Question

5-34 Customer Profitability Analysis; Luxury Hotel Industry The luxury hotel chain Ritz-Carlton intro- duced a system called "Mystique" that collects information about its customers from employees and staff at the hotel. The information is used to personalize the services provided to each guest. For example, a bottle of the guest's favorite type of wine would be placed in the room without the guest having to request it. Similarly, the type of fruit a guest prefers will be waiting in the room on arrival. The information is available throughout the Ritz system so that when the guest checks into any Ritz-Carlton hotel, the special treatment is available. Other hotel chains such as Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt have similar programs Required 1. How do these information-gathering programs help the hotels become more competit the strategic role of these programs? you see a role for activity-based accounting for these firms, as it relates to their information gathering and customer service? 3. What ethical issues, if any, do you see in the information-gathering systems?

Answer 1

1.

Data Collection and its Application for the Hotel Industry

Technology has indeed positively altered the way any business is run. Almost every hotel owner knows the importance of guest satisfaction; this being one of the prime areas in bringing in revenue for a hotel property. But, how would you know? Data, lots of it!

Data allows you to understand a guest’s habits, predict decisions and understand their preferences. It’s the proper assimilation of data that will help hoteliers gain a deeper insight to improve the way the hotel functions.

While guest experience is often the most talked about subject amongst hoteliers, data, as a subject is not yet in the focus. Systematically collecting data and deriving actionable insights will help hoteliers deliver a meaningful experience. If customer experience is the prime concern, let’s understand how data collection can help hoteliers maintain existing customers and win over new ones to drive increased revenue.

• Understanding Data
• Tailor-Made Messaging
• Superior Customer Service
• Identifying Loyal Guests

Hotel brands must remember the 4 main pillars of data.

1) Data Collection

2) Data Analysis

3) Training staff members to be experts in handling data

4) Constant tracking of metrics

answer 2.

Activity based accounting assigns manufacturing overhead costs to products in a more logical manner than the traditional approach of simply allocating costs on the basis of machine hours. Activity based accounting first assigns costs to the activities that are the real cause of the overhead. It then assigns the cost of those activities only to the products that are actually demanding the activities.

ANSWER 3.

Information collection can be defined as the process of collecting information, for carrying out a research project. The main purpose of information collection is to update the information in a record and make important decisions by using the information. Information collection takes place at the early stage of project and contains various activities like pre collection, collection, analysis of information and present the findings. Before collecting the information, it is very important to get the approval of the community from which you are going to collect the information.

There are a number of ethical issues that must be considered while planning to collect information of any type. In the process of information collection, the researcher will have to make some expenses, apart from the time and energy of the researchers in order to complete surveillance forms. In case of a study by an organization or government bodies, the research organizations may also need to coordinate with each other, so that they get time and money to collect the information. After the information is collected, it needs to be compiled, interpreted, analyzed and managed. For information collection, surveys can be said as being more resource intensive. Sometimes, the people of the population, from where the information are collected, may also have to incur some expenses. The people in the population may cause a certain amount of discomfort and potential harm in the process of information collection. All these things can be considered as the ethical issues in information collection.

The implementation and revision of the programs from the information collection results in expenditure of time, manpower, money and other resources. If the conclusions come to be wrong as a result of wrong information, then the resources could have been used in a different way. Hence, at the beginning of the information collection process, the researcher should ensure that the information collected should be truly needed, used to revise or implement in the program and disseminated widely. Additionally, the results of information collection programs should use less costly information collection methods.

One should also keep in mind that collection of information is very important and should not be delayed. The information collection process should cause minimal risk to the researchers. Not all the information collected should need ethical review. If the collected information needs formal ethical review, then it should be starting at the early stage, as the final approval may take months. In this way, one can handle the ethical issues that occur in the information collection process.