Planning with Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts have spent the last 45 years defining what it means to be a luxury hotel. During these last 45 years they have formed this definition by basing all their planning and decisions on service excellence, being the best at what they do. In essence, planning requires an accurate analysis of all available resources knowledge of past performance, and assessment of the current situation and clearly formulated objectives. To Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts, service excellence is not just what theydo but what they are. As the experience of Four Seasons demonstrates, personal service is a source of superior profitability, reputation, and growth. The success of Four Seasons organization and planning is not just in the service they provide but deeply rooted in the employees it chooses and depends on to provide those services in a genuine and innovative way, by beinginnovative in planning and developing standards both meaningful and flexible, and on maintaining a unique culture that brings all this together. While innovations in hotels design and style, technology, and personal amenities will always be important, nothing comes closer thanpersonal service to providing what strategist Michael Porter has defined as true competitive advantage: the ability to deliver distinctive benefits for which customers will pay more, over time, becausethose benefits are highly valuable and difficult to imitate (Talbott, 2006).

As Porter has written,

A company can outperform its rivals only if it can establish a difference that it can preserve;
Competitors can quickly imitate management techniques, new technologies, and input improvements;
The most generic solutions those that can be used in multiple settings diffuse the fastest; and
Competitive strategy is about beingdifferentchoosing to perform activities differently or to perform different activities than rivals (Talbott, 2006).

Four Seasons believes planning is concerned with looking at the future and identifying alternative courses of action. They believe plans are derived from objectives and concerned with the way in which objectives are to be achieved. The fact that objectives are to be achieved, the fact that objectives have been set, or agreed; in no way guarantees their achievement. Plans are the means by which objectives are to be achieved. This can be likened to the plans to a bridge, and the concept of a plan as a bridge is useful, as one can visualize the plan as the means of gettingfrom the present situation to the intended future situation. A hotels strategies are the plans it devises to win the competitive struggle. Its strategic planning can be defined as the set of decisions and actions resulting in formulation and implementation of strategies designed to achieve the objectives of the organization. Strategic decisions impact a hotels long-term profitability, often require the allocation of considerable resources, are future-oriented, often affect more than one department, and require consideration of the hotels external environment. A number of strategic decisions have already been made for an existing hotel including its location, size, facilities and, to a certain degree, the types of guests it was builtto serve. Still, strategic decisions are made at the individual hotel levels that influence it as ability to compete and to achieve its objectives. The larger and more complex a hotel, the more management will likely be faced with the need to plan strategically. Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts was foundedin 1961 and since then has worked to make personal service its distinguishing competitive advantage (Talbott, 2006). Experience since then would indicate that personal service can and does fulfill Porters dictum. Planning is not an activity, which can be undertaken without due consideration being given to those internal and external influences, whichare constantly changing. The loss of skilled staff in any part of the hotel and the management of others less skilled and needing training may necessitate the modification of plans as may increase in the cost of materials and power. Exceptional service is an intangible product delivered by Four Seasons, compared to physical assets. Systems and culture are dynamic and it takes long periods of timeto develop. Service depends on many integrated actions, including how employees are chosen and managed and how standards are created and taught (Talbott, 2006). Exceptional service is an investment the perception of guests as based on the quality of the staff providing the service, which over the history of Four Seasons has been a superior source of profitability, reputation, and growth. The world is nowflat, as Thomas Friedman has recently written, and this has removed barriers in a different, often disempowering, way.

Planning is not an activity just for top management; it is something involving every employee in order to avoid inefficiency, delay andwaste. "The important to budget travel is to approach ahead. When it comes along to family trips, globetrotting, well-deserved holidays and/or going to see new places we have never been before, the fact of cost and budgeting is generally in the back of our heads. Arranging and expending our travel budget carefully is a concern for most families. Minimizing spending and charges, while still taking pleasure in your vacation to its fullest, is the key to guaranteed success and fiscal liability. Your pocketbook and family will thank you! The reasoning regarding protecting money while vacationing is simple: Even if your personal finances is extremely limited, you can still take a break and enjoy life! Simply put, life is just too short to never step out of the door or departing the homestead! Also thinking about that while traveling, no matter whether on a price range or not, even the smallest of things can all add op to a huge vacation or travel costs!..". Some will plan their activities in advance (often in order to minimize effort) others will need help and training to enable them to plan theirwork effectively. This is one of the responsibilities of management to plan the training, where necessary, of their subordinates. In dealing with employees and all others, Four Seasons is guided by a philosophy summed up in the Golden Rule, a version of which can be found in most world systems of belief. It is for this reason that the Golden Rule works in many situation where the rule may not be, across a wide variety of countries, and even in cases where staff were not initially selected through the multiple interview process. The basis of what Four Seasons calls its unique service culture is a series of understandings of the nature of the people who provides the act of service, and the one who receives it. The first of these is about the people themselves, namely, that the desire to serve is innate, there to be discovered,and not taught by the hiring organization (Talbott, 2006).

In order to reach objectives, it is necessary to make plans. The making of plans and making of decisions as towhich departments, sections and individuals are to be accountable of which activities, is the first step in organizing process. In deciding who is to do what, the chief executive, whatever his title, is creating andorganization structure. The decisions as tothe activities needed to fulfill the plans and objectives and as to the groupings of the activities thus designated into appropriate departments should create a logical framework or structure. Positions of specific responsibility are identified and to the misalliance the requisite authority to enable the individuals concerned to achieve their objectives. In the decades since Four Seasons opened its first location it has developed service standards that help make the whole organization possible. These standards work because they are not just a reflection of what the guests needs are, but also the needs of server individually. Each of the organizations standards captures several things, why the service matters, what level of performance is required, how that performance should feel to the guest. Take check-in for example: The mission is to provide a speedy, discreet, non-mechanical and hassle-free arrival for business travelers; to provide a comforting and luxurious arrival for leisure travelers (Four Seasons, 1999). In this and in all cases, Four Seasons standards are intended as a road map, not a script. The phrase speak clearly in a friendly manner, for example, encourages each receptionist to use words, which feel natural to him or her. Trust is key to the true measure of this type of service performance. When a companys reputation is made or lost on service, as Isadore Sharp observed, trusting that reputation to the character and competence of individual employees makes a large statement about their importance. Treating them as theyare asked to treat guests amplifies the point even further (Talbott, 2006).

References

Four Seasons Core Standards, April 1, 1999, Four Seasons Hotels Limited.

Isadore Sharp, Singapore Workforce Development Agency, Leadership Forum Address, October

27, 2005.

Michael Porter, What is Strategy?, Harvard Business Review, November-December

1996, pp. 62-64.

Talbott, B. M. (2006). Industry Perspectives:A White Paper Series from Cornell University. Four

Seasons Hotels & Resorts. Retrieved from http://www.fourseasons.com/cgi-bin/pdf-

we.exe//pdfs/about_us/service_culture/PersonalService.pdf

Thomas L. Friedman, The World is Flat: A Brief History of the Twenty-First Century (New

York: Farrar Strauss Giroux, 2005).

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