酒店行业外购趋势分析Essay

摘要
 

一些大型品牌组织正在大规模得增加他们的食品饮料部门的外购。而这样做的原因是：减少成本，提高生产力，提高服务质量，提高客户满意度，关注在核心区的外包的好处。尽管有这些好处，还是带来了一些与之相关的风险。在这篇文章中，我们发现了定这些事实背后的主要驱动力和战略计划。
 

关键词
 

酒店、食品和饮料、餐馆、外购
 

简介
 

外购已经发展成为一种常规策略，一些酒店管理者将它引入自己酒店，目的是想能在这个强有竞争力的市场减少开支。
 

外购时最好选择最好的服务提供商，以确保业务不受交易的影响。有一项研究 (Fair and Shaw 1997 cited in Thomas and Robaina 2004) 表明，外购是指从外部购进需要本企业进一步加工或装配的已加工了的原材料。
 

当公司、餐馆或酒店愿意并准备为你提供食宿时，根据核心组织的新趋势来说，企业总是存在很大的发展空间的。
 

外购背后的趋势与战略意图
 

因此，潘宁顿提出外购普遍存在这一趋势：为了减少开支自身的压力渐渐增加，就业机会少，渴望更多和更持久的利润，对提高技术的愿望，客户越来越了解市场而他们也想知道客户内心的需求与想法。在这样竞争激烈的市场中，公司更加难以找到并留住熟练的员工，更难提高公司的品牌与形象。
 

摘要———Abstract:
 

A good quantity of the large brand organizations is in a large scale increasing the outsourcing of their food and beverage departments. As a cause for this the desire of reduced costs, increase in productivity, enhanced quality of service, higher client satisfaction, and the possibility to focus on the main core areas are some of the benefits of outsourcing. Even though having all this benefits, brings some risks associated with it. In this article, we identify the main drivers and the strategic intends behind such facts. We have then in conclusion the need to identify and understand why hotels are outsourcing their food and beverage outlets. Being this a trend , what are the drivers behind it, and the strategic intent, that is making hotels outsource part of a business that was always related to the hotel industry since early days.
 

关键词———Keywords:
 

Hotels, Food and Beverage, Restaurant, Outsourcing
 

简介———Introduction:
 

Outsourcing has grow to be a regularly strategy introduced in the hospitality industry s managers seek to decrease expenses in a strong and aggressive market.
Outsourcing constantly tries to gather the best service providers to make sure that the business is not affected with the transaction. In a study from (Fair and Shaw 1997 cited in Thomas and Robaina 2004) , outsourcing can be defined as the process of getting an outside provider to do a process that internally is not being produced effectively . The service will then be delivered to the best experts in the area of production.
 

A business always has higher chances of growing when the company, restaurant, or hotel is prepared and in the willing of taking on board the new trends according the central organization.
 

外购背后的趋势与战略意图———Trends and strategic intent behind outsourcing:
 

So for this trend some of the outsourcing drivers as presented by Pennington, (2011) are the increase pressure to reduce costs, poor job markets, the desire for more and longer profits, constant increase in technology, the wish for more specific specialization, customers more aware of the market and more aware of what they want and with such competitive market its every time more difficult to find and keep skilled employees that want to connect with the company and the brand.
 

To emerge from crisis hotel units need to reflect tactically in terms of rising productivity, improving the foundation row and pleasing the clients of the property.
 

Domberger (1998) presents an important fact, that unfortunately there is a severe lack of knowledge of the industry and market between hotel managers that should clearly be aware of the importance for them to focus on their core competency. Getting outside companies to do certain tasks in the hotel routine is a perfect way of achieving the required goals. Once again hotel managers narrowing their way of looking to the business, expect that the new company providing the service will share the costs and management risks, and create an increase in the profits for the hotel in a really short length of time. Tom (2001) in an article states that outsourcing is when a organization and a expert in outsourcing put their resources together to reach positive results for both parties.
 

From the article of Robinson et al,. (1998) can be seen that providing rooms and guest services is still the hotel's main purpose to which the hoteliers should pay attention. The food and beverage outlets, however orders special awareness for the reason that is of great importance to guest satisfaction and loyalty and brand organization grow. Numerous hoteliers, on the other hand, commit the error of believing that the same skills to operate a restaurant are the same ones to run a hotel running. The restaurant industry requires a special set of skills, including more consideration to specific details, than room’s management. By restructuring food and beverage departments, hotel administration has the opportunity to forward all the power that was set for the restaurant trade and center efforts on increasing hotel operations and profits and, possible investor worth as shown by Robinson et al, .(1998)#p#分页标题#e#
 

It’s important then that hoteliers decide what the vital concepts for a good and effective outsourcing are, being core competencies one of the competences that is crucial to a business acomplish competitive advantage, Prahalad & Hamel (1990ª:68) in one of the most well known studies in this field state that the first point when considering core competencies is to identify that “competition among productions is as much a race for competence mastery as it is for market position and market power”. Higher supervisors cannot center the attention on all activities integrated in a business and the competencies necessary to produce them effectively. So the main objective is for management to center their awareness in skills that really shape competitive improvement and attempt to recognize what the property doest more finest and more effectively, and what areas they should pay more attention when working to increase the competitive advantage. Prahalad & Hamel (1990b) they also wrote that “core competencies” should not be predetermined, they should vary allong with any suddent changes in the business market atmosphere. The authors present also some points that support the company when recognizing their ”core competencies” as they provide contact with a large range of experts in different areas allowing the production of new products and services, they make a well build and consise donation to the way the client evaluates the profits of the final product, and as well “core competencies should be difficult to dupplicate as it should be something unique to that specific property or company, that’s why is called a core is a charateristic that other companies do not have”.
 

The next point is brand differentiation being a definition that goes back to Chamberlin and Robinson’s study from 1933 that shows one of the first principles of marketing theory and is crucial for marketers so they can be judged on how effectively they distinguish their product to avoid straight opposition, seeks to provide products or services that are different from the ones provided by the opponent and that are widely appreciated by the consumer. One of the modern economic models that describe the environment that generates differentiation comes from Caves and Williamson (1985) and is based on brands presenting special characteristics that try to call to the attention to various sectors in the business environment. This makes the brand less liable to the action of the opponent; when a competitor brand decreases prices, brands that are more individual in characteristics and services are the ones to lose less clients (Caves and Williamson, 1985), per last we have “strategic partnerships” being this tactical coalitions that can be defined as a mutual union involving several companies with linkages that are built to share resources, leading to the combined achievement of individual company targets as studied by Parkhe (1991). More firms have used this approach as a basis of competitive improvement as studied by (Das and Teng, 1998). Because companies are exposed to planned risks related to amplified ambiguity in their financial, technical, political, and competitive business areas (Olsen et al., 1998), managerial survival turns to be an increasingly imperative concern. Firms have become conscious that resources that add value to the company are becoming gradually more limited, and have used several procedures to concentrate on this matter. Companies that have used joint strengths to deal with this subject have recognized that entering into business arrangements with opponents, providers and clients, and companies in other areas is a chance for structure forces (Lewis, 1990) whereas optimizing investment consequently increases a superior exploration of the business. By accepting strategies capable of structured alliances, managers are capable of supplying more to both, their companies triumph and their industries. As well an alliance increases turning to be the way through which related firms expand their access to specific assets.#p#分页标题#e#
 

外购的好处———Benefits of outsourcing:
 

Some of the probable positive sides of outsourcing can be found in the texts that propose that outsourcing techniques can carry some possible benefits, such as cost decrease, performance enhancement, flexibility, specialization, and access to new techniques as per a study from Blumberg (1998). Along with several others, price decrease serves as the first and the most incentive reason for outsourcing as can be seen by the following authors in their studies (Mclvor, 2005, Kakumanu & Portanova, 2006). Flexibility is another important benefit that comes along the outsourcing practices. Companies outsource some tasks to outside experts by doing a payment to the contractors, with this comes the transfer of operational risks to the outsourcing service suppliers in the other hand. Insinga & Werle in their study (2000) show that firms are actually under constant demands to outsource, in order to increase their competitiveness by accomplish a superior out coming on assets through less funds requirement and growing the capacity to adapt quickly to a shifting situation through less commitment to in-house resources. Insinga & Werle terminate then stating that the focal point of outsourcing is” to do more with less”. The information available suggests that functions that are of little tactical price or can be treated as not primary can be outsourced, for example, operational level functions such as accounting, or some regular tasks and support services include cleaning, catering, safety and maintenances as presented by several studies from (Harland et al., 2005; Kakumanu & Portanova, 2006). It is frequently recommended that firms on average outsource its” non-core activities” to a third party. However, there is a tendency for organizations to outsource not only its non-core services, but also main activities. Harland et al. (2005) presents Cheesley’s (1997) as confirmation to hold this way of outsourcing both core and non-core tasks. It is argued that the hotel sector not only outsource secondary services, such as cleaning, catering, laundry and but also significant activities as food and beverage.
 

Per Pennington (20011),we can then say that specialization is one of the benefits of the outsourcing for the company as well as quality delivery of the service; can be established less risk in the process as is not the hotel the face of the business but the company to whom the service was outsourced, the knowledge that is gained with the sharing as there is always positive and negative points from this relations, it’s a guaranteed income as there is always a rent that needs to be paid and a percentage of the revenues from the outsourcer, attract new outsiders to the property and that can bring extra business to the hotel as well, this allows the company to focus on core or the main service that they provide, in the case of a hotel will be room sell, cost reduction will be the last topic under analyses and shows that with outsourcing the companies reduce their costs with staff, with equipment and with bills because those costs will be supported by the company that supplies the service now. From the customer side we can say that there are some benefits as well a wider range of products available that in the previous and old hotel model. So a restaurant with a more personalized team directed to customers and to the service of food provision and from the hotel side they will have a team fully prepared to provide their best service in what they are really good selling rooms, so the customer will have a more pleasant stay having all services provided by teams that are fully prepared for the task that are doing so if both sides provide good service that will probably result in a increase in revenue and business because the customer will came back. Pennington (2011)#p#分页标题#e#
 

外购的威胁———Risks of Outsourcing:
 

In addition to the benefits when implementing outsourcing policy in a business, various researchers put to the front some risks related with this mater, we can see as example, price increases, supply market threat, failure to provide staff with good skills, the excellence of outsourced products/services and company change transformations as shown by several authors (Elmuti & Kathawala, 2000; Harland et al., 2005; Mclvor, 2005,). The quality of staff and work provided cannot always be certain. This is often a major apprehension suggested by the literature as a negative impact in outsourced service (Kakumanu & Portanova, 2006). In addition, from the employees’ point of view as argued by Beaumont & Sohal (2004) outsourcing might influence career opportunities, and modify completely organizational cultures. This transfer possibly obligatory to the outsourcer side can be perceived to be an opportunity for grown and improvement or a penalty. In addition, in Kakumanu and Portanova’s (2006) article, it is suggested that some citizens are concerned about a rising job loss. With the panic of losing their jobs, they have pressurized several firms to reconsider or even call off some outsourcing deals.
 

So in conclusion of this point for Pennington, (2011a) the risks of outsourcing for the company are the fact that they are getting a new partner and that can make the brand loose customers depending which association is going to be made between the parties, and that fact is at the same time a really high risk because if any bad connection is made with one of the sides, both of them can loose business and prestige, both sides can loose existing customers that might not feel conformable with the change of location or the connection that will start having after the fusion and for the part that is receiving a outsider an no longer do promotions with other outlets to incentives customers as from then on the outlet will be managed by another party.

For Pennington, (2011b) the customer is mainly the fact that might need to go to a different place due to relocation of the business, the service deliverance can become different due to property where is located now and the client might not be completely satisfied due to the fact that doesn’t feel the sense of brand delivery, so its important that both sides work together to make the clients feel involved in all the transition.
 

结论———Conclusion:
 

In conclusion can be said that supporting the administrative perspective with respect to benefits and risks of using outsourcing in hotel operations, the excellence of outsourcing services is the most important factor which might affect a manager decision of whether to outsource or not. This result in a less propensity for hotels to outsource their core competency departments, such as reception, and at the moment the test is to clarify if is profitable to outsource food and beverage outlets. These front-line departments come across guest and provide services to them in a straight line. Their presentation has authority on the sustainability of hotels in a great deal. Furthermore, due to the uncertainty of the quality of outsourcing service, the level of hotel outsourcing operations is not too high at the moment, but is in the process of growing rapidly. This indicates that a mutual understanding between outsourcing contractors and hotels is much and seriously needed for an effective union. Beaumont and Sohal (2004) argument that outsourcings practice can be identified on a range from getting someone from outside to do some of the daily tasks and to become partners in the business. They suggest that partnership allow both parties strive to improve outsourced business process and share the decreased costs of enhanced profits. Therefore, with the expansion of affiliation associations between outsourcing supplier and hotels, the level of outsourcing process might enlarge in a large scale.#p#分页标题#e#

According to the journal by the authors (Krajewski and Risman, 2000.Dawis et al., 1999) these competitive advantages are the capabilities that companies must have to obtain in order to enhance competitive advantage and to succeed simultaneously. The motive for outsourcing at this time engage several topics effectiveness, low cost improved quality, flexibility, being approachable and to chase different competitive priorities. Subcontracting has immense benefits for tactical operation particularly for non cost- related objectives. It is of good importance that managers should understand the need to outsource. They should not focus only on cost decrease but they have to look forward to other profits of outsourcing as example rational thinking, superior mental picture of the future and the outcomes, being more innovative, consistency, excellence oriented services and search for wider solutions that add value as indicated by (Quinn, 1999).
 

So it’s of great importance that managers think on the position that the company is at the moment and evaluate benefits and risks of outsourcing before actually starting the process, because this can cause chaos internally and diminish the company brand image to the customer.