Case Study: The Mount Rundle Hotel Banff

Background Information
Banff, a resort town with a population of 6,700, and one of Canadas most popular tourist
attractions, is the largest town in Banff National Park in Canada. Suited at 4,800 feet, it is
the highest elevated town in Canada and is surrounded by Mount Rundle, Mount
Norquay and Sulphur Mountain. Banff National Park sees an influx of four million
tourists every year, and brings more foreign tourists than anywhere else in Canada. A
large number of employees working in the hospitality sector are from different nations as
a result of the employment market being very tight. The Mount Rundle Hotel, belonged
to the Encore Hotels Group and had 65 well-furnished rooms. The hotel priced itself at
the upper end of the price spectrum.

Issue statement
The main issues in this case are failures in customer service delivery and unsuccessful
recovery actions. This service delivery failure escalates into a major problem and fullfledged confrontation between hotel management and the customer (Steve McKenzie).
Symptoms:
1. High-end hotel but with poor room service. Housekeeping staff playing catch football
in the hallways. No one helped the customers to carry their luggage. Room hadnt been
cleaned, it was usually improperly stocked, or not stocked at all.
2. High-grade decoration but with unreasonable design. Hotels in-house restaurant is
under customers room, which makes the room smelled like bacon and eggs. There are
two superfluous stairs that led to the room. As a result it is not convenient to walk or
carry up luggage.
3. Bad problem solving and communication skills. The hotel charged the customers
credit card without any authorization. After corresponding numerous times, the hotel still
didnt give any solutions and refused to budget even an inch.
4. There are problems in room reservation services. Lack of communication between
Expedia and hotel. The customer booked room through Expedia, but Expedia did not
charge. And the hotels website had quoted higher prices than Expedia.
5. There are accounting mistakes unnoticed and unreported for six months. As a result,
accounting department decided to fix the mistake by charging customers credit card
without authorization.
Root causes:
1. Poor operations management and no clear procedure. Because of the inadequacy of the
general manager, there is an operational weakness in the human resources policy and
day-to-day management of the hotel, which led to misunderstanding between hotel and
customer, as well as accounting department mistakes.
2. Lack of employee training and bad hiring. Because of the very tight market, hotel has
to hire a large number of employees from different nations. For example, the front desk
staff was a college student and apparently did not receive good training. Unprofessional
staff and lack of training led to poor service and customer dissatisfaction.
3. No customer-oriented attitude. The hotel focus on internal systems rather than
customer-oriented. The hotel general manager has an inward focus, more intent on
managing internal company systems and processes than catering to customers needs.

Recommendation
1. In order to solve the customers discontent, the Mount Rundle hotel should
immediately offer sincerely apology to customer for what hotel had done and promise to
improve the customers services.
2. Make customer service surveys. Ask advice from customers, especially dissatisfied
customers. According to the results of survey, the hotel should take actions or make some
promotion activities.
3. Clean up internal management. Redesign and set up standard procedure of customers
service, such as check in, check out, room service, room clean, and payment.
3. Hire professional staff with right attitude. It is always important to recruit and hire the
right person especially in the service industry. In order to do that, the hotel human
resource department should make clear job description, requirements and qualification
when recruiting new employees. In addition, some pre-employment assessments and
personality testing should also be included. The person who has attitude issues should not
be hire from the very beginning.
4. Ongoing staff training and development. Create well-established on-boarding process.
Provide continues training which focused customer service to employees, as well as
management level. Find ways to motivate staff like creating some incentive programs.
5. Establish corporate culture, put customer as primary. Right now, the manager of hotel
think that it does not matter if a customer returned or not. This attitude will lead to lose
more customers. The Mount Rundle hotel must become a totally customer-focused
organization. In order to do that, from the top down, they must believe that they work for
the customers.
6. Make more frequent quality control assessment of operations. Good quality of service
is the key to retain customers. So it is critical to provide high quality service to customers.
In order to do that, the Mount Rundle hotel should make more frequent quality control
assessment for every aspect in operation.

Summary
The Mount Rundle Hotel, located in Banff, belonged to the Encore Hotel Group. It priced
itself at the upper end of the price spectrum. However, customer service delivery failure
and unsuccessful recovery actions led to a major problem and full-fledged confrontation
between customer Steve McKenzie and hotel management. These problem arise from
poor operation management, lack of employee training and bad hiring, and no customeroriented attitude. In order to correct mistake, restore the hotel image, and retain
customers, the Mount Rundle hotel must take actions immediately, which include offer
apology to customers, make customer survey, set up standard procedure, hire professional
staff, provide ongoing training, and establish customer-oriented corporate culture, etc.