Analysis Of The Settlement Hotel In Melaka, Malaysia

Introduction

Business act as the main factor that how it makes an organization survive till last long. As the main income will be coming from how the way of an organization work on their business. In Malaysia, it could be more challenging as Malaysia comprises different races, such as Malay, Chinese and Indian (Chieng, Pan, Leong, 2015, p.11). In other words, Malaysia owns different cultures, values, and beliefs, therefore business target will need to take a balance to shape the globe of the future.

Basically, the hospitality industry will be the main focus on the business itself and how to give a good service that could let most of the guest come back and look forward to them. Hospitality industry would not only sell the room and let the guest stay in but also providing other services to gain income such as providing weeding plan, served food and beverage, providing transport as and so on.

Both business and service will be brought a huge impact on the hospitality industry. It will not only affect the company reputation at the same time will be affecting how long can survive in the future. In this study will be a focus on how business function and the aspect of service in the hospitality industry. There are few factors we will be highlights, such as the types of facilities, department available in the establishment, the role and function for each department, the target market and suggestion for improvement.

As there are so much of travelers nowadays, the hospitality industry has become the main industry the society looking for and of course, we could not one by one to discuss and compare all of them, therefore, we choose a hotel which named The Settlement Hotel as our main discussion for this assignment. The reason for choosing this hotel due to there are some practices we could be learned but at the same time there are some practices we think can be improved. Since business and service model of hospitality will influential as it can direct affected hotel itself and public. In fact, it is very important to study the area between business and the aspect of service in the hospitality industry.

Company Profile

Name of establishment: The Settlement Hotel

Location: Jalan Ujong Pasir, Taman Aman, 75050 Melaka

History

Melaka is a state of Malaysia filled with historic sites and modern tourist attractions. The Settlement Hotel located at the central of historic Melaka City. The popular tourist attraction ‘Jonker Street ‘is only 10 minutes range of driving from The Settlement Hotel. It is very convenient to the guest that visit The Settlement Hotel. The decoration of The Settlement Hotel is more towards the Traditional Malay Style. The hotel’s architectural style also tries to capture and preserve the precious “cultural heritage.” For example, when the guest entry the main gate of The Settlement Hotel, guest can attract by the “cultural heritage” that the hotel retains. It houses an art gallery as well as the antiques and collections of the owner of the private museum.

Types of Facilities

One of the types of facilities in The Settlement Hotel is ballroom. The ballroom is a perfect and elegant place. It can also accommodate up to 100 customers. Besides, it is also a place for meetings and weddings. Moreover, the second facilities in this hotel is Meeting Room. This is a smaller meeting room in this hotel. It can be used for meetings, seminars, and conferences. At the same time, it also provides a comfortable environment for mangers and senior staff when they are having meetings.

Furthermore, another amenity of this hotel is free Wi-Fi in every room and hotel lobby. This is because the staff work in the hotel can access to Internet search something that they want, and it can also bring convenient to the customers. As a result, customers can use the free Wi-Fi access Internet to search the nearby shops, restaurants, night markets, and so on. Besides that, The Settlement Hotel also have the multi-purpose room. It provides a large room to meet the different needs of the customers. For example, it can be a games room, meditation, birthday party, and so on. In addition to this beyond that, the other facilities of The Settlement Hotel is have a rooftop garden. This rooftop garden allows customers to enjoy the sight of the beautiful views and plants. Thus, it also offers plenty of tables and chairs for customers to chat over breakfast or afternoon tea. In the evening, the customers can also enjoy the night view of Malacca while enjoying the dinner.

Next, another types of amenities in this hotel is the dining restaurant. It offers a variety tastes and flavors of cuisine to guests such as Western cuisine, Malay cuisine, Chinese cuisine, Indian cuisine, Portuguese cuisine and Exotic Middle Eastern cuisine. When customers feel hungry it can fulfill theirs’s physiological needs and social needs. Besides, The Settlement Hotel have the long table bar. The long table bar allows customers to relax and unwind themselves as well as enjoy the ‘kesidang’ sweet scent with natural environment while enjoying drinking and chatting with friends.

In a nutshell, the types of facilities in this hotel have traditional spa village and pool. The settlement spa village allows customers to feel physically and mentally happy and refreshed as well as to enjoy a rejuvenating and nourishing spiritual experience through a variety of traditional massages, scrubbing, facials, nail care services and other care services. Besides that, the pool is located beside the spa village and it can also unwind and relax customers during their holiday.

Department Available in the Establishment

Some department available in the establishment in a hotel is Front Office (Front Desk Services), Concierge Services, Housekeeping, Accounting, Marketing and Sales, Food and Beverage, Human Resource and so on.

Firstly, Front office is an area where the visitors arrive and first counter that the staff on duty to service the guests. Concierge Services is a group of people will be service the guests when they are arrived at the hotel and give greeting for the guests. Then, housekeeping is a department to clear and clean the whole rooms and around the hotel areas. Accounting is a department for the systematic and comprehensive recording of financial transactions pertaining to a hotel. Next, Marketing and sales is a process or technique of promoting the services of a hotel and food service or catering of the industry those business and companies responsible for any meal prepared outside the home. Lastly, human resource are the people who make up the workforce of business organization or economy to build up the operation of the hotel.

The Role and Function for each Department:

Front Desk Services

The role of a front desk services is to be a patience and kind person to treat good for the visitors and service the visitors that what they face the problems whatever they needed. The visitors will always make up check-in and check-out at the encounter with the staff. The function is helping the visitors to check-in and check-out from the hotel and ensuring the visitors have a good service.

Concierge Services

The role of a concierge is greeting the visitor when they arrived at the hotel. The concierge will open the front door to the visitors to let them come into the hotel and help the visitors to carry out the luggage and bags. They need to have a good image and keep smile as a concierge because the visitors will fell welcome when they are greeting by the concierge.

Housekeeping

The role of a housekeeper is a group of staff keep clearing the rooms. The staff will clear the rooms after the visitors used and make sure the rooms are clean and tidy. This is because the visitors can feel comfortable while they live in the hotel and they will feel warm as their home however they are outside from their home.

Accounting

The role of an accounting is providing financial data and information to the hotel. Accounting measures the amount of the whole operation of the hotel and make better for the financial to the hotel. Then, the accounting will not try to run an organization or make investment decisions without accurate. That is a important role as an accountant in a hotel to manage the financial system.

Marketing and Sales

The role of the marketing and sales is an operation and activities of promoting product and service to the customers. The marketing staff will develop and manage sales strategies to ensure the operation of the hotel will be smooth and unhindered. They can also attract more visitor to come overnight at the hotel and provide good services to them to conform they are satisfaction.

Food and Beverage

The role of the food and beverage is a restaurant will set up tables, removing used dishes and preparing simple dishes for the customers. The customers will have been serving by the waiter and waitress to carry the foods and drinks to them because the customers are far from the house. The food and beverage must calculate the ingredients that use for cooking in the kitchen and not to be wasted.

Human Resource

The role of the human resource is responsible to scree, interview and place workers, they may handle employee relation, benefits and payroll. Human resource needs to know about direct and coordinate the administrative function of an organization to have a target for the company. They must arrange the manpower and staff to smooth the entire workflow in a hotel.

The Target market

Based on the research that we have done about The Settlement Hotel. One of the target markets of The Settlement Hotel is family holiday trip and tourist holiday trip. Location of this hotel is at a tourism attractions high population area. The location of the Settlement Hotel is nearby the center of city Malacca. Besides, there have a lot of type historical building and culture that occupied our territory that left in our history. For instance, Portuguese, Nyonya, Holland, British and so on. Hotel also provide daily shuttle service for tourists to Jonker Street and Portuguese Settlement. Hence, the family holiday trip and tourists holiday trip are one of the target market for The Settlement Hotel.

Besides that, The Settlement Hotel provide the budget tourism, it majority focuses on middle-class consumer because it is price reasonable. The pricing per day of The Settlement Hotel is stand for different type of room and different type of season. The pricing of per room per day normally RM100+ the higher price can up to RM500+. It is a 4-star Hotel, it is a reasonable price and suitable to the middle-class family to stay in this hotel.

Other than that, another target market is businessman, working women and teenager. This is a chance for them to interact in a relaxed environment. This hotel more suitable for the businessman, working women that focus on their works. In a relax environment, it can aid them to stay away as well as release the stress. The decoration of The Settlement Hotel is more towards to traditional Malay style. The Settlement Hotel provide an experience that living in a traditional Malay home. It has a relax and peaceful environment compare with city lifestyle. It can let the guests stay away from the reality, the pressure and rush timing for their livelihood.

Suggestion for Improvement

Based on the research that we have done about The Settlement Hotel, we have few suggestions to improve the hotel. Firstly, we suggest that provides a mobile application program about the hotel to the guests so this can increase the revenue. It can also convenient the guests to book the hotel. This application program can display the history, details, promotions, location and others important and interested information about The Settlement Hotel. Therefore, the guests can log in to the mobile apps that provides by the hotel at anytime, anywhere. For instance, guests can book the hotel with a cheapest price in the apps that provided by the hotel. In addition, the guests that have download the apps can get the information at the first time.

Secondly, we suggest that provides extra customers service for the frequent guests. For instance, hotel should offer a 20% discount to the frequent guests that visit us more than 3 times or hotel could upgrade the rooms for the frequent guests to VIP rooms. Thus, it can let the guests feel loyalty. Furthermore, hotel can also provide free breakfast, lunch or dinner in the dining room to repeat guests. Other than that, hotel can also provide free spa and services to the frequent guests such as massage, body scrub, reflexology and many others signature treatments that can make guests feel relax. Hence, this can let the frequent guests know more details about the facilities in the hotel. Moreover, they can have a free experience through these extra services. So, this can ensure that the guests can return again.

Thirdly, we suggest that hotel should provide a series of training programs for employees to provide well trained and friendly employees to maximize customer satisfaction. Hotel should train and motivate their staff effectively, so that guests can feel welcome. For an example, employees should be trained to have a good attitude, grooming, approachable and attentive toward the guests so that the guests feel welcome. Other than that, employees should have good communication skills such as greeting the guests, remember the name of the guests or thanking the guests and inviting comments and return business. As a result, this kind of actions can make a good impression on guests. When guests felt welcome, it can increase the occupation rate and it can also increase the reputation of the hotel

In a conclusion, to have an improvement we suggest that hotel should do a questionnaire or survey to get feedback from the guests or staff. The feedback from guests and staff is very important because it can reduce the problems or threats that hotel might facing such as high staff turnover and low occupation rate and others. Through the questionnaire or survey, we can know not only the problems and threats but also can know about the strengths of the hotel and opportunities. As a result, we could use the guest and staff feedback to make a future decision so our guests can feel welcome and staff can feel respected by the hotel.

Conclusion

In conclusion, The Settlement Hotel would not only sell the room and let the guest stay in but also providing other services to gain income such as providing weeding plan, served food and beverage, providing transport as and so on. The hotel takes the eclectic approach when it comes to style, slanting more towards contemporary English that is expertly infused with modern Peranakan and South East Asian (Jeremy Khalil,2016). The hotel’s architectural style also tries to capture and preserve the precious “cultural heritage.” It houses an art gallery as well as the antiques and collections of the owner of the private museum. Besides that, The Settlement Hotel have a lot of department, such as front desk service, housekeeping department, Food & Beverage department and so on.

The Hotel also have few facilities such as free Wi-Fi and dining restaurant. In addition, the target market for the Settlement Hotel is budgeted tourists, working woman, teenagers and so forth. After the research that have been done by us, we felt that The Settlement Hotel has a potential to improve their hotel in many ways such as they can improve the facilities that provided by the hotel, increase the quality of the staff, explore innovative markets and so on. Moreover, we suggest that provide a mobile applications program, give extra services to frequent guests, provide a series of training program for employees and do a survey or questionnaire is very important toward the future plan of the hotel. It might direct influence the future decision of the hotel. Therefore, those suggestion that had been given could increase the revenue of the hotel.