Assignment

Introduction

Founded in 1946 by M. K. Guertin, the Phoenix-heaquartered Best Western has grown to become the world's biggest hotel chain with more than 4,000 hotels in approximately 80 countries. Unlike typical hotel chains, Best Western does not own any of the hotels itself; each of the Best Western hotels is independently owned and operated. These hotel franchises act as a member of the Best Western asscoication and they renew their membership every year in order to obtain the right to use Best Western signage and connect to Best Western's centralized global reservation system. To lower their operating cost, Best Western transitioned their hotel reservation facilities to a call center in Manila, Philippines in 2005.

Despite significant growth in the past few decades, Best Western Hotels are often criticized for its poor customer service, hotel facilities, and lack of standard across its hotel chain. Best Western is now facing severe competition because traditional high-end hotel chains have launched their versions of budget hotel outfits such as Holiday Inn Express, Hilton's Hampton Inn, and Marriott Courtyard to compete in the mid-range hotel market.

At the same time, some hotel chains have launched programs to improve their customer service levels. For example, Ritz-Carlton has empowered its employees (from janitor to front desk officer) to make any decision costing up to $2,000 to solve customer problems on the spot. This new policy has pleased many customers and won Ritz-Carlton a lot of customer loyalty and award.

On Dec 12, 2007, Best Western named Roman J. Jaworowica to be its new chairman. You have just been hired as an external consultant to work in Roman's team to improve Best Western's customer service level. You are tasked to

• Analyse Best Western's problems
• Conduct a situational analysis using SWOT analysis
• Recommend areas for improvement, particularly in the area of Customer Relationship Management
• Prepare a CRM readiness checklist for Best Western
• Justify your recommendation

Deliverables

The deliverables for your Final Project include a report that answers the questions described in the previous section. Your final report should not be fewer than six pages in length or more than eight pages. In terms of organization, your final report should have an executive summary at the beginning and a recommendations section at the end. Be sure the report is in MS Word, arial 12-pt font, with single spacing.