Question

THE PALM OASIS SUITE HOTEL

Cody Michlon, manager of the Palm Oasis Suite Hotel in Miami Beach is requesting your help to improve the guest

experience at the hotel. Cody Michlon plans to remodel the front desk to provide a more customer-centric

experience and create an optimal level of staff efficiency and guest service. Historical data of arrivals during the

peak check-in time of 5:00PM to 7:00PM showed that an average of 80 guests arrive each hour. It takes an average

of 3 minutes for the front-desk clerk to register each guest.

Mr. Michlon wants to improve guest service by reducing the length of time that guests spend waiting in line.

CURRENT (PLAN 0): At present, the hotel has five clerks on duty, each with a separate waiting line.

PLAN I. The first proposal would designate one employee as a quick-service clerk for guests registering under

corporate accounts, a market segment that fills about 30% of all occupied rooms. Because corporate

guests are preregistered, the registration takes an average of just 2 minutes. With these guests separated

from the rest of the clientele, the average time for registering a typical guest would climb to 3.4 minutes.

Under this plan non-corporate guests would choose any of the remaining four separate lines.

PLAN II. The second plan is to implement a single-line system. All guests could form a single waiting line to be

served by whichever of five clerks became available. (The only difference between the current scenario

and this proposed Plan II is the line formation – currently it is set up with five separate lines one in

front of each of the clerks, this plan II proposes a single line that wraps around with a corral and the

next guest will go to the next available clerk). This option would require sufficient lobby space for

what could be a substantial queue.

PLAN III. The use of a self-service kiosk for check-ins is the basis for the third proposal. This kiosk would provide

about the same service rate as would a clerk, however, since check-ins are automated the service time

would be a constant 3 minutes. Because initial use of this technology is minimal, Cody estimates that

20% of customers, primarily frequent guests, would be willing to use this machine – hopefully this

percent will increase in the future. Cody would set-up a single queue for customers who prefer human

check-in clerks (the remaining 80% of the customers). This line would be served by only four clerks,

because of the space requirement for the self-serve kiosk and the extra expense of the technology.

PLAN IV. Please provide your suggestion for a “better” queuing system. Be sure to compare your performance

measures to the other plans. Your idea??????

INSTRUCTIONS: Prepare a one to two page Executive Summary which should include the following

Answer 1

Executive Summary

Mission:

To improve customer experience of the guests opting to stay at the THE PALM OASIS SUITE HOTEL by redesigning the guest check-in process to be a smoother and faster affair.

Current Situation:

The hotel has identified the time slot between 5 pm and 7 pm as a peak check in time, where they receive an average of 80 guests per hour. The current reservation set up is such that it has five clerks handling check-ins separately, which takes a time of 3 minutes per guest on average.

Proposed changes:

Since corporate guests account for 30% of the volume, there should not be any second thoughts about having a separate counter for these. Since, these guests are most likely repeat customers it would generate in them a feeling of being acknowledged as being special, which would go along way in achieving the mission – enhancing customer experience.

This activity however, would increase the average check in time for the regular guests to 3.4 minutes. In order to compensate that, the hotel should introduce the self check in kiosk. This would not only increase the perception of the hotel as an adopter of technology, but would also be a cost feasible option for the hotel in a long term perspective. Since this kiosk would engage about 20% of the guests, it would reduce the burden on the clerks and also decrease the average time required to process a check in.

The number of regular check ins would be halved due to the above mentioned implementations, and only 2 clerks would be able to handle these. The average time required to process these regular check ins would drop to 3 minutes again.

The concierge desk can be tasked with handing out pamphlets and fliers containing recommendations pertaining to site seeing options, popular places to visit, food and beverage outlets etc. This activity should include guests waiting in lines at all the four counters, this will help the guests beat the monotony of waiting and can also improve the prospect for the hotel to generate ancillary revenue.