Hotel Portman Essay

INTRODUCTION:

The case revolves about the problems of employees in hotel Portman, architected and developed by John C Porter (world famous designer of luxury hotels). Hotel Portman was inspired by Hong Kong’s finest hotels and was supposed to be a revolutionary benchmark in history of American luxury hotels in terms of quality and services it offered to its customers. To accomplish this Portman’s employees were required not just to offer their services but a commitment to its customers to turn their visit into a memorable experience. For this reason, a group of employees called the personal valets (PV) were most central to hotel’s functioning. The PV’s were like personal butlers which provided comprehensive personal services to the customers of the hotel. They were expected to be key competitive difference in hotel as no other hotel, in competition with Portman, provided with such a service. Every employee was treated as an ‘Associate’ and as an associate they were required to sign a contract wherein all the rights administered to him were detailed. He could also challenge the authorities in court wherein his rights were not administered to him.

• Risk of unacceptability of by the Americans of the new way of service and culture due to improper implementation of its goals and

Lack of Proper HR structure:

• There is no proper HR structure and policies followed in Portman hotel’s management.

• In recruitment process, Portman does recruit and select the employees that they feel are suitable and have an associate contract as well, that needs to be signed by every employee who clearly shows their work boundaries and expectations.

• But what is clearly missing is the demarcation of work responsibilities and defining jobs.

• Also as there is no proper performance evaluation, performance appraisal and feedback system in place, PV’s tend to take up their responsibilities and the job more casually because of which, some of them end up working to make up for the others.

• Hence the implementation of these two systems is necessary to be able to evaluate performance of every PV so as to be able to evaluate their efficiency and to make the employees feel a part of the organization by encouraging them to share their issues and give feedback on important issues.

2. External & Internal Alignment:

• Portman lacks the gap in aligning the external and the internal resources and