The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company Harvard Case Solution & Analysis

Problem Statement

The General Manager of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, James McBride is concerned about a new strategic decision that he needs to take which may disrupt the brand. Ritz-Carlton is one of the most significant and luxurious hotel chain with around 38 hotels and is being supported by Millennium Partners. However, a new multi-use facility is aimed to set-up but the Millennium Partners are concerned with the “7 Day Countdown Process” of the Ritz-Carlton company as they want to achieve 80% occupancy for which they think this method is not appropriate.

The general manager is under real consideration about the decision and requires a strong justification to sustain the 7 Day Countdown Process. The decision is of critical nature as it has two concerning points where James will have to focus more. He needs to convince the investing partners, Millennium Partners about the positives that the company has achieved with the 7 Day Countdown Process and most importantly ensure them to achieve maximum occupancy rate in the desired period.

Problem Analysis

This section will analyze the importance of 7 Day Countdown Process as it is the source of competitive advantage and cannot be replaced. Using the VRIN model, this process will be analyzed which will highlight the significant features it has and how damaging it can be for the company to replace this method with another(Cardeal, 2012). This will be critical as it will help in understanding the issues and will provide sufficient help in designing the alternatives that James McBride can utilize and select the most feasible option.

VRIN Analysis

The company’s 7 Day Countdown process is the most valuable resource it has that has helped significantly in establishing Ritz-Carlton as one of the strongest brand in the hotel industry. This method has helped the company recruit employees and through effective training transform them into quality serving and well-disciplined employees. This whole process takes 7 days that are well distributed in different function and has given fruitful results. This has increased customer satisfaction rate a great deal and has helped the company expand readily.

This resource or method is to some extent rare and is not being practiced by any other player in the industry that gives the company and edge over its competitors. The rareness of this method allows to attract the most skilled employees form the rivals and less effort is required to transform such employees. Besides that the company value its employees which is why transforming and gaining their acceptance become easier.

This method can be adopted by other players as well in the industry but assimilating the method properly will be challenging for them. Therefore the proper imitation is very challenging and gives the company an edge in this regard. This scenario exhibits that this method is to some extent hard to imitate and will give significant advantage to the company. Besides that the company cannot substitute this method with any other as it will hurt its brand image.

Therefore replacing this method will hurt the company’s reputation and extending the process will incur new challenges that will be hard to deal with. Furthermore, the new challenges will make the task of achieving 80% occupancy more difficult and will not be in best favor of the company and the investing partner.

Decision Criteria

Factors

Alternative 1: Extend the Process.

Alternative 2: Continue the process and decrease the occupancy target.

Customer Satisfaction

1

1

Brand Image

0

1

Ease in Implementation

0

1

Financial Strength

1

0

Sustainability

0

1

Total

2

4

Key: 1 will represent “Yes”. O will represent “No”

Alternatives

Alternative 1: Extend the Process

The first alternative suggests the company to extend the 7 day countdown process and add another 7 days into it in order to transform employees in a better way. This decision is also being proposed by the Millennium Partners and will allow the company to maintain the expectation of the partners and will make the relationship stronger. However, there are certain benefits and costs related to this decision that are significant to address. This decision will allow the company to increase its training schedules and give more appropriate and efficient modeling to the newly hired employees that will strengthen the employee base...............

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