Introduction
Alpine Inn and Spa is a 2-star hotel situated in South Lake Tahoe, California. Its 38 non-smoking rooms are equipped with air conditioning, television, ironing facilities, and tea and coffee makers. The hotel offers its guests free Wi-Fi and parking, as well as an outdoor swimming pool and a hot tub. It allows customers to check in with pets and has an environment that is friendly for disabled people. The major competitive advantage of the hotel is its location.
It is situated in close proximity to many restaurants and shops, a gondola station, Bijou Golf Course, and ski resorts. However, customers, attracted by such a favorable location, are often disappointed with the quality of service in Alpine Inn and Spa. Most complaints are concerned with rooms that are not clean enough and have broken facilities, and the hotel’s staff that either fails to solve customers’ problems or is not available when needed. The review of guests’ feedback demonstrates an urgent need for service improvement.
The Area of Opportunity
Alpine Inn and Spa has a great opportunity of attracting new visitors and converting them into loyal customers due to its favorable location. Such amenities as the swimming pool and a hot tub are an additional factor motivating customers to choose this hotel. However, Alpine Inn and Spa fails to meet customers’ expectations in terms of cleanliness. Recent research shows that cleanliness is the most significant parameter for choosing a hotel for 78% of visitors (Cresswell).
Guests expect their rooms to be generally clean and pay special attention to the cleanliness of their linen, toilets, and bathrooms (Cresswell). In Alpine Inn and Spa, customers are often dissatisfied with dirty towels, carpets, and bedclothes, litter in the pool, and broken things, such as towel racks or TV remote controls. It spoils the customer experience and undermines the hotel’s reputation. Therefore, improving cleanliness is an important area of opportunity for this service provider.
Potential Solutions
To address the identified area of opportunity, the organization should focus on its employees. Researchers have found that in the hospitality industry, the staff has a great influence on customer experience (Solnet and Golubovskaya 286). If a company’s management practices lead to employee satisfaction, employees are motivated to do their work better, which leads to customers’ satisfaction and loyalty (Solnet and Golubovskaya 286). For this reason, Alpine Inn and Spa should make sure its workers have a stimulus and the necessary resources to perform their duties properly. The hotel should educate its employees about the importance of cleanliness, provide them with effective and safe cleaning tools and products, and train them to use these tools efficiently.
Apart from supplying the staff with the necessary instruments and knowledge, the hotel should pay attention to monitoring the work of its employees. For example, Alpine Inn and Spa can employ mystery visitors. They would come to the place in the guise of ordinary guests, use all the facilities available, and draw up reports on the quality of service. Cresswell also suggests that employees should stay in the hotel rooms to understand the customer experience. Letting workers look at the hotel through the eyes of guests may help them to notice flaws that do not seem significant from an employee’s perspective.
One more solution to address the issue of cleanliness is to respond to customers’ complaints in a timely manner. Guests are dissatisfied that there is often nobody to help them when they want to have their linen changed, and the room cleaned. Therefore, Alpine Inn and Spa should organize working shifts in such a way as to always have somebody on duty to help customers. The hotel should ensure that there are enough employees to clean all the rooms properly. Furthermore, the staff has to be trained to resolve conflicts and handle customers’ discontent.
Results of Implementing the Solutions
The competitors of Alpine Inn and Spa are such 2-star hotels as Alder Inn, Heavenly Valley Lodge Bed & Breakfast, Americana Village, and Postmarc Hotel and Spa Suites. The amenities available in these hotels are almost the same as in Alpine Inn and Spa. Some of them lack a swimming pool or air conditioning or are not accessible for disabled people, which makes these features an advantage of Alpine Inn and Spa. However, all of them have a spa and are kid-friendly.
Yet, if one looks at customers’ reviews, one will see that many guests noted that in these hotels, rooms were clean and comfortable, which cannot be said about Alpine Inn and Spa. Therefore, it may be argued that cleanliness is indeed a significant component of customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry. If Alpine Inn and Spa implements the proposed solutions, it is likely to attract more visitors and allow them to enjoy its advantages, such as a swimming pool, a hot tub, and a favorable location. It will bring it to par with its competitors and, perhaps, even make it a preferred choice for customers looking for a hotel with an outdoor pool.
Conclusion
To sum up, one of the major problems of Alpine Inn and Spa is lack of cleanliness. It may address this issue by training its staff and providing employees with the tools necessary for their work. Another way of dealing with this problem is monitoring employees’ work with the help of mystery visitors and making workers stay in the hotel as if they were guests. Finally, the service provider may teach its employees to process customers’ complaints. The implementation of these solutions is likely to bring Alpine Inn and Spa to par with its rivals, namely, 2-star hotels in the same area and almost the same facilities.
Works Cited
Cresswell, Sonja. “The Importance of Hygiene for Guest Satisfaction.” Institute of Hospitality. 2019. Web.
Solnet, David, and Maria Golubovskaya. “Service Management and Tourism.” The SAGE Handbook of Tourism Management, edited by Chris Cooper et al., SAGE, 2018, pp. 269-294.