“We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen”

Ritz - Carlton

Established in 1983 with the purchase of The Ritz-Carlton, Boston and the rights to the name Ritz-Carlton. The management company has grown from one hotel to 81 hotels worldwide with plans for further expansion in Europe, Africa, Asia, the Middle East and the Americas. The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company is an independently operated division of Marriott International, Bethesda, Md.

About

What has Ritz-Carlton achieved ?

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company L.L.C., which operates five-star resorts and luxury hotels worldwide, has received all the major awards the hospitality industry and leading consumer organizations can bestow.Ritz-Carlton is the first and only hotel company twice honored with the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award from the United States Department of Commerce.

How does Ritz-Carlton do it?

The five points where Ritz-Carlton pays attention

They have a clear sense of their target customers and their need and have developed a distinctive strategy for satisfying these needs. And Ritz-Carlton has focussed on this from the very recruitment step. It states that it uses the 12 Service values which include values such as “I am empowered to create unique , memorable and personal experience”

Strategic Concept

Top Management commitment

Ritz-Carlton has seriously committed to service quality. Their management looks monthly not only at financial performance but also at service performance. Cleanliness , service and values. It's the reason this company says “We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen”.

Ritz-Carlton provides services of high standards. It believes in services that are of high quality both functionally and emotionally.This can be truly seen by the way company policy works, Where they say that an employee is entitled to spend upto 2000$ on a customer or guest .

High standards

Profit tiers

Ritz-Carlton is a luxury and a brand no ordinary middle class person has access to. So what they did is to focus to the need of that of higher class and have decided to raise the fee and lower services to these customers who barely pay their way, and to coddle big spenders to retain their patronage as long as possible. Ritz-Carlton looks to it that it gives its offers and rewards system which is focused for higher class.

Monitoring Sysytems

The hotels measures the success of its customer service efforts through gallup phone interviews which ask both functional and emotional questions. This fact shows at which level is the company monitoring its systems and its company.

How does the Ritz-Carlton match up to the competitive hotels? What are the key

differences?

What ritz did that made it a different case altogether from the rest of the hotels are following:● The idea of “ We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen’ is

a major factor showing that their services are well taken care and that they take care of their employers and hence they know that they are going to take care of their guests or customers.

● The way they get their feedback is also impressive as the matter of fact the question being both functional and emotional is a major breakthrough from the general way.

● Their way of trying more and more of innovation is again appreciable as this again very rare among the competition. Best example is the rooms of these hotels. The way they make each room and experience of each customer different.

● Also the introduction of the 12 service values is a new way and the “wow factors” in the employee's way of general lifestyle and incorporating the fact that they need to bring that experience to their customers is important.

Discuss the importance of the “wow stories’ in the customer service for a luxury hotel like

Ritz-Carlton.

The “wow stories” are very important in the service for luxury hotels like Ritz. By using these “wow stories” Ritz-Carlton has used a very important idea of a best service the idea of surprise. For example these wow stories help employees think tangibly and help them realise in how different ways can they actually satisfy a customer. Which is very important because in a company like Ritz it is both the relation between company and emloyee as well as that between employee and customer is important. These “wow stories” help that relation to strengthen. This also shows how in a daily schedule of employee they take time out to realise an overall goal of that to please guest and customers to make them happy.

What can Ritz-Carlton do to increase their reach?

If we see through the amount of hotels and line of hotels it has opened is very less as that of 80 to 260 world-wide of that of Radisson-Blu. Which clearly shows it has to focus more on the expansion part also the fact that it is very less expanded in the asian side which is growing at highest rate is a negative thing.

Summary or rather a conclusion

What Ritz-Carlton did is at a whole different level the idea of managing services. For a company to become successful it has to maintain a good relation between with customer which is not only during the transaction or purchase but also during the service that is needed by the product or the consumer. And presently services are accounted for 54.4% towards India’s GDP. So that is the importance of services over products.

Disclaimer

During marketing internship under the Prof. Sameer Mathur, IIM Lucknow.

Created by Gadavilli Sumukh, IIT Madras.