stiff competition in the hotel industry. The hotel’s management should strengthen their marketing and operation strategies as a tool in increasing market share, prioritizing in developing website and upgrade the hotel facilities. Performance measurement by monitoring feedback and implement quality management. Also adopt proactive approach to enhance and maintain consistency in quality and level of services by conducting staff retrain and upgrading of skills. Reviewing new service standards, conduct regular focus group studies to predict future customer requirements, minimize and eliminate high employee turnover by taking good care of staff welfare, and exercise job rotation of staff to promote innovation and creativity in the job.

 .