Managing Quality, Customers and Performance Essay

Managing Quality, Customers and Performance - Essay Example This statement sums up the kind of efforts required to deliver value to the customer and for producing a quality product. An individual's beliefs or conceptions about what is desirable, good or bad - forms the value system (Kotler, 1974). For Hotel Hilton, Optimus Ireland's Best award in December 2006 will go a long way towards encouraging it to perform still better. Innovation, excellence and value addition go hand in hand in today's competitive environment. Customers and the target segments are crucial stakeholders for hotel Hilton. Different types of value addition strategies are adopted by businesses to grow. These could involve trying out different types of market-product combinations, carrying out the business according to certain sets of principles, segmenting the market in their own way, or relying on the feedback of customers for shaping the final service. All this is possible only with the coordination and management of employees of the hotel, service processes, technology and other resources in order to produce better services for the customer. Hilton Hotels Corporation is recognized all over the world as a well known hospitality company1, offering guests and customers the finest accommodations, services, amenities and value for business or leisure. The group has been serving its customers for more than 80 years now. Conrad Hilton purchased his first hotel, The Mobley, in 1919, in Cisco, Texas. The first hotel to carry the "Hilton" name was built in 1925 in Dallas. There's no looking back since then. Today Hilton Hotels Corporation develops, owns, manages and franchises over 2,900 hotels, resorts and vacation ownership properties worldwide, with brand names like Hilton, Hilton Garden Inn, Doubletree, Embassy Suites Hotels, Homewood Suites by Hilton, Hampton, Hilton Grand Vacations and Conrad (Datamonitor, 2006). In recent years, Hilton has been able to boost its leading position in the corporate travel and conference markets while making significant inroads into the growing leisure sector. The hospitality sector has become very much competitive with more and more companies entering the hospitality business with innovative ideas and newer technology. In order to maintain brand advantage, Hilton is constantly developing products and services designed to meet guests' changing demands and offer an enhanced experience. In order to create more opportunities for growth the shareholder of Hilton Group approved the sale of its hotels operation to Hilton Hotels Corporation for $5,900 million in January 2006. With the present operations in more than 80 countries, the hotel chain promises much more as the awards like the Optimus Ireland's Best award encourages it to do more. 3. Role of Quality The final service/ product and quality are to be valued by the customers. Quality is a function of value addition or vice-versa. The value that has been added to the product has to be seen in relation to the customer's needs and expectations. In general, for an organisation there are both external and internal customers. The external customers are those who use the services of the hotel while the internal customers are the employees and other internal stakeholders. Once the service is delivered to the intended