Outsourcing Hotel Valet Service

I attached the assignment my colleague did below. Please read these samples and do the discussion. The discussion should be minimum of 300 words. Also, please choose 2 peers and reply to their discussion.

Topic:

By this point in your graduate journey, you have surely been exposed to Human Resources in one way or another.  You all have likely witnessed a workplace setting where outsourcing was used to augment the workforce.  In this thread, respond by Wednesday with the following:

-What roles were outsourced?

-Was it successful?

-What were common issues that you encountered?

Peer #1

I’ve worked for Hilton at various properties over the past decade and at my most recent destination, a Hampton Inn & Suites, roughly 2 years ago we outsourced Valet Parking. We were in a unique position that our corporate owner also owned a parking garage directly adjacent to the hotel property, for (I’m assuming) a long time we hired, fired, and oversaw the Valet Parking Attendants until management and our corporate directors saw another (cheaper, less liable) path forward: contracting a 3rd-party valet attendant service.

It has some successes and some faults; primary successes were that we no longer had staff on our payroll that only parked and retrieved cars (while understandably that was their job, a lot of their time was spent quite simply doing nothing), we no longer had to oversee benefits or additional compensations. Furthermore, now any issues with parking were now dealt with by a contracted company — damages, general customer complaints, etc.

The downside is that while we, the hotel, know the difference in company, most customers do not. The hotel still dealt with complaints, car damages, general displeasure — extending contact information to the guest, but the fact they now how to go through another outlet to have their feedback directed to the correct party seems to only add to their frustration.

Side-note: Due to COVID-19 we cut our Valet company, and only offer self-parking options (with a small decrease in price) and while there are less complaints, our more regular guests consistently complain about the fact that we no longer offer it.

(Proving the age-old statement, you can’t please ’em all.)

Peer Reply

Bingtao Hu

RE: Outsourcing Hotel Valet Service

I like your post very much because I have been troubled by it. Hotel parking is a way to enhance the customer experience. This way I don’t spend more time parking because I want to rest as soon as possible. I think as a service industry, hotels should be hands-on in parking because it’s about the guest experience. For an outsourcing company, parking is just a job. But I think good service requires emotion. This is a disappointing response from a guest who believes that a complaint of damage will not be accepted by the hotel. Great job.

Lauren Sbardella

RE: Outsourcing Hotel Valet Service

Reid,

I completely agree from the guest prospective if i made a complaint about my car to the hotel and they they told me to contact another company I would feel more frustrated and further probably not follow though with it due to the hassle unless it was a bigger issue like damage. Sometimes the cheaper option isn’t always the best especially in the guest service industry! I also know personally for me I rather self park my car rather than have to tip someone doing something I could easily do myself. Completely agree you can NEVER please everyone!!

Jennifer Warnicke

RE: Outsourcing Hotel Valet Service

I completely understand what you mean.. I’ve worked in a hotel where the valet parking was outsourced. Although, like you said, there are some benefits such as not having to worry so much about internal benefit costs and wasted time and the like, there is also that hassle of having to tell a customer that’s already frustrated that you, as a hotel, are not the ones they they should be frustrated with (having to send them through another call on hold just to get an issue resolved).

Not only that, but as simple as it may seem to be a valet driver, those contracted individuals don’t always know the premises the best and don’t always treat the property with as much respect as they should. This, in turn, can lead to a guest believing that they are employees of the hotel and not wanting to come back to that hotel specifically for that reason (even if they don’t say anything to the hotel staff about it). Personally, I want to ask you, do you think contracting that service out has been worth it? There are upsides and downsides on both ends. So, I genuinely want to know from a first-hand perspective, do you think that contracting valet parking out to a third-party service was the right call?

Peer #2

Companies outsource various HR functions, such as business-process outsourcing (BPO), employee selection and recruitment, and employee relations management, among others. Organizations outsource these functions to augment their workforces and processes, mainly by saving costs, ensuring a continuous flow of work, and growing employees’ skill sets.

In the company that I worked, the HR team outsourced employee selection and recruitment, BPO, and training and development. These functions were outsourced because the company did not have adequately trained professionals to perform them in house. The outsourced operations were cost-effective when performed externally, and would have been administratively burdensome had they been done in house. The BPO provider eased the workload that the inhouse HR team would have been forced to do manually.

Some of the core issues encountered in the outsourcing exercise included a perceived lack of capability by some employees, a failure by the outsourced service providers to communicate effectively, and the lack of control by the outsourcing company.

Peer #3

Working as an Event Manager over the years I’ve dealt a lot with outsourcing in the aspect of vendors. Most weddings and larger events there are always a handful of vendors that do not work for the property involved in the event. The most common for weddings are Floral, Entertainment, Djs, Catering, Bakers, and Officiant. There are many more than those listed and sometimes can become very hectic trying to not only manage the event itself but to coordinate the sometimes 15 pulse vendors on site before, during and after the event.

When working at the White Elephant on Nantucket Island often the only people working directly for the Hotel were the serving staff, kitchen, and myself. Luckily the vendors were usually the same and most were familiarly with the property and the policies and procedures in place and the general flow of how we operated a wedding. We used a suggested vendor list when working with clients of vendors that were not only exceptional in quality but also easy for us to work with. Over the years we unfortunately even developed a list of vendors not allowed on site as they proved impossible to work with or repeatedly broke policies set in place and agreed to.

For the most part working with the outsourced vendors worked very well since as stated they were usually reoccurring vendors. Only when there was a new vendor on site or when there were a large amount of them did it become hectic to operate and keep everyone on the same page and time schedule.

Peer Reply

Jennifer Warnicke

RE: Outsourcing Vendors

In that type of situation, it can be tough. I know exactly what you’re talking about. I’ve been on those type of premises where it’s all large events such as weddings, graduation parties, etc., and there are many different aspects that have to be considered. I must say though, the venue’s decision to put their foot down and say that some vendors will not be allowed back because they are impossible to work with or broke policy rules is absolutely the right call. Some venues decide that because one vendor is less expensive that, no matter what kind of work they do, they are worth the hassle.

Personally, that has never been my opinion. It is the venue’s job to make sure that the entire machine is well oiled and running smoothly. If they have one part that’s broken within a machine, they can’t just say ‘oh well it’s cost-effective and it’s doing a good enough job so we will keep it”. No. They replace that broken part and fix the issue. Another thing that could be done is to have a set list of vendors that are contracted. If the venue needs an extra service because a party asked for it specifically, then some exceptions can be made. Overall, however, I think there should be a general list of vendors that are hired because they are familiar with the property, familiar with the systems, and familiar with how the machine works and what their role is within that system (and do their job well).

Peer#4

The main core idea of the outsourcing industry is “do what you do best and let others do it”, in short, it is to hand over the links in production and operation activities to other companies, and the company itself focuses on the most The core competitive part of the business. In the beginning, this can save a lot of cost and time. This important corporate development strategy and management model has been widely used in many fields.

As I know, there are many outsourced services in the hotel industry. With the continuous development of the hotel industry, hotel outsourcing services is a trend of professional operation of hotels, because it can use social resources, reduce operating costs, and share hotel operating risks. This is also in line with the trend of social division of labor, and it is also the need to restore the hotel as the main body of operation and focus on the core products.

This outsourcing service is the embodiment of the hotel’s continuous development. For example, some hotel service projects have taken the form of an external lease due to a lack of professionals or related resources. The venue, equipment and even personnel are leased to partners inside or outside the hotel. The hotel only charges part of the rent or contract fees. The benefits of this kind of project outsourcing are increased professionalism and the hotel’s resources are fully utilized. Hotel service project outsourcing is usually supporting facilities or non-core products, such as hotel equipment, conference decoration, hotel catering and kitchen business.

However, it cannot be ignored that hotel outsourcing may bring a series of problems, because outsourcing units value short-term benefits, while hotels value long-term benefits and comprehensive benefits. Due to the deviation of the interests of the two, there are also differences in management methods. For example, the emergence of freshly squeezed fruit juices with added additives in the hotel, and food poisoning in outsourced restaurants, resulting in legal disputes. This also makes us worry about the long-term development of the hotel.

Peer #5

Companies of all types use outsourcing to reduce costs and increase efficiency. I did internship in Oakwood Residence Funder Chengdu almost five years ago. I worked in both Front Desk and Housekeeping department during the intern. The landscaping of our hotel was alway outsourced to other profession company. The job positions in Front Desk and Housekeeping Department were never outsourced, because our manager believed these positions would have direct impact on hotel’s reputation and revenue. Outsourcing landscaping work allowed our Manager to save time and effort. Outsourcing also saved our hotel’s operating costs and training costs, which allowed us to focus more on serving our guests. And the outsourcing company finished the landscaping work very well.

Peer #6

I worked with the Taj hotel for a year back in India. They used outsourced half of the housekeeping staff and used to hire half of the staff.

Advantages-

1-The housekeeping manager used to say that they used to save a lot of money since outsourcing used to save them a lot as they have a contract between the hotel and the outsourcing company and they have fixed salaries and also save on employee-related cost like health insurances, day-offs, workplace safety issues, etc.

2- The hotel always had a back-up. If they are a shortage of staff or the outsourced staff are do not arrive the HR used to contact the company and they used to send the staff.

If there is any problem the hotel didn’t need to worry about it as it is between the outsourced staff and their manager. issues related to salaries or work off would be handled by the third-party company.

Disadvantages-

1- The hotel had to teach them from scratch. The in- house staff is hired directly after they are graduated from the hospitality college so they know what and how things need to be done. On the other hand, the outsourced employees need to be taught everything. Which needs time and it also adds expenses of training them.

The staff is hard to handle and sometimes it can be tricky as they never listen and the Housekeeping manager always used to call the contact manager to sort the issue. Since they were on contract their salaries were given to them by the company they were hired from and the company used to delay in giving them and on the other hand the workers used to stop working till ty get their wages.

The Hotel was experimenting with this to see which is better. I think is it has its pros and cons it depends on what type of hotel it is, the size of the hotel also matters in this as the workers are inexperienced when it comes to talking with the guest. and in a 5-star hotel that is important.