How the Coronavirus Pandemic will affect the Hotel Industry.

Background

In BUMKT2601, you have learned about redesigning processes in services industries. Currently, many newspaper and Internet articles are covering how the hotel industry will redesign its processes in response to the coronavirus pandemic. Any redesign will have to consider the balance between quality and productivity carefully. 

Requirements

You are to consider how the Four Seasons Hotel chain will achieve that balance in response to the current environment. Some of the key questions and theories you should consider are:

1. In what ways will customers now change their assessment of the five Dimensions of Service Quality (i.e. Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Empathy, Tangibles)?

2. Which hard and soft measures will the Four Seasons Hotel chain use to measure its service quality?

3. Which tools (e.g. Fishbone, Pareto) are suitable to analyse the service problem of new and/or redesigned processes?

4. How will Four Seasons improve service reliability without becoming uneconomical?

NB: Please address any other salient issues and apply appropriate theories/concepts that you feel are not covered by the above four points. 

Sources of information

Chapters 14 & 15 of the set textbook covers relevant topics, and Video 15 on the BUMKT2601 Moodle site shows how the Four Seasons Hotel has built a world-class service organisation before the pandemic. The Four Seasons website will also give you some insight into how it is currently adapting.

The above are some of the sources that you should use but you are expected to use a total of 10-12 sources. Normally, the majority of these sources would be academic texts and journal articles. However, because the coronavirus is so current, many of these sources will not refer to the coronavirus. Therefore, your sources are likely to be a balance of the set text, academic sources, and articles from electronic media (e.g. websites). Remember, they should still be credible sources, though.