Portman Hotel Co. Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

The Portman Hotel Company

Problem Statement

The problem identified in the case is that The Portman Company is facing the issue of high turnover among the Personal Valet which is almost 50%. The morale of PV’s has gone down because their expectations were not met and they were angry. Along with this, increasing complaints by the guests’ have also been a major concern for the management. The increasing cost was also a concern which threatened to raise the level of overhead for the company considerably.

Data analysis

The problem identified in the case is basically the high turnover among employees or the Personal Valet who consider that the structure of the hotel is too much de-centralized. They have to wait for many days before they can actually discuss their problems with the supervisor. As one of the Persona Valet stated “The supervisors are very less in number and we have to make decisions ourselves in chaos and hurry. We keep trying to find a supervisor who is not available to solve our problems.” After the first interview none of the PV’s met Scott. In fact everything was too much de-centralized and based on personal understanding and decisions, which actually accounted for all the conflicts and chaos.

Secondly, the management assumed that the amount of tip for each Personal Valet would be around $200 per week; however it turned out to be $40 for every PV. This was quite demotivating for them because initially they were pretty sure and confident about getting tips in excess of $200 per week. The reduced amount of tips was initially because of the low occupancy in the initial phase of the hotel but it was mainly because of the lack of understanding of the concept of a Personal Valet. The concept of Personal Valet was more common in Asian region where travelers understood the concept. But in America, people were not aware about this concept. This was the basic reason for low amount of tips for each PV.

Another concern was the content of job of each Personal Valet. At the time of hiring, they were told that their job description would include 50% of cleaning the rooms while the remaining 50% of the job description would be to serve guest which would include ironing their clothes, buying them books, booking tickets for a movie, etc. However, in practice, each PV had to clean 80% of their time which was a frustrating factor for the Personal Valets. The problem they faced was that while cleaning the bathroom a guest might buzz them and they had to rush to serve them “sweaty and smelly” to reply back the buzzer. All PV’s felt the system was too decentralized with no central character. Along with this, working with other departments was also a problem. They had frequent problems with other group of workers regularly. PVs felt that porters were too slow to respond to their requests to carry the bags of guests which had to make them wait for a long period. PVs felt that the slow response of porters was making them loose the tips. PVs felt that all other groups treated them like maids rather than considering them as crucial group in the development of the Portman Hotel business.

Another problem faced by Personal Valet was that they had to service clients on different floors, which made it difficult for PVs to develop long-term relationship with the guest to serve them in the future also. Another problem which PVs faced was the fact that permanent personal valets and floaters were unaware of each other’s work ethics. Floaters were unable to develop relationship with guests. However permanent personal valet thought floaters are stealing their tips. It was a general perception that floaters were careless and they hurt team’s loyalty because they were constantly serving a single client whereas, they had to move around based on the requirement.

Although the idea with 5-star plan was to deal with the problems and remove them but in fact this did not happen. Another problem which came their way was the work ethics. Private valets complained about discipline and accountability. They were concerned that there was no system to work out problems. Both private valets and supervisors were concerned with 5-star system. The felt confused between floaters and slouches. The quality was also suffering because instead of seven rooms, each valet had to clean 10 rooms. The problem which Scott, the Director of guest service faced was that he had to listen to 10 to 15 PV complaints each day and all of them wanted their problem solved within a day. This was not possible for Scott to manage in a single day. And while he conducted a meeting with all Personal Valets’ he had to listen to opinions of every PV which were all different and very strong. Along with this the ethics of work at Portman Hotel was also quite an issue at the hotel. According to PVs, slouches disrupt the whole working at the hotel. They did not perform their duties as they should have actually done.

With all the discussed problems, the management was concerned about the fact that initially they thought of keeping the structure de-centralized by making PVs stay on the same position but grow in their jobs constantly. However, with the increasing problems among PVs and the supervisors with the less number of PVs, management decided to increase two more supervisors. However, the problem was still not resolved and because of the expensive labor cost in the region; the management was concerned about the increased cost.

Affected most by the issue

Personal Valet are the ones who are most affected by the situation because as the case states, Portman Hotel management had a vision to hire people that were talented rather than experienced and who could serve all kinds of guests as per their preference. Along with this, the unsatisfied customers were also the stakeholders to the situation because in the end, a satisfied customer matters.

What do the numbers tell you?

The chart which shows the figures and the reason for attrition explains that initially during the early months, more PVs were terminated because the management did not know the exact way to manage such a system where PVs would serve the guests. Therefore, the termination percentage was 100% in the first month and in the second month as well. But gradually, the statistics changed in the third month March, where attrition because of termination reduced to 33%. As the year ended, the termination of PVs was reduced considerably but the number of resignations increased to more than 80%. The company or the management was looking to reduce the number of turnover of PVs because it was hampering the services and making the guests unsatisfied. Therefore, as the chart shows that the management had to reduce the number of resignation to maximum 20% within the next six months.

Suggested Alternatives

With the current situation identified in the case where the PVs are down with their morale, guests are not satisfied with the services and the management is worried about the extra cost that is incurred by centralizing the organizational structure. Therefore, following are the suggested alternatives which the management can consider to overcome the situation.

Team Captain

The first suggested alternate to the current situation is to create a new position within each team known as a “team captain”. The purpose of the team captain will be to report the supervisor and communicate all issues and concerns of each PV to the supervisor. The captain will not only be the bridge or the communicator between the management and the PV, but he................

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The new hotel has opened a new service strategy: import to America in the Asian style with butler service, as a member of a group called personal valet. To achieve this high level of service, the hotel pays great attention to its human resources, considering that the quality of its services will depend on the quality and motivation of people, it articulates a number of employees' rights, "he tells employees are enforceable in court. After the opening of the staff are happy and highly motivated, but soon the morale and quality problems develop. Students should assess the human resource at the theory and practice of management in the light of these problems. "Hide
by Charles C. Heckscher, Philip Holland Source: HBS Premier Case Collection 13 pages. Publication Date: Feb 03, 1989. Prod. #: 489104-PDF-ENG