Strategies used at Fortune Inn Rivera, Jammu for ensuring Guest Satisfaction.

At Fortune Inn Rivera management has divided strategies into two folds namely for Hotel Section i.e. Rooms and other for Restaurant Section i.e. Food & Beverages. First lets talk about Hotel Section, Management at the Hotel Section has laid down 4 stages of handling the guest i.e. they entertain guests in 4 different sections to ensure complete Guest Satisfaction for their guests. The management first of all identifies the nature of the Guest Coming to the Hotel before planning the 4 main stages of Guest Handling. Nature of guest refers to the type of the guest, i.e. First Time Guest or the Returning Guest; is he a Business Visitor or a Leisure Visitor; his preferences of the room and type of room etc. All these information helps the management to take a final decision of the steps to be taken in 4 basic stages of ensuring the Guest Satisfaction. After gathering this information management charts out the steps they need to take to ensure complete Guest Satisfaction i.e. WOW Experience, the 4 stages has been discussed as below: y Stage-1: Pre-Arrival Stage

In this stage they prepare the employees with the basic information regarding the Guest arriving. In this section they find out the time the guest will be arriving so that they can be prepared to welcome him at the Hotel Front Desk properly and in a sophisticated and well planned manner. After finding out the timings of the guest arrival they try to find out the preference of the guest coming which includes the type of service he or she expecting, the type of room he wants, any extra facilities, etc all this information is gathered through the reservation sheet as management at Rivera believes in gathering of More Information from the guest at the time of booking so that they can prepare for the services required by the guest. For this task they ensure that they get more information from the guest at the time of booking by asking all these options from the guest either through reservation sheet filled by the guest or through direct conversation with the guest, but if the guest is not booking the room directly then the agent or the intermediary booking on his behalf is asked about these questions and information is collected. y Stage-2: Arrival Stage

This is the stage which starts at the time guest actually arrives in the hotel. At the stage management ensures that the room to be assigned to the guest has been prepared and is up to the expectations of the guest including any preferences he has mentioned at the time of booking, management also sees that guest has been properly welcomed and greeted by the Front Desk Staff, for this purpose a Front Desk manager or the staff member goes to the entrance and welcome the guest personally, then to avoid the hassle for the Guest who might have reached the hotel
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through a tiring journey, management tries to keep the reservation card filled in advance so that at the time of check-in the guest should not have to wait for a long duration of time where he will have to fill the form, provide his id or passport, etc but all he requires to do is to sign the check-in form or the reservation card and then he is escorted to his room by a manager and is made a comfortable check in to the room assigned. y Stage-3: Occupancy Stage

During this stage management ensures that the guest staying the hotel is having all services he has asked and is paying for and is having comfortable stay at the hotel. If any complaint or dissatisfaction to any service is reported by the guest management makes sure to solve the issue as per their 15 minutes Response policy, whereby the Guest if responded with a possible solution within 15 minutes of the complaint made. But this policy is put into action after assessing the nature and priority of the complaint. y Stage-4: Departure Stage

At this stage management ensures that the Check-out of the guest is also made through a planned process as All is Well that Ends Well and if the end i.e. check-out would not be comfortable the whole experience of the guest will turn sour. To ensure a comfortable check out Front Desk sees off the guest with the same level of sophistication and greeting they have received the guest, and it is tried that the guest is been see off by the same manager who has received the guests at the time of his arrival; and again to make the check-out a hassle free operation management prepares the bill in advance and send it to the guest before check out time for his approval so that any correction if any required can be made on time and without giving any hassle to the guest and once approved sometimes guest is being offered with the facility of Wireless Credit Card Swiping machine so that the complete process can be carried out well in time and without any hassle for the guest and at the actual check-out all he is required is to sign the bill and credit receipt. This way the guest is provided a timeliness experience where he consumes all the services and enjoys them without experiencing any hassle. The tasks performed under the 4 stages are performed as per the set SOPs (Standard Operating Procedures) or Parameters established by the top level management to ensure delivery of Quality Services to the guest, at Fortune Inn Rivera-Jammu which is a subsidiary of ITC Group the Sops and Parameters are set by the ITC and by the Local Management as well and here set SOPs and Parameters include:    Greeting the Guest with Smile. Providing the Guest a Comfortable Stay. Providing him the Service as per his preference.
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Prepared by: Vishesh Gupta 24-MBA (HT)-10

Now talking about the Restaurant Section, Rivera Management make sure that the Guest Coming to enjoy the Services of Restaurant section gets the Service of such a Quality, which he expects from them. For this purpose management has devised some parameters which they have to follow while delivering the service to the guests, which are as follows:     Choice of an Extensive Menu covering the famous dishes of worlds best cuisines. Pricing the services in such a way that the Guests should not feel Over Charged or Under Charged. On time Service, i.e. Guests are not made wait for too long before enjoying the services. If possible, Guests are offered to sit in their preferred places, i.e. middle, side or front tables at the restaurant in order to make their experience a WOW experience.  Ambience should be such that the Guest feels comfortable while enjoying the Services, which mainly includes giving him privacy, sophisticated and peaceful environment, etc.  The chefs are required to follow a set parameters while preparing guest dishes until and unless requested by the guest, i.e. use of tastemakers are restricted to an extent.  All the dishes prepared go through a quality and presentation check before final presentation to the guest.

 Measurement of the Satisfaction Level

Once all the stages has been followed and the set SOPs and Parameters have been delivered Management seeks to receive the feedback of the guests through Comment Cards, Electronic Feed Back Forms or the Guest Service Feedback Forms (GSF); filled by the guest either during his stay, or at the time of check out or may be after the guest has checked out of the hotel. This is done in order to measure the level of satisfaction a guest has received. Measurement is done by the corporate specially hired for the purpose. Under this all the forms filled by the guest are entered into the computer systems and at the month end a detailed report is prepared by which management finds out the areas where the guests are Most Satisfied and Least Satisfied respectively.
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Corporate doing this valuation and preparing the report for the hotel also provides them a comparison report of various other hotels, so that the management can compare their service with other similar service providers and find out the areas where they are exceeding their competitors and also where they are lacking behind. Once the measured Guest Satisfaction level is available with the Management, the managers try to take all steps required to enhance the satisfaction level and to convert the dissatisfaction into satisfaction in the future service delivery process. Another way by which they assess the satisfaction level is by the number of repeated guests visiting Rivera, as the Management of Rivera believes that a Guest will only give them Repeat Business if he or she has been completely satisfied with the services he has experienced during his past visit to the hotel and if it happens then all the procedures followed by them are believed to be successful.

 Does this Service Quality enter into strategies and if yes then How?
These service qualities form the basis of strategies used at Fortune Inn RiveraJammu. Strategies are formed and altered time to time on the basis of the feedback received by the Guests as the Management always strive to enhance their operations and to reach the level where they can achieve 100% satisfactory feedback from their guests. Once they receive any kind of suggestion or negative feedback they try to find a solution to solve the issue, and if they achieve a satisfactory and long lasting solution to the problem they add it to their Set Standards or SOPs to enhance their overall performance in order to satisfy more number of guests in an enhanced way and if any of the Parameter or SOPs followed by the management is giving problems to the Guests, Management takes all possible steps to rectify it and if that is not possible then the respective Parameter or the SOP is left out for future strategies. So in short we can say that the parameters of the service quality are the foundation stones of the strategies formulated and followed by the Rivera Management to convert the Experiences of their Guests into WOW Experiences and to get repeated businesses form them in future.

Prepared by: Vishesh Gupta 24-MBA (HT)-10

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