The Sheraton Althone Hotel

In the hotel industry, yield management as a profit maximization strategy is concerned with the market sensitive pricing of fixed room capacity relative to specific market characteristics. More recently interest in yield management has been increasingly evident in the hospitality industry as hotel companies have sought to maximise revenue and profitability from the sale of accommodation. In this report, we will take a look at the strategic management technique of Sheraton Athlone Hotel in Ireland and develop a detail analysis of how yield management is used to attract business and maximise revenue.

v  Starwood Hotel Family

Sheraton Athlone Hotel and Westin Dublin Hotel are both in the Starwood Hotel Family. Starwood Company is one of the world’s largest hotel and leisure companies. They provide flawless and bespoke service to high-end leisure and business travellers. Sheraton is their largest brand serving the needs of luxury and upscale business and leisure travellers worldwide. From full-service hotels in major cities to luxurious resorts by the water, Sheraton can be found in the most sought-after cities and resort destinations around the world.

v  Description of Sheraton Athlone Hotel Ireland

Sheraton Athlone Hotel is a four star luxury hotel located in the Midlands in Ireland. Hotel has spa facilities, 167 luxurious bedrooms and suites with affording spectacular views over the River Shannon and Ireland's Lakelands. Business amenities at this 4.0-star Sheraton Hotel property include wireless Internet access and audio-visual equipment. This Athlone property has a restaurant and a bar/lounge. Guests are served a complimentary breakfast each morning.

Sheraton Athlone Hotel has 11 dedicated conference suites, boardroom meeting rooms, advanced technology and unrivalled conference support service. It includes a remarkable aquatics area with 18m pool, 3 feature pools and state of the art fitness equipment. It also has one restaurant La Provence which service breakfast, lunch and dinner daily. Harvest Café also service hot food and snacks throughout the day.  The Sheraton Bar services drinks, snacks and cocktails.

One of the most important marketing questions facing a hospitality operation is “who stays at our property and whom else can we attract?” Through marketing research, tools, and strategies, lodging properties seek to indentify target markets. Target markets are distinctly defined groups of people that the hotel hopes to retain or attract as guests.

Sheraton Hotel provides clean, comfortable, inexpensive room and meets the basic needs of guests. Generally, the market for the lodging industry can be segmented into three major categories, based on reasons for travel: business, pleasure and group. It has potentially large market from which to attract clientele. The clientele may include families with children, tour groups, travelling business people, vacationers and groups of conventioneers.

Strengths

Sheraton Althone hotel is member of Starwood Hotel & Resorts Worldwide. It is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world.The hotel has unique combinations of classical brand marketing and hotel industry experience. Special excellent organization system will help ensure that Sheraton's new brand messaging is threaded into every nuance of the guest experience.It is located beside Athlone Town shopping centre giving it prime location and only 90 minutes from Dublin makes it perfect for business or leisure.

Weaknesses

From the price contrast we think that average cost of Sheraton Athlone is always higher than Radisson Blu Athlone. We suppose Radisson Blu is the biggest competitor, because both of them are under the big international hotel group and have high quality service. But during our research we find that just one day the room price of Sheraton is lower than Radisson, but the other five days are all higher than it, especially on 11^th March and 12^th Math they have the highest price.

Opportunities

Sheraton Athlone has the ability to hold big Wedding especial with the beautiful river view.Spas has specialize service for their guests, it is one of Sheraton Althlone’s biggest recommend activity. So it is worth to developing.The equipment’s improve of the suites will attract more people because most suites have good view of Shannon River. The best location for business people, Sheraton Athlone has great deals of contract with some big companies.

Threats

Sheraton Athlone Hotel needs to make more advertising on the primary media.To add more characteristic service items or activities will attract more business. From the contrast with Radisson Blu we think that they did much better than Sheraton in this aspect.

Critically evaluate the multiplicity of management styles--Consultative

A consultative management style can be viewed as a combination of democratic and autocratic. The managers always ask staffs' opinions and allow them to feel involved. But they are the one who makes the final decision.

Skills, experiences, and ideas of others are things what this kind of managers will focus on. However, they still reserve the power of final decision making. They won't make major decisions until they make sure of what influences those decisions will have.

Advantages

1.        The varieties of ideas may bring creative change.

2.        Provide more choice for managers to choose the most effectively and efficiently ideas.

Disadvantages

1.        The varieties of ideas may bring a stalemate for managers to bring them together.

2.        The varieties of ideas also bring some difficulties to managers to choose the best ones from those ideas.

3.        Even though staffs have been consulted, some of them may still disagree of the final decision.

Critically evaluate the multiplicity of management styles--Democratic

 Democratic Management Style is yet another Management Style. It is one of the four most common management styles currently practiced in the social as well as business environment. How is this Democratic Management Style different from all the other three Management Styles? Let’s take a look at the democratic management style with a different perspective.

A Democratic Management Style has moderate approach to a situation whether at work or in a social places. The way things are getting done is to seek opinion from your staffs as opposed to giving a direct instruction. In the case of a social place example a community meeting, you’re tend to seek opinions and points of view from those turn up for the community meeting. As a democratic manager, you still need to give instruction but before you do that, you will solicits ideas and opinion from your staffs and you allow the voice of your staffs and make your own decision based on those feedback. Sometimes the decisions are made similar to the feedback but not always the case in the case of a Democratic Management Style.

Advantage

1.  Encourage group decision
2.   Look friendlier
3.  Value opinion from staff
4.  Reduce implementation conflicts

Disadvantages

1.    Decision made may not be the best for the company
2. Time consuming
3. Conflict among support and non-support group
4.   Staff may not have enough knowledge about the decision

Critically evaluate the multiplicity of management styles--Laissez-faire

Laissez-faire leadership style can be good for employees to be participating in the management process. In the other words this style could made the leader avoid the duties of management, sometimes it also let the leader structure discordant. It is most appropriate to apply this management style when dealing with confrontation or conflicts because you do not want to be seen as siding anyone. But in many cases it is not deliberate and is simply a result of poor management. This kind of style is positive only in the case when the employees are very responsible

Advantages

l  It could helpful to cultivate employees’ responsibility.

l  It could help employees mix the sense of innovation into the work

l  High job satisfaction and morale.

l  No negative feelings in group works.

If a company has developed a group of employees that has proven itself over time to be capable of performing any tasks thrown at it, management may be able to take a more relaxed approach to their guidance. This frees up managers to use their time in other ways to benefit the company.

Disadvantages

l  It proves poor management and makes the employees lose their sense of direction and focus.

l  It leads to much dissatisfaction of employees because of this non-standard management style.

l  A laissez-faire management style makes it easy for workers to do a substandard job or to slack off entirely, and it usually takes a very high-visibility problem to bring such workers to light.

l  Some leaders may use this management style as a lazy way of avoiding responsibilities that they should accept or leaving employees without necessary guidance or leadership.

This management style can create an environment of fear. It costs to high turnover and absenteeism, which can hinder progress. But on the other hand this style made employees put more innovation ideas into the work and made them more comfortable and confident in the group works. It is also a useful way to test employees’ responsibility. 

Critically evaluate the multiplicity of management styles--Autocratic

Autocratic

The autocratic management is about the manager make their own decision without any consultation, the manager likes to control the situation they’re in, so their decisions will reflect the opinions and personality of the manager.

Advantages:

l  Can making the quick decision

l  No time waste

l  boost personal morale

l  implement decided new policy

It is a easier way manage a big organization, because when the manager make their decision there were no question ask, without to talk to someone it will save some time; easier way to built the self-confidence;

Disadvantages:

l  Stuffs maybe feel useless

l  The new ideals from stuff will not be consider

l  wait for instruction causing delays

l  No initiative from staff

In an opposite way to look the Autocratic management, there were some disadvantages. When they make their decision without ask anyone, it might make the stuffs feel useless and in this kind of management style the manager maybe lose lots of good ideals from stuff  

The Overbooking Policy

Hotels may offer some excuses that they have to oversell to make up for the losses from the growing number of guests who make reservations but never keep them. The main reason for overbooking is ‘No shows’, it means people who make bookings but fail to honour them.

Some hotels routinely accept more reservations that it has rooms and then sends the overflow guests to a closely hotel or the bad case: second-rate motel, telling them they can take it or leave it. What’s more, some of the hotels do not offer guests to adjust the rate, then guests could not get hotel vouchers or other forms of credit that are impossible to redeem.

In academic theory the “no-show” reason we can include ‘Early departures’ and’ late cancellations’ these two items. The best overbooking rate is marginal revenue that equal to marginal cost. What we need to considered in overbooking policy are four items: Estimate cancels, estimate no shows, early check-out and extension check-out.

Creative innovation organization

Innovation is the successful exploitation of new ideas. The word derived from Latin. It has three basic senses: Update, Discovering and Change. Innovation is not only the invention of a new idea people interested in. The idea actually bought to market, used and put into practice let the company can improve something or add some value on it. This is the update, discovering or change in a product offering, service, business module or operation which meaningful improve the experience of a large number of stakeholders. By all means, innovation is a business revolution.

Rather than using the word “new”, the word “change” is more perfect. A change reflects that there was a way people were doing something before, and now there is a different way. It also can use for on existing practice or technology in another sector. Innovation is non-conventional, the process often through a series of groundbreaking time (think process) in order to gain the ultimate success.

By giving the innovation idea in the business is not just selling the product. It is the combination of good idea to motivated staff and instructive understanding the need of customers. As Richard Branson said that “An innovation business is one which lives and breathes outside the box”. The most creative and innovation idea be using the company may attract much more customers. The innovation always concludes product service, business model or operations. These areas widen the scope of innovation beyond the popular culture sense of it. Innovation can relate to a product offering, be it a brand new product, built on new futures. Service changes can certainly be innovation. Business model innovations are favorite and powerful types of innovation. Operation innovation can be quite valuable such as Wal-Mart’s work to improve its fleet efficiency by 25%.

As nowadays, much more of the senior managers do not have a clear, well-developed model of what innovation looks like as an organization capability. They think that the innovation is all about the new products and service. Today greatest amount of wealth goes to those who create new business model, new source of revenue based on changing technology and changing global demand. Innovation is now important for all kind of business activities, not just the end products. So that managers should take an action and think creating holistically about their entire business concept.

Technological innovation is an economic activity that aimed to creating its own intellectual property technology; this is the essential character of technological innovation. The innovation always means “unique” or “revolution”. It is worth to pay attention of intellectual property rights.