Sample MBA6304 Hospitality Management Report 3

MBA6304 Hospitality Management Report 3 Sample

Introduction

This is an Individual assessment. Each student is required to write a report on the contemporary ethical, legal, social and cultural challenges faced by a hospitality operator in relation a situation of a change management or a crisis.

Task

The purpose of this assessment is to assess the contemporary ethical, legal, social and cultural challenges faced by a hospitality operator in relation a situation of
a change management or a crisis. They will report on their analysis and possible strategies to assist management of that organisation.

Your report must include:

› Title Page: The title of the assessment, your group name and name and student ID for each of the students within the group.

› Executive Summary

› Table of Content

› Introduction: A statement of the purpose for your report and a brief outline of project (one or two paragraphs).

› Body of Report: Describe the tasks you performed as mentioned in the task.

› Findings and Recommendations

› Conclusion: A summary of the points you have made in the body of the paper. The conclusion should not introduce any ‘new’ material that was not discussed in the body of the paper. (One or two paragraphs)

› References: A list of sources used in your text.
They should be listed alphabetically by (first) author’s family name. You are required to have at least 15 scholarly references.

› The footer must include your name, student ID, and page number.

Solution

Introduction

With the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, critical global responses such as travel restrictions, lockdowns, shelters-in-place, international travel bans and social distancing orders were introduced (Davahli, et al., 2020). For Assignment Help, These travel bans impacted major parts of the world’s population because of partial or complete border closures imposed across countries. The hospitality industry was one of the worst affected sectors with millions of people becoming unemployed, global fears of spread and future waves and uncertain economic situations (Davahli, et al., 2020). The report here aims to assess various contemporary ethical, legal, social and cultural challenges present during such crisis by considering the example of a hospitality operator. It has also conducted an analysis and suggested possible strategies for better management of the organization. In this regard, Hilton Hotel has been undertaken as the hospitality operator, which is one of the world’s fastest-growing and largest hospitality companies (Hilton, 2023a). It comprises of 22 brands across 123 countries and territories with around 7295 properties worldwide. In this report, the analysis has been emphasized mainly on the Hilton Hotels present in Australia for identifying and evaluating different ethical and legal, social and cultural challenges during the pandemic crisis.
Analysis of Challenges Faced by Hilton Hotel

Impact of COVID-19 on Hospitality Industry

The COVID-19 pandemic generated catastrophic effects on the hospitality industry of Australia, forcing around 70% of business to decrease their staff hours while 43% sacking workers or placing them under unpaid leaves (Knaus, 2020). Around 78% of various accommodation and food service businesses were also required to bring changes to their workforce. In this regard, more than 30% of these businesses ceased down because of the impact from the pandemic outbreak (Knaus, 2020).

Fig 1: COVID-19 Impact on Hotel Industry Performance in Australia

(Source: Statista, 2023)

From the figure 1, it can be observed that around 24 out of 90 respondents opined about how they expected revenues to reduce by 81% or more in the upcoming years, while 19 of them expected about the decline in occupancy rates (Statista, 2023). Thus, this implies the negative impact on sales and revenues of the hospitality companies in Australia because of the pandemic crisis.

Furthermore, Victoria, Australian Capital Territory and New South Wales were the worst affected states for the hospitality sector because of lockdown and travel restrictions (Deputy, 2021). The pandemic outbreak also transformed this industry by causing an 80% decrease in shift-hours during April 2020, thus, leading of operations of businesses with half of their employment capacity. Besides, Hilton Hotels was also affected across various countries, which resulted in its laying off around 22% of its global corporate workforce (Valinsky, 2020). It also extended existing furloughs for numerous staff members for additional 90 days alongside pay cuts for executives. This was the first global crisis faced by the hotel chain that brought travel to a virtual standstill, thereby causing huge losses for the hospitality company (Valinsky, 2020). In addition, the hotel chain’s revenues and occupancy rates were also badly affected with the lingering effects of the pandemic.

Ethical and Legal Challenges

Various ethical and legal challenges were residing in the hospitality industry with the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic. Australia introduced a mandatory 14-day quarantine period in designated facilities like hotels or hotel-like service apartments for responding to the threat of infection (Haire, et al., 2022). Hilton Hotel in Australia also became a part of providing such quarantine facilities. While travelers supported this concept of quarantine in the hotels, this public policy was criticized as they often felt exposed to various risks (Haire, et al., 2022). This is because of the apparent inadequate system of infection control provided within such hotel facilities. It was also pointed out that often hotel facilities seemed inappropriate or inadequate for health and wellbeing of people living with their children (Haire, et al., 2022). Thus, systematic issues regarding infection control in hotel quarantines were common that generated risks to safety of individuals. Here, hotel quarantine points out towards ethical issues of human rights and infringement of liberty of individuals, who could have also quarantined at their own homes (Williams, et al., 2022). This is because strict restrictive measures were being imposed by the government in such emergency quarantine situations, which could be viewed as threat of harm to such individuals. COVID quarantines further involved larger populations at these hotel facilities. These measures can often be viewed inconceivable both legally and ethically in the public eyes (Williams, et al., 2022). Thus, its imposition cannot always be termed as ethical or legal as part of a risk-based measure to be undertaken at the hotel facilities.

Furthermore, the pandemic outbreak changed various legal aspects of contracting issues and employment laws of the global hospitality and travel industry. Force majeure clauses rose in commercial contracts that could excuse the hotel companies like Hilton from performing their contractual obligations (Edwards, 2021). Issues with payment of fees and negotiation of payment holidays were also being faced by these hospitality operators. They were further bound to rethink their cancellation policies with customers because of shifts in their expectations amidst uncertain travel (Edwards, 2021). Various employment issues also increased for the hospitality industry during the pandemic crisis because companies had to deal with the dilemma of imposing vaccine mandates and handling employees refusing to get vaccinated. Moreover, hospitality businesses were also faced with stricter data privacy laws, making it difficult to provide personalized services to the customers (Edwards, 2021).

Social and Cultural Challenges

Various social and cultural challenges were also faced by Hilton in ensuring health and safety measures for its workforce and customers alongside maintaining diversity and inclusion in the workplace environment. Hospitality companies were forced to lay off thousands and millions of workers without customers. Employment casualties led to around 290,000 hospitality workers being laid off in Australia (Goh & Baum, 2021). Hilton Hotek participated in the innovative strategies of ‘quarantine hotels’ that enabled it to change it service delivery standards. In this regard, the company made sure to introduce contactless services alongside providing increased hygiene control measures (Goh & Baum, 2021). These were essential for ensuring a safe working environment for both its employees and guests. The hotel had to be more mindful of these social measures as the workers in quarantine facilities became more exposed to risks of transmission from guests sharing the same hotel space (Goh & Baum, 2021). Such risky environment further often resulted in the spread of the pandemic cases being transmitted to hotel workers. This shows how it became generated numerous social and cultural challenges for Hilton Hotel. Thus, this made it essential for the company to provide more meaning work and safe working conditions to its employees at different hotel facilities. Furthermore, the COVID-19 pandemic caused disastrous effects on the hospitality sector alongside the people working in this industry (Mehta, et al., 2022). Social distancing measures, travel restrictions and lockdowns affected businesses of hotels like Hilton, which further impacted employment conditions of its employees. Their professional and personal wellbeing were majorly hampered, thereby giving rise to social and cultural challenges for the hospitality operator (Mehta, et al., 2022). This shows that changing variants of COVID-19 created profound effect on the psychological and personal health of the workers in the hospitality sector, thus, making it difficult for Hilton Hotel to deal with social and cultural challenges.

Despite these challenges, Hilton successfully responded to the pandemic crisis by implementing various health, safety and security programs like Hilton CleanStay and Hilton EventReady, where were solutions for cleanliness and customer service (Johann, 2022). It already consisted of some pre-pandemic innovations in place, which helped in providing contactless experience to guests in the hotels. The hospitality operator further constantly tracked various travel restrictions and requirements for better responding to crisis circumstances (Johann, 2022). This shows its adaptability towards the changing environment in offering safe traveling conditions alongside dealing with potential social and cultural challenges.

Findings

From the above analysis, it has been observed that Hiton Hotel faced various contemporary ethical, legal, social and cultural challenges while operating during the COVID-19 pandemic. It had to deal with ethical issues of human rights and infringement of liberty for providing quarantine facilities at its hotels. It also faced the risks of causing threats to potential health and safety conditions of its guests and workers at such facilities because of lacking proper infection control mechanisms in those areas. Furthermore, the company faced legal challenges of employment issues and contractual laws like cancellation policies, paid or unpaid leaves, vaccine mandates, data privacy laws, commercial contracts and payment of fees and negotiation of payment holidays. These challenges were dealt with abiding with the new legal realities put forward with the pandemic outbreak. Besides, it also had to manage the social and cultural issues regarding healthy and safe working environment of its workers working at the quarantine hotel facilities, dealing with increased transmission of the disease and managing impact on employees’ psychological and personal wellbeing arising from employment issues. However, Hilton Hotel handled these challenges successfully by ensuring safe, healthy and secure environment for its guests and workers alongside undertaking all preventive policies to deal with social and cultural challenges.

Recommendations

The Hilton group has faced significant challenges due to the outbreak of the pandemic. The objective of the following part of the report is to recommend actions that can help the firm recover from these challenges.

Plan-Do-check-act model

Plan

Managing the safety of the customers, employees and other stakeholders of the organization must be the primary goal of the firm.

Do

Communicate necessary actions to the employees. This can help them to initiate strategies that aims at visitors’ safety. Customers who are travelling must be provided with services like new towels, washroom essentials, masks, and many more in order to ensure safety.

Check

The feedbacks from customers must be checked in order to ensure improvement.

Act

The feedbacks of customers must be used as their opinions. This can help the firm to think creatively and ensure a safer environment for the visitors.

Six Sigma model

The organizational leaders of Hilton group are suggested to use this model in order to avoid social challenges and ensure diversity within the workplace. Lean six sigma projects are responsible for collaborative approach. They ensure amalgamation of employees from different departments. The objective of this collaboration is to improves the quality of services. Such approach not only fosters collaboration but ensures diversity within the workplace (Seiler, 2023). Hilton group can use this model to form teams with team members from different cultural backgrounds. These diverse teams can focus on innovation and creativity. Such creative ideas can also help the firm to overcome drastic impact of the pandemic.

Lean thinking

According to this model, it is the responsibility of the organizational leaders to focus on the values of customers and what they are willing to pay. While analyzing challenges, it can be found that the organization was bound to rethink their cancellation policies. In such situation, lean thinking can help these leaders to communicate the safer environment that visitors can get while staying in their hotel. Such value addition can empower customers and prevent them from cancelling their bookings.

Conclusion

The report aimed at assessing various contemporary legal, ethical, social and cultural challenges of the chosen hospitality operator Hilton Hotel during the COVID-19 pandemic crisis. The first section of the report provided a brief background about the pandemic and its implications for hospitality sector alongside company overview of Hilton. The body found out how this pandemic impacted the hospitality industry and identified various ethical, legal, social and cultural challenges for the companies operating under this sector. Ethical issues were human rights challenges and infringement of liberty and legal challenges were changes in employment laws and commercial contracts. Besides, social and cultural issues were related to health and safety of guests and workers alongside implications on psychological and personal wellbeing of the employees impacted by the pandemic. However, it was observed that Hilton has been successfully operating with various measures to respond to such challenges. Despite this, some strategies for managing the company going forward were suggested, which include plan-do-check-act, lean thinking and six sigma approach.

References