CASE STUDY

Ritz-Carlton
Making You Say Wow
Submitted by:
Monir Ahammed
ID: 172 003 069
Course: Principles of Management (MGT-501)
Program: MBA (Textile & Apparel Marketing)
Primeasia University

Submitted to:
Prof. Dr. AHM Habibur Rahman
Professor & Dean
School of Business
Primeasia University
Introduction:
The history of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel goes back to 1898 when Cesar Ritz, a Swiss hotelier, founded
the first Hotel in Paris. He wanted to create perfect service combined with extraordinary luxury.
In 1910 he established his first American hotel in New York with the help of the Ritz-Carlton
Management Cooperation (RCMC) which is an organisation supporting franchise of the company.
The RCMC helped to introduce the hotel to the American hospitality market but with the economic
crisis and the Second World War from 1920 to 1950, the business declined and a lot of hotels had
close down. The situation in the United States was very serious and the only surviving hotel was
the Ritz Carlton in Boston.

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel is luxurious, elegant and formal.

They provide commendable customer services.
Their motto is We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.
Employees have been trained in very precise standards and specification for treating
customers.
In the past Ritz-Carlton management approach use to be prescriptive and scripted but
later on it was expected from the employees how to make guest happy by interaction to
more natural, relaxed and authentic.

Broad objective of this Case Study:

The purpose or objective of this Case Study is to allow us with real expertise and
understanding, as well as judgement to excel.
Helps us to take risks, make judgements in uncertain situations, and to propose and select
from multiple possible options, none of which may be right or wrong

Specific objective of this Case Study:

To identify the culture of Ritz-Carlton Hotel
To identify the motto of Ritz-Carlton & how they are preserving this
How Ritz-Carlton helps the new employee to adopt the culture
To take decision about their approach to customer & how its helping them to obtain
customer goal
Identifying the importance of a strong culture & why Ritz-Carlton culture is important for
luxury hotel business.
Q-1. Describe the culture at the Ritz-Carlton & why do you think this types of culture are
important to luxury hotel? What may be the drawbacks of such culture?

The culture of Ritz-Carlton Hotels is Outcome Oriented which means that they now focus on
outcomes rather than focusing on how to get those outcomes. This kind of a culture is important
to a luxury hotel because it belongs to an industry that is a pure service industry. All that the luxury
hotel would have to offer its customer is service, and if thats not up to the mark, then its useless
to run the hotel.

Such an outcome oriented culture has its own drawbacks; such as fewer checks may lead to
diminishing outcome which is the first step to failure in achieving increasing outcome which is its
primary goal. So even though the employees have been given a free-hand, they still need to be
monitored to some extent on how to maintain the standard of positive outcome.

The short the main focus is on luxury, comfort, style, hospitality and of course the cuisine. The
main objective of the hotel management is to give its customers a service like kings and queens.

Culture at The Ritz-Carlton:

Innovation & Risk taking - More Natural, Relaxed and authentic.
Attention to detail precise standards and specification.
Outcome orientation commendable customer services.
People orientation Trainings.
Team orientation Trainings of Groups.
Aggressiveness Immediate customer services.
Stability luxurious, elegant and formal.

Importance of Ritz-Carlton Culture:

This type of Culture is important because it has influence on employees and it is associated with
high performance.

Believing customer service is a must for a luxury hotel especially when dealing with customers
one of the reason a hotel can be name or rate as luxury is because of the service that people receive.
It always good to be address as sir or madam it shows value to their clients and hospitality, the
way they treat people make it superb from the rest, people love attention and this hotel shows it all
the way from different level such as by smiling and treat people with respect warm and caring.

Draw Backs of Such Culture:

The drawback is the way they detail themselves it like a scripted (A particular system of
entertaining) and recitation (Oral delivery of prepared lessons) and a way it is good to be motivated
but to what extent are one willing to go to make customers satisfy. It seems these people are
playing a role of a robot it is an act and the show must go on.
Since this kind of organizations culture depends on the caliber of the leader, so the selection and
succession is regarded as a critical variable and much time and effort should be spending on them.
Employees working in this kind of organization culture are reluctant to change and they respond
to the changing environment by first ignoring the change. Also this kind or organization culture is
very expensive.

Q-2. What challenges the do you think the company faced in changing the culture? What
is the Ritz-Carlton doing to maintain the new culture?

The most important challenge that the company might have faced in my opinion would be the
transition time between the scripted approach to figure-it-out-yourself approach, as this would
have been the time when the employees would have been told to do whatever they can and would
do to achieve the service excellence for fulfillment of the outcome oriented goal. This figuring
out time would have been an experimental phase for the employees and they would have been in
between two different approaches.

Coming to the point where the role of Ritz-Carlton Hotels Management come into act, they
wouldnt have to do anything special as the majorly left it on the employees to figure out the
methods for making the new approach practical and succeed in it.

In short a challenge that may Ritz-Carlton faced is maintaining and Stronger the Culture of their
System and implement the culture to their employees with detailed basic of the Culture system
that Ritz-Carlton have.

To Maintaining New Culture Ritz-Carlton must be doing

Planning Ritz Carlton establish appropriate the new culture with constrains decision
making in management functions.
Organizing Management provide degree of independence for employees.
Leading They trained employees for degree of concern for job satisfaction.
Controlling They made self-reliance on external or internal control.

Q-3. What kind of people do you think would be happiest and most successful in this
culture? How do you think new employees Learn the culture?

The people who are, self-motivated, pleasant by nature, enjoy helping others, and are a friendly
personality, are mainly fit for this job. Basically the right cultural fit as it is the service industry,
and people interested in service oriented jobs are first picks from the job pool.

As the new employees are selected against a personality mentioned earlier in this question, all they
would need to learn the culture would be simply being themselves. Through this, they would
polish their innate skill for servicing customers and prove to be the right fit for the job.
Ritz-Carlton objective is to serve its customers at far above the ground and its employees should
embed to execute their job effectively and efficiently with following qualities:

Love to Interaction with Other Peoples.

Like to tackle different situations.
Have a great personality.
Know how to communicate.
Know how to entertain or serve the customers.
Have quality of innovations.
Observing other employees execution towards the guest.

HOW EMPLOYEES LEARN CULTURE

Stories: luxurious, elegant and formal.
Rituals: Committed to treat its guest like royalty.
Material Symbols: Exemplary Customer Services.
Language: We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen.

Q-4. What could other organization learn from the Ritz-Carlton about the importance of
organizational culture?

What the other organizations could learn from Ritz-Carlton Hotels would be to hire the
right people for the right job, i.e. servicing. If an organization hires people who are not the
cultural fit and are not servicing-material, then the organization would be made up of all the wrong
people doing something that is not actually required for the achievement of organizational goals.
Also what other organizations should keep on mind is that the organizational culture is to be
maintained and not changed unless and until there is dire need for it, because if it is changed, its
takes its toll on the employees and the customers by altering something that they are used to doing
and seeing/experiencing there respectively.

One more thing that other organizations could learn from Ritz-Carlton Hotels is that the
Organizational Culture must be kept in mind always, and that excellence should be achieved
revolving around it, not the other way around!
The Other Organization Can learn
Manage to make their staff happy.
Explorer employees potential.
Make environment more flexible.
Motivate staff for more effective and efficient performance.
Maintain standards while changing the approach.
Increased employee satisfaction.
In time decisions
Importance of customer services
Conclusion:
All in all, Ritz Carltons implemented training methods are essential for the high quality and their
success regarding increasing customer and as well employee satisfaction. The Gold Standards, the
daily line-up and the quality control through quality leader are some of the important factors which
gave the company the reputation they have nowadays. Analysing these methods does not only
show the positive sides of the strict standards but clearly emerged also the disadvantages. Due to
the strict regulations the pressure on employees rises tremendously and leads to a lack of
individuality and missing spontaneity. Also the high costs of employee per year should not be left
out but highlighted as negative aspect. To use their opportunities Ritz-Carlton should retain their
training programs but retain them a bit to keep the employees individuality, spontaneity and
naturalness which would help to adapt to the changing customer profile.