Investigation of Multiple Devices †Free Samples to Students

Question: Discuss about the Investigation of Multiple Devices. Answer: Introduction This report is a critical analysis of the management decisions in the technology and systems at StayTogether. This is a chain of ten hotels, which have decided to merge themselves and combat the pressure of the market, for the increasing demand of the low priced hotels. This new hotel chain has over thousands of hotels of all categories. The booking would be made from a single website and the prices will be fixed even during the peak seasons. However, since the booking will be done form a single website, hence, the IT and IS systems need to be well-equipped to take up the increase in the traffic flow in the website. This report highlights the issues that might be faced by the chain of hotels and the management decisions of the hotel have been critically evaluated. This report primarily highlights the four management decisions and its effects on the customer choice, continued patronage, brand loyalty and to attract new customers. Finally, a recommendation has been provided on the ways the hotel chain might improve their services as well as their website, to assist the customers book their choice of hotels, successfully. The decisions that are taken by the management are aimed towards the enhancement of the business. The management of the StayTogether hotel chain has taken four critical decisions. The decisions include the following: The loyalty schemes and programs are aimed towards the attraction of more customers toward a particular brand. Loyalty schemes provide the loyal customers with many benefits that result in growth and customer retention (Bilgihan Bujisic, 2015). The StayTogether group of hotels have taken the decision of providing loyalty schemes to the loyal customers. As a token of this gesture, the loyal customers are given free pick up and drop at the airports, free car parking at the hotels, along with providing free night stays. Researchers have highlighted the fact that the loyalty programs have a key role to play in enhancing the retention of customers, as well as attract more customers. The loyalty programs have also proven to boost growth of the companies. Moreover, with the growing demand of the cheap hotels and low cost accommodation, it is essential to introduce loyalty schemes to retain the customers and preventing them from losing to the competitors. This is an effective decision and t he customers will be attracted towards the hotel chain. Thus, the actual intention of the merger would be fulfilled. Free buffet breakfast and dinner The tourists and customers always welcome anything that is free. The management has taken the decision to include the cost of the buffet breakfast and dinner along with the prices of the rooms. Thus, the customers are attracted towards booking the hotel rooms from StayTogether. This scheme of free breakfast and dinner is a useful one and affects the customer loyalty. More customers are attracted to the take up hotel rooms since the breakfast and dinner are given free. This scheme is likely to attract new customers, along with customer retention. This scheme is also an added advantage to be ahead in competition with the other contemporary hotels. Thus, leadership advantage is also achieved with the implementation of the free breakfast and dinner to the customers. This decision is an effective one and hence the hotels will witness increase in the number of tourists visiting every year. Many tourists, who would have chosen some other hotel, will prefer booking the StayTogether group, to avail the free buffet dinner and breakfast. However, this scheme will not be applicable if the tourists choose to have their dinner and breakfast from the exclusive restaurants present on the site. Another notable decision that the management of the StayTogether hotel chain has taken is to provide rebates to the customers, if they choose a particular airlines. This management decision is an important one, as this rebate will encourage the customers to make their bookings with the particular airlines that are considered for rebate. The customers are able to credit the rebate as a free night stay or a free dinner and breakfast. These rebates have a key role to play in the attracting new customers along with retaining the old customers. Thus, the customers who have been booking from the other websites will now ensure that they make their bookings from StayTogether website or mobile app. Thus, the motive of attracting more customers, along with customer retention is obtained. Moreover, the brand patronage is also affected by the rebates given. The patrons of other hotel brands might think of reconsidering their decision of choosing their preferred brand as compared to the advantage s given by StayTogether. Hence, the footfalls of the customers have notably increased, and the hotel chain will witness enhancement in the business. Social responsibilities (charity donation) The social responsibilities are essential and have been taken up by the StayTogether chain of hotels. The customers are also involved in the charity donation that the hotel group is engaged in. The customers have a choice to make where they would like to donate 1% of the total bill that they are paying (Murphy, Chen Cossutta, 2016). This move is an essential one as the customers can donate money to the charity of their choice by booking the hotels among the StayTogether chain of hotels. This decision by the management ensures the fact that more customers are attracted towards making their bookings from this particular website in order to engage in charity donations in the charity home of their choice. Thus, along with enhancing the charitable activities of the hotels, the customers are also given choice to donate their money to the charity of their choice (Murphy, Chen Cossutta, 2016). Thus, the management decision is an effective one and results in enhancement of the customer rete ntion as well as attraction. The Information Technology and Information systems are often considered synonymous. However, there is difference in these two terms. The information system encompasses the people, processes and system that are designed towards the creation, storage and manipulation of the organizational information. One of the main reasons that people cannot distinguish between the IT and IS is that both are computer based system and assists the smooth running of the online systems. Information technology falls under the domain of information systems. With the use of information technology, the information system works. With the hotels merging together, the IT and IS needs to be well-developed and compatible enough to support the extra load that is put upon the online booking system due to the booking done by all the people (Murphy, Chen Cossutta, 2016). The IT issues that are faced by the StayTogether are as follows: Dependency on the IT and IS is essential for the StayTogether hotel chains. However, much dependency on the IS and IT might result in loss of vital information. The loss of data might prove to be detrimental for the chain of hotels, since the data of the customers might be lost due to the failure of the systems (Murphy, Chen Cossutta, 2016). This is a major issue and might result in loss of sensitive data, resulting in loss in business. The implementation of the online and automated systems call for expert employees who are well versed in IT (Murphy, Chen Cossutta, 2016). Lack of expertise among the employees will result in inefficient handling of the online booking system. The employees need to know, how to store data, confirm the booking in the online systems and carry out online transactions. Thus, lack of expertise among the employees will result in occurrence of errors. Managing the online information is required such that the customers are able to book the rooms of their choice, in the hotels of their choice (Wang et al., 2016). Lack of efficient management of information will result in the confusion in the bookings, overlap of bookings, online transactional issues. These, when faced by the customers, will result in customer defection. Thus, efficient management of the information is essential. Security is a major issue in the online booking system that is used by the customers trying to book a room in the hotel of the StayTogether chain of hotels. The lack of firewalls as well as lack of efficient security might give easy and unauthorised access to intruders, stealing confidential data about the customers (Guo et al., 2013). Moreover, the security issues are a major issue that would result in lack of trust among the tourists. Another issue faced by the customers who try to book their rooms in their choice of hotel is the payment issue. When many customers try to book the hotels simultaneously, the payments might not be successfully credited into the hotels account, while showing that it has been debited from the customers account. The congestion of the online traffic is a major issue. Since the customers of ten hotels have been booking the hotel rooms through one website, hence congestion of the online traffic is a major issue. Due to traffic congestion, the online system is slow and the customers might complain about their sessions being timed out (Casalo et al., 2015). The website might not be scalable, thus affecting the booking of the customers. The lack of ease of use among the users might result in loss of customers, and the customer patronage might be lost. Moreover, employee retention policies might face a setback due to this issue (Ling, Guo, Yang, 2014). Technology compatibility issues The technology used for the website might not be a compatible one for all the hotels, located in various geographical locations. The technology incompatibility will result in difficulty of the customers, to book the rooms of their choice of hotels (Ozturk et al., 2016). The format in which the customers enter their responses might not be easily converted in the local systems of the hotels, thus giving rise to inconsistency and redundancy in the input of the customers and the data received by the hotels (Li et al., 2017). The sustainability issues might arise due to the use of outdated technologies among the chain of hotels. The sustainability issues might result in the website to be outdated and incompatible with most of the technology platforms (Wang et al., 2015). The user interface of a website has a key role to play in attracting customers. The user interface needs to be a good one, along with providing the ease of use of the website. The lack of useability of the website might deflect the loyal customers as well. The lack of friendly user interface might result in many customers preferring other hotel booking websites rather than the booking system of the StayTogether (Rus Negru?a, 2014). With the extensive dependency on the IS and IT, the manual work is replaced by automated and computerized work. This might result in loss of job of many employees as the computers and the IS-IT do their work. Thus, the incorporation of the IT-IS, might result in loss of jobs of many employees (Murphy, Chen Cossutta, 2016). Conclusion It could be concluded that the decisions taken by the management of the hotel group is effective and would result in the enhancement of the business of the hotel chain, and would provide the ability to combat with the increasing demand of the cheap accommodation. It could be recommended that the mitigation of the issues will ensure customer attraction and customer retention. More offers such as offers on early booking or extended stay could also be provided to ensure customer retention. Thus, the mitigation of the IT-IS issues might be helpful assisting the enhancement in the customer attraction to the hotel chain StayTogether. 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