Hotel Internship Final Report

Since change of my internship location, my first goal from the Monthly Report #1 was to at least 80% mastering the new PMS system, which is Galaxy LightSpeed. I accomplished this goal without many difficulties, except the expected deadline of the goal that I initially set, which is February 26th, 2018. Actually, it spent me two entire weeks to fully understand various functions that the new system has.

Another goal that I accomplished is that to clearly understand the knowledge and background information towards Starwood Hotels and Resorts, since our hotel brand is owned by Starwood. As I mentioned in my first monthly report, I was able to take one-week training of Revenue Management in Starwood Development Center since I will cross-trained between Front Office department and Revenue department. The course was called My Revenue Management Journey, which gave me an overall introduction of revenue management. This training starts with the introduction of Starwood. As a worldwide hotel group, Starwood operates over 1150 hotels in 102 countries. They have already noticed the great impact of social media and high technology in hotel industry. So, they are committed to make better use of their existing resources to create better staying experience.

Since I worked mostly in Revenue department within the month, one of my goal was to understand how to effectively update the historic and forecast report. Luckily, the second part of the training is the foundations of revenue management. The training helped me a lot since I have never taken Revenue Management related class yet. Room rate needs to be changed frequently and it will base on the information provided in the markets. Room Type Forecast Report or known as the Master Revenue Report should be updated daily. It provides the number of available room and occupancy in the rest of the whole year. This information will give the Revenue Manager a general picture of how many rooms could be sold in the future. From the report we can find some days have over 90% occupancy while other days only have 10%. Since high occupancy indicates high demand, the room rate could be much higher in peak season than in low season. Besides these, there are so many different types of report that I need to understand and practice. Thus, I need to take some extra effort to review all of the reports that I have learned every day. Because each report has different purpose to look it up, I need to make sure I am able to accurately differentiate them.

My fifth goal was to understand the Revenue Management terminology and be able to use them in a proper manner. As an international, the professional terminology always become a challenge. In order to fill the gap, I spent a lot of time on this part. I read some articles about revenue and took the note down about all the terminologies that I cannot understand, as well as all the terminologies that I have never seen before. I also searched and wrote explanations down in my notebook before I go to ask my Revenue Manager.

There is only one goal that I have not able to accomplish was my second goal. Actually, this goal was one of the goal listed in my initial reports, which is the understanding of customer satisfaction system. But I still did not complete this goal so far, because this goal need to be accomplished when I work in the Front Office department. However, I did frequently look up the online review from the customers, and I have understood why such types of complaints exist. However, I did not have a chance to log them into the complaint record book of our hotel since that is Front Office responsibilities. Thus, I was not able to summarize them together and analyze potential issues that might cause these complaints to exist.

Five New Goals for the next month

Classroom to the Practical Experience

Even though I never took Revenue Management class so far, but from my other classes such as Hospitality Sales, Marketing, and Strategic Management. The core concept from these classes towards hospitality management allows me to better understand and practice when I work in Revenue department. Revenue Management is everything about selling the right room to the right customer with the right price at the right time and finally maximum the hotel revenue. Therefore, we need to know the market segments (who), demand in different season (when), price sensitivity (how much), distribution channel (where). We also need to be aware of all competitors. Look at their pricing strategy and find out how they performed, and then compare with our hotel to evaluate our performance.

Monthly Internship Report #3

Discussion and reflection of previous goals set

In terms of the goals that I set last month, I achieved almost all of them, and throughout the process I have learned a lot. My first goal of the month was get fully understand and analyze our hotel’s OTAs (Online Travel Agencies). My given tasks and projects were to review all the hotel OTA’s websites and compare the property content/policy/rates parity with the Brand Website; also compare the rate structure and promotions with our competitor’s Brand Website; finally compare the property content/pictures/policy/promotions with our competitor’s OTA website. Our hotel’s main OTA include Expedia, Booking.com, Priceline, Hotwire and Orbits. Our competitors include Radisson Hotel Philadelphia Northeast, Best Western Plus Philadelphia Bensalem Hotel, Holiday Inn Express Philadelphia NE Bensalem, Hampton Inn & Suites Philadelphia Bensalem, and Sleep Inn & Suites. Throughout the process, I have understood that this project will help us check all the information provided on the OTA websites as well as to better understand the difference between our hotel and the competitors. All the OTAs are providing slightly different information even they supposed to be the same with our brand website. For example, hotel pictures are different on all the website; We offer complimentary parking for customers but Hotwire and Orbits don’t show this amenity as free; minimum check-in age are different on Expedia and Hotwire, etc. This could be a problem because customers will be confused sometimes. Consistent information is important to make sure customer get the right and up to date information wherever they make the reservations. In terms of the second goal that I have accomplished is that combine the knowledge from the class to analyze the different types of customers as well as their decision preferences when they book a hotel. According to the knowledge that I have learned from class combined with my research and analysis over the last month, for business travelers, the purpose of their traveling may be attend a conference meeting or negotiate a contract with their partners. A good location of a hotel brings business travelers convenience. They won’t need to worry about calling a cab, peak hours for traffic, or have troubles to find a place for meals. So it saves them valuable time and energy to focus on their real purpose of traveling. Because business travelers do not need to pay their bills by themselves, most of them are price insensitive, which is a good thing for hotels. For leisure travelers, they come to a city to explore attractions or attend events. They usually have minimum hotel requirements, like a clean, quiet and safe place to live. After all, they come to a place to have fun but not stay at hotel all day long. They may consider price when they search hotels, because they sometimes have limited budget. However, a good location or free breakfast can also attract them. A good location decreases the difference with a lower priced hotel, because it helps leisure travelers to save transportation fee and their valuable time. Convenience and trustworthy are important factors to them, especially when they come to an unfamiliar place. Discount benefits are also attractive for leisure travelers. My third goal was to do an overall SWOT analysis regarding our hotel. Four Points by Sheraton Philadelphia Northeast has much strength. As we know, Four Points by Sheraton belongs to Starwood hotel group. It has already gotten international recognition. As a full-service hotel, Four Points by Sheraton has meeting rooms, event spaces, a fitness center and a restaurant. Moreover, Four Points by Sheraton has a good location and relative lower price compare with the nearby hotels. I think it is important to discover the hotel’s strength so that marketing team can highlight these details to make marketing promotions and the revenue team to make pricing strategy. Another goal that I have set for myself is do some market research on competitors, customers, and so on. Always pay attention to competitors is also important. However, choose a right competitive set is the first critical step. I read an article regarding the importance of figure out the correct Comp Set. According to the article, It is saying that accurately identifying a competitive set is important for a hotel market study because the data provide both a more accurate perspective on a hotel’s historical operating performance and a basis for projecting a hotel’s future performance. The determination of a competitive set allows for supply and demand trends in the market to be quantified, which in turn enables a more reasonable projection of future performance and a more accurate assessment of actual performance. (Mahmoud, 2015) I was not able to achieve the fifth goal set from the last month, because this month I have not transit to the front office department yet, so I will move it to the rest of my internship goals.

Five New Goals for the next month

Classroom to the Practical Experience

The class reminds me the most over this month is Marketing in Tourism and Hospitality class. There were many tasks and project that I have done this month are all related to customers behavior, competitive set, sales and promotions, etc. In the class, I have learned and I am still clearly remembering that, many criteria can be used to establish the competitive set, but location, brand, product type, quality, and ADR are the main considerations. One of the more obvious things to look for when identifying a competitive set for a market study is the location relative to the property and its competitors. The second consideration about the competitive set is the brand. Most of the major hotel companies have a complement of full-service, limited-service, and extended-stay brands that are in different chain scale categories, such as luxury, upper-upscale, upscale, upper-midscale, midscale, and economy, all of which are tailored to a specific type of traveler. Our hotel is a full-service hotel which means all of our competitors need to be full-service hotel. Than we need to look at the property itself and find out the product type and quality. Product type related to the facilities provided by the hotel. It should be considered because similar facilities are likely to attract similar type of customers. The last should be ADR, since price has already played a large role in a person’s decision to stay at a specific hotel.