NH Hotels Case Study
Overview: Social media and the Internet have transformed the hotel industry. By writing millions of reviews, a year on websites and mobile apps, travelers are among the most empowered and influential consumers in the world. As NH Hotels aggressively expanded their global reach, accessing and analyzing the vast amount of customer feedback became critically important to maintaining their online reputation – and securing their future success. Review the following case study and respond to the questions listed in the critical elements section to develop the content of your essay.
A project developed on Google Cloud Platform – NH Hotels: Making a reservation for the future
Challenge
To initiate the process of more efficient customer data collection, analysis, and reporting, NH Hotels used off-the-shelf software tools. These programs proved inflexible and they also lacked critical features, such as benchmarking their competitors, which were required by NH analysts. Development cycles dragged on and deadlines were consistently missed. NH Hotels turned to Paradigma, a technology consulting firm based in Madrid, to build a customized solution.
Solution
After several meetings with NH Hotels to understand their needs, Paradigma set up a small development team (including a representative from NH). This cooperative approach accelerated development time and gave Paradigma the confidence to select the most appropriate technologies for the project. Using various software tools, such as Grails and JQuery, Paradigma designed an elegant customized solution called “Quality Focus Online.” For optimal performance, the development team decided to host this system in the cloud. Paradigma recommended a Google Cloud Platform solution that used Cloud SQL as a fully managed database, combined with Compute Engine for rapid translation of multilingual customer reviews.
“Quality Focus Online turned out to be easy to use from day one. It helps me save a lot of time and improves our business” says Javier Mármol, Director of Hotel NH Palacio de Tepa in Madrid. “For example, we discovered from reviews that noise was a problem, so we increased our room insulation – and our positive scores shot up overnight.”
About the Quality Focus online tool
The Quality Focus Online tool processes, interprets, rates, reports and monitors the reputation and performance of the 400 hotels of the network, individually. It turns a lot of unstructured information into meaningful and actionable analysis.
Half of the guests’ reviews analyzed by the tool are from NH Hotels’ own surveys and half from reviews on 3rd party sites like Trip advisor.
Results
Quality Focus Online can now process, interpret, rate, report and monitor the reputation and performance of each individual hotel in the NH group. Hotel guests can use their mobile devices to immediately deliver feedback about such topics as service, cleanliness, value and food. Half of guest reviews captured and analyzed are from NH Hotels’ own surveys and half are from reviews on third party sites such as TripAdvisor.
The Quality Focus Online tool aggregates and processes over 200,000 reviews a year and is used more than twice a week by all NH hotel directors throughout the world to identify problems and make informed decisions in near real time. For example, NH Hotels has averaged 20% less negative reviews monthly after adding Wi-Fi access to every location. NH Hotels also was able to track the direct correlation between expenditures (e.g., adding more noise insulation to rooms) and customer satisfaction. As a result, executive management at the highest level has become more confident in making these types of bottom line decisions.
Include the following critical elements in your essay:
What does Big Data mean to NH Hotels? Briefly describe how this organization came to realize that Big Data was the key to improving their business operations. How did they determine what data was needed and how to manage the information that was available to them?
What were their main challenges? Explain the challenge(s) they encountered with data collection and the efficient processing of this information to gain actionable insights about their hotels.
What was the proposed solution, and the impact of results? Describe the solution that was developed and implemented to solve their business challenges with managing and analyzing customer feedback. How does the solution give NH Hotels a competitive advantage and what technologies were deployed to make this solution effective and efficient to serve its purpose?
Requirements for the Essay
APA 6th edition
4-6 pages
At least 4 credible scholarly references
