PORTMAN HOTEL

The Portman Hotel Company is characterized for being one of the most prestigious
luxury hotels of America. The service given to the guests is incomparable with their
competitors. The direct contact between the guests and the associates is unique in the
hotel business. They have a new concept, were a group of employees called the Personal
Valets, provide a service to the guest and are trained to predict the guests needs and
personality.

The Most Pronounced Symptoms of Distress

The biggest concern this company has is evident. The employees are not performing as
they were expected. The hotel wants to have a higher level of employee commitment and
responsibility, but there isnt a concrete plan to solve this dilemma. The Portmans
strategy says that training and motivation will not achieve some standards. That, for me,
is a big problem because they are not having a good program for training the associates.
They need to develop a stronger training plan to achieve what they are expecting from
the member of staff.

The Problems
The problem identified in the case is basically the high turnover among employees
or the Personal Valet who consider that the structure of the hotel is too much de-

centralized. They have to wait for many days before they can actually discuss their
problems with the supervisor. As one of the Persona Valet stated The supervisors
are very less in number and we have to make decisions ourselves in chaos and
hurry. We keep trying to find a supervisor who is not available to solve our
problems. After the first interview none of the PVs met Scott. In fact everything
was too much de-centralized and based on personal understanding and decisions,
which actually accounted for all the conflicts and chaos.
Secondly, the management assumed that the amount of tip for each Personal Valet
would be around $200 per week; however it turned out to be $40 for every PV. This
was quite demotivating for them because initially they were pretty sure and
confident about getting tips in excess of $200 per week. The reduced amount of
tips was initially because of the low occupancy in the initial phase of the hotel but it
was mainly because of the lack of understanding of the concept of a Personal Valet.
The concept of Personal Valet was more common in Asian region where travelers
understood the concept. But in America, people were not aware about this
concept. This was the basic reason for low amount of tips for each PV.
Another concern was the content of job of each Personal Valet. At the time of
hiring, they were told that their job description would include 50% of cleaning the
rooms while the remaining 50% of the job description would be to serve guest
which would include ironing their clothes, buying them books, booking tickets for a
movie, etc. However, in practice, each PV had to clean 80% of their time which was
a frustrating factor for the Personal Valets. The problem they faced was that while
cleaning the bathroom a guest might buzz them and they had to rush to serve them
sweaty and smelly to reply back the buzzer. All PVs felt the system was too
decentralized with no central character. Along with this, working with other
departments was also a problem. They had frequent problems with other group of
workers regularly. PVs felt that porters were too slow to respond to their requests
to carry the bags of guests which had to make them wait for a long period. PVs felt
that the slow response of porters was making them loose the tips. PVs felt that all
other groups treated them like maids rather than considering them as crucial group
in the development of the Portman Hotel business.
Another problem faced by Personal Valet was that they had to service clients on
different floors, which made it difficult for PVs to develop long-term relationship
with the guest to serve them in the future also. Another problem which PVs faced

was the fact that permanent personal valets and floaters were unaware of each
others work ethics. Floaters were unable to develop relationship with guests.
However permanent personal valet thought floaters are stealing their tips. It was a
general perception that floaters were careless and they hurt teams loyalty because
they were constantly serving a single client whereas, they had to move around
based on the requirement.
Although the idea with 5-star plan was to deal with the problems and remove them
but in fact this did not happen. Another problem which came their way was the
work ethics. Private valets complained about discipline and accountability. They
were concerned that there was no system to work out problems. Both private
valets and supervisors were concerned with 5-star system. The felt confused
between floaters and slouches. The quality was also suffering because instead of
seven rooms, each valet had to clean 10 rooms. The problem which Scott, the
Director of guest service faced was that he had to listen to 10 to 15 PV complaints
each day and all of them wanted their problem solved within a day. This was not
possible for Scott to manage in a single day. And while he conducted a meeting
with all Personal Valets he had to listen to opinions of every PV which were all
different and very strong. Along with this the ethics of work at Portman Hotel was
also quite an issue at the hotel. According to PVs, slouches disrupt the whole
working at the hotel. They did not perform their duties as they should have actually
done.
With all the discussed problems, the management was concerned about the fact
that initially they thought of keeping the structure de-centralized by making PVs
stay on the same position but grow in their jobs constantly. However, with the
increasing problems among PVs and the supervisors with the less number of PVs,
management decided to increase two more supervisors. However, the problem was
still not resolved and because of the expensive labor cost in the region; the
management was concerned about the increased cost.
Affected most by the issue
Personal Valet are the ones who are most affected by the situation because as the
case states, Portman Hotel management had a vision to hire people that were
talented rather than experienced and who could serve all kinds of guests as per

their preference. Along with this, the unsatisfied customers were also the
stakeholders to the situation because in the end, a satisfied customer matters.
What do the numbers tell
The chart which shows the figures and the reason for attrition explains that initially
during the early months, more PVs were terminated because the management did
not know the exact way to manage such a system where PVs would serve the
guests. Therefore, the termination percentage was 100% in the first month and in
the second month as well. But gradually, the statistics changed in the third month
March, where attrition because of termination reduced to 33%. As the year ended,
the termination of PVs was reduced considerably but the number of resignations
increased to more than 80%. The company or the management was looking to
reduce the number of turnover of PVs because it was hampering the services and
making the guests unsatisfied. Therefore, as the chart shows that the management
had to reduce the number of resignation to maximum 20% within the next six
months.
Suggested Alternatives
With the current situation identified in the case where the PVs are down with their
morale, guests are not satisfied with the services and the management is worried
about the extra cost that is incurred by centralizing the organizational structure.
Therefore, following are the suggested alternatives which the management can
consider to overcome the situation.
Team Captain
The first suggested alternate to the current situation is to create a new position
within each team known as a team captain. The purpose of the team captain will
be to report the supervisor and communicate all issues and concerns of each PV to
the supervisor. The captain will not only be the bridge or the communicator
between the management and the PV

The 5Star team plan is reorganization of the personal valets. This plan is created to
solve the problems the PVs have. It is a plan to put an end to the disorganization and
tension there is with the different workers of the hotel. The Portman wanted the

personal valets feel more comfortable with their work. This strategy was also designed to
solve the problem of employees that couldnt have a long-term relationship with the
guests and having some control with the tips, which are so important for the associates.
This plan didnt happen as expected because it had some improvements at first, but still
had some problems. I think this is a significant problem happening in this company.
They cannot find a real solution and they still have some difficulties. There are several
problems going on in this company, but this dilemma might be the one the Portman is
concerned with and the one is limiting the hotel to achieve all their goals and
expectations.

The Human Resources Issues

The human resource department has been trying to solve the problems the employees
have. They wanted the associates to have a work ambience without concerns so that way
they could perform a good work and achieve the goals the company expected from them.
They tried to make the guest feel at home, helped them with everything that they need,
but they cannot do their best because of their intern problems with the other associates.
Every time there are more complaints from the guests, and PVs were making each time
more errors. The lack of supervision may be the reason this deficiency from the
associates is occurring and is another worry the company is being inflicted with.
Employees are not being controlled or helped when they are performing their jobs. If
they do not want to have more complains from the guests, it is essential for a good
performance and a work with no errors, to have a supervisor that con control that. The
associates also did not have any guidelines of discipline because the hotels philosophy
did not believed to discipline poor performers. They need to change that philosophy and
start training employees because that may be a strategy that can solve several problems.
Other concern that I could find in the hotel was a problem with the different
departments that the company had. Employees said that working with other groups
from the company was a problem. The hotel was structured in a way departments could
not work together because they hay different functions and was disorganized. The hotel
has to break the departmentalization and make the hotel function all together to support
each other and that way be able to know what is going on in the hotel. Decentralization
is also a big problem. The employees feel they dont have a person to lead to when they
need help. A solution to this can help employees solve easier and faster the problems so
that the guest would be helped and that way complaints will decrease.
For instance, the floaters were looked upon as disloyal and careless. They were accused of wasting time
and stealing tips. They were viewed as outsiders rather than members of the same group. However, in
reality, they were just victims of their position. They weren't afforded the luxury of building strong
relationships and familiarities with their coworkers nor the guests. The fact that their job required them to
move around caused them to be seen as unstable. Besides, the floaters were an adaptation implemented

by management. It wasn't their fault that the hotel capacity wasn't full enough to allow the 5-Star plan to
work properly.
Not being able to find a supervisor left expectations unclear. And finally, Instrumentality broke down in the
case study when the personal valets spent more time cleaning than giving actual service to the guests.
Less time serving the guests lowered the potential for building relationships of trust with them and thus
lowered the potential for earning larger tips.
The Portman Hotel did have a system in place for disciplining the shirkers, or poor performers, but they
chose not to use it. They believed that discipline was actually contrary to the hotel philosophy. Instead
they opted to use Positive Reinforcement

Recruiting and Selecting

The recruiting and selection of the associates in this company is considered to be crucial
to the Portmans strategy. They are trying to find the most talented people for their
company. They believe the quality of service given to their guests depended only on the
excellence of the employee. The process of selection was very important so they could
find the most capable employee that could satisfy the needs of the guest. The problem
was that they wanted to find the perfect employee but didnt believed in training them to
be perfect. As an example, the Portman believed that friendliness could not be trained or
motivated, employees had to be friendly by nature. One of the supervisors of the
personal valets commented that there is no training because they are so busy. Training
is very important so that the goals the company has can be accomplished. Employees
need to have training time, even if they have to work and the hotel has occupancy of
100%. If the employees are

Non Human Resources Concern

The original philosophy is another concern this company has. This difficulty, unlike the
other problems, is not a human resource issue. They restrict themselves to follow the
philosophy and they do not believe in varying it. Many problems in the hotel can be
solved if they will vary and have new strategies. One example of this may be the levels of
hierarchy that were increasing in the company buy were against this philosophy. They
said they will have higher costs if more levels of hierarchy were created, but that can
solve some of the most severe problems they had in the company. Costs may increase,
but problems may be solved and that will be worth it.

Conclusion

In conclusion I can predict that the most significant concerns The Portman Hotel
Company has are based on low performance of the human resource department and the
limitation to follow the original philosophy of the company. The Personal Valets is an
impressive idea, and may be the key competitive difference for the hotel, but it needs to
have a perfect performance so that the hotel can have a remarkable result and can have
an Asian-style service, as they wanted to achieve that objective. The company has to
work hard solving those problems and find a solution that will have instant results
because of the sudden shot up occupancy they are having lately.