PREVAILING CONTEMPORARY THEMES IN HOSPITALITY AND THE UPCOMING FOUR SEASONS HOTELS EXPANSION BY FELIX L. H. MURILLO Glion Online MBA Abstract This paper identifies contemporary themes in the Hospitality Industry and why these are emerging or currently pursued. The themes selected are themes directly related with the expansion of hospitality businesses and in particular as they have an effect in the upcoming growth of Four Seasons Hotels. Although Four Seasons already pursues these contemporary themes, the current expansion situation speeds up the process and makes them critical.
The contemporary themes chosen have in common the term “distance”, whether this is chronological (generational differences) developmental (multidirectional career paths) or geographical (distributed teams). A more particular attention is placed on distributed teams vs. collocated teams within Four Seasons. Introduction: Reasons to Undertake the Study Four Seasons is entering a new era of accelerated growth, still remaining fully committed to its business model.
In the current economical environment, the interest rates in North America and Europe are at an all time low. There are also many positive macro trends – including growth in world travel and trade, demand for luxury goods, and emerging market consumer demand –. These circumstances are coming together and pushing luxury business development in general and for Four Seasons in particular. In this environment the study of contemporary themes that will help support growth becomes critical to the success in the long term.
The specific themes found to be relevant to this growing success are: Generational differences in work values, multidirectional career paths and collaboration in distributed teams (a further emphasis is made on this last theme). Chronological distance: Generational differences A group of individuals that were born in the same defined period of years have been exposed to similar societal and historical life events during critical stages of their formative development (Schaie, 1965). These circumstances determine that will be differences in values between older and younger managers and employees.
To facilitate the growth of our existing top talent and to attract the best in the market we need to understand the generational value differences. This is especially important in Four Seasons today as younger generations will gradually fill management positions in new Hotels. From a less positive perspective, the lack of understanding of generational differences would bring communication and relationship issues (Patterson, C. , 2008) moreover it will prevent companies from retaining and attracting top talent.
In an increasingly more competitive Hospitality environment and with new generations in the market place less motivated towards long years of commitment, hard work, average pay and poor work-life balance for a bright company future, the need for hospitality companies to be sensitive towards generational value differences is critical to succeed and it needs to drive human resources strategies, especially in related to recruitment and employee retention (Lyons et al. 2005). Developmental distance: “Boundaryless” careers
Traditionally the higher you were in the chain of command of the organization the more successful you were considered. Today there is more than one way to achieve success and many ways to asses it -in addition to income, rank and status- i. e. level of work life balance, inner self satisfaction, autonomy or freedom (Baruch, 2004). Understanding the career expectations of the Millennials and the difference in the expectations with other generations is a very current theme in the Hospitality industry. The concept presented by Ghoshal et al. n 1999 and by Baruch in 2001 is very significant, in our current environment the hospitality companies need to develop talent toward increasing their “employability” i. e. the improvement of being hirable in the future. The hospitality companies that understand and implement initiatives in their companies that understand this concept will have more chances to attract the best. An “Intelligent Enterprise” focused on the development of intellectual resources versus the management of physical assets (Arthur, Claman, DeFillippi and Adams, 1995).
In the case of Four Seasons and its global growth, it is particularly important to look at this current theme and design strategies for success. Interestingly, it will not mean that all initiatives will have to comply with a multidirectional career theme. Globally there will be markets that are fully developed whereby the individuals have taken on the responsibility of planning and managing their own career path (“the protean career” Hall and Mirvin, 19996) however in a global expansion there are markets that are still looking for “job security” and linear progressions, specially within less privileged groups and emerging markets.
It is essential then that we are able to identify these differences and in any case, be able to provide people with options to gain career success. Geographical distance: distributed teams As hotels and other hospitality companies grow, their global distributed teams have to collaborate without the advantage of the common interaction of collocated work (Kumar, van Fenema and von Glinow, 2004). Companies concentrate teams that support multiple hotels even in the same city or country, sharing services that increase both productivity and profitability. The success of these distributed teams facilitates expansion.
While this has been a common theme to large hospitality organizations and budget hotel chains, it has only been during the recent economic crisis that the luxury market, particularly Four Seasons, have started to consider global distributed teams beyond centralized corporate and central reservations services. While we are in this predicament, other hotels have exhausted their economic potential, and not succeeding in becoming efficient, are searching models of inter-hotel cooperation (Gherissi Labben and Mungall, 2007). This shows how the luxury market has not been leading this theme acting reluctant to promote distributed teams.
The competitive pressure and the shrink in profits during the recent economic downturn have provoked change and innovation. Change needed to defeat the existing fear that reducing teams’ intense collaboration will directly impact the culture and the personalized service; attributes of the company success. In an emotionally engaged organization with a strong company service culture the face to face interactions are very much valued. Beyond the communication exchange levels there is a need to demonstrate and strengthen the feeling of belonging to the group (Siino, 2007).
The teams may be global with members that are distributed across a large geographical distances. This often includes cultural differences. However, the teams may be also distributed locally i. e. the company may develop multiple hotel units within one country or even city and decide to maintain centralized departments to increase productivity (still connected through information technology). Departments like reservations, telephone operator, purchasing, sales & marketing, human resources, public relations, finance, etc. are being shared.
As Cascio (2000) points out it is for sound business reasons that services are shared and teams distributed (reducing workspace costs, increase productivity, and facilitating expansion). By sharing services, hotels decrease the dependence on hiring and training, which strengths the rationale for a virtual work. In the above scenario, there are no cultural differences however, the rest of the characteristics of the distributed teams apply. To be well-coordinated requires the members to be constantly aware of each other (Kumar et al. , 2004).
It is in these circumstances that I see a gap within Four Seasons between what the current practices are and the achievable potential. To tackle this gap the most important strategy to reach a successful distributed team is to motivate within the team members a positive attitude towards reducing collaboration intensity. This positive attitude needs exist prior to the distribution of the team in the form of enthusiasm and continue later on as the teams cease to be collocated. There needs to be the correct level of technology and IT support to facilitate the interactions as such.
If we are implementing a central operator for multiple hotels it will require flawless connections and so on. Technology is not the panacea that will breach the gap (Morris, 2008) but it needs to cover the needs. A strategy to deal with the collaboration intensity in the above departments is sequentializing the teamwork (Kumar et al. , 2004). Although there are different levels of stickiness, by working on smooth and clear transitions of the hand-off, we succeed in reducing the amount of interaction needed at that specific point. There are certain roles that need to become representatives between hotels.
These are roles like revenue manager, sales director or catering manager. They move back and forth with an agreed scheduled frequency (Galbraith, 1973; McCann & Galbraith, 1981). The frequency of transit will be determined by the need of face to face contact and the distance between hotels. In the case of having two hotels in the same city, as it is the case of Istanbul, where Four Seasons has two Hotels, the representatives’ move from their base location in one of the hotels to the other, once a week were they attend scheduled meetings. Conclusion
The study of contemporary Hospitality themes is one of the better tools for success: By studying and analyzing the generational differences we are able to better cater to the careers of the Millennials and maximize the communication and relationship with other generations. By being sensitive to the psychological contracts that managers currently make when joining a Hotel and cater their careers accordingly, we are able to retain top talent and attract the very best in the market. By working on distributed teams Four Seasons is able to expand more efficiently. References Arthur, M. B. , Claman, P. H. , DeFillippi, R.
J. , & Adams, J. (1995). Intelligent enterprise, intelligent careers. The Academy of Management Executive, 9(4), 7–22. Askun, D. , Ela Unler, O. , & Olcay Bige, A. (2010). Understanding Managerial Work Values in Turkey. Journal of Business Ethics. doi:10. 1007/s10551-009-0185-y Baruch, Y. (2004). Transforming careers: from linear to multidirectional career paths Organizational and individual perspectives. Career Development International, Emerald Group Publishing, 9(1), 58–73. doi:10. 1108/13620430410518147 DeFillippi, R. J. , & Arthur, M. B. (1994). The boundaryless career: a competencybased perspective.
Journal of Organizational Behavior, 15(4), 307–324. ProQuest document ID 228918914 Ditmann, M. (n. d. ). Generational differences at work. American Psychological Association, 36. Four Seasons Hotels Announces CEO Transition. (2013, February 5). Business Wire. New York, NY, USA. Retrieved from http://search. proquest. com/docview/1284116887? accountid=45049 Gherissi Labben, T. , & Mungall, A. (2007). The intensity of collaboration and type of managements on the peorformance of Swiss hotels. Advances in Hospitality and Leisure, 3, 151–172. doi:10. 1016/S1745-3542(06)03009-8. Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
Groschl, S. (2011). Diversity management strategies of global hotel groups A corporate web site based exploration. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 23(2), 224–240. doi:10. 1108/09596111111119347. Emerald Grosse, C. U. (n. d. ). Managing Communications within Virtual Intercultural Teams. Business Communication Quarterly, 65(22). doi:10. 1177/108056990206500404 Heinrich, E. (2007). FOUR SEASONS HOTELS INC. (TSX: FSH. Rogers Publishing Limited. EBSCO HOST Academic Search Premier Database Jarvenpaa, S. L. , Knoll, K. , & Leidner, D. E. (1998). Is Anybody Out There? Antecedents of Trust in Global Virtual Teams.
Journal of Management tnjbrmalion Syslem, 14(24), 29–64. Kumar, K. , Van Fenema, P. C. , & Von Glinow, M. A. (2004). Intense Collaboration in Globally Distributed Teams: Evolving Patterns of Dependencies and Coordination. ERIM REPORT SERIES RESEARCH IN MANAGEMENT Erasmus Research Institute of Management (ERIM), 1–37. ERIM Report Series reference number ERS-2004-052-LIS Lester, S. W. , & Kickul, J. (2001). Psychological contracts in the 21st century: What employees value most and how well organizations are responding to these expectations. HR. Human Resource Planning, 24(1), 10–21.
ProQuest document ID 224581951 Morris, S. (2008). How to get real results from virtual teams: Recognize that people, task and technology are different but equal. Emerald Group Publishing Limited, 16(4), 33–35. doi:10. 1108/09670730810878493 Ozgur, S. , Devrim, U. , & Smola, A. J. (2011). Guest editorial: model selection and optimization in machine learning. Mach. Learn. , 85(1-2), 1–2. Po-Ju Chen, & Youngsoo Choi. (2008). Generational differences in work values: a study of hospitality management. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Emerald Article, 20(6), 595–615.
Schneider, J. (2008). Lifestyle Hotel Trends Around the World. ProQuest — Building Design and Construction, 48(13), 1. Siino, R. M. (2007, June). Emotional engagement on geographically distributed teams: Exploring interaction challenges in mediated versus face to face meetings. Stamford University. ProQuest. Solnet, D. , & Kralj, A. (2011). Generational Differences in Work Attitudes: Evidence from the Hospitality Industry. FIU Review, 29(2). Tolbize, A. (2008). Generational differences in the workplace. Research and Training Center on Community Living, University of Minesota. Townsend, A. M. Hendrickson, A. R. , & DeMarie, S. M. (2002). Meeting the Virtual Work Imperative. COMMUNICATIONS OF THE ACM, 45(I). Zemke, R. , Raines, C. , & Filipczak, F. (n. d. ). Generations at Work. Zemke, R.. (2001). Here comes the millennials, 38(7), 44–49. ProQuest document ID 203405788 Completed: March 16, 2013 Word count: 1,626 ——————————————– [ 1 ]. The study introduces the term “distance” to help illustrate these contemporary themes that have conditions that are apart and motivates the implementation of strategies to bring them together creating synergy and success. 2 ]. DeFillippi and Arthur (1994) [ 3 ]. Collaboration Intensity (CI) of a team is the required level and frequency of interactions needed for the initiation and ongoing joint action and mutual awareness of: the members of the team; the flux of activities in teamwork; the evolving work-object; and the context of the collaborative situation. [ 4 ]. The incremental expenditure requred to transfer units at the time of hand-off (Von Hippel, 1998)
