What value does a focus on the Gold Standards have for The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company?
The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company aims to succeed in one of the most logistically complex service businesses. Targeting primarily industry executives, meeting and corporate travel planners and affluent travelers, the Atlanta based company manages 25 luxury hotels that pursue the distinction of being the very best in each market. It does so base on the strength of a comprehensive service quality program that is integrated into marketing and business objectives.
Hallmarks of the program include participatory executive leadership, thorough information gathering, coordinated planning and execution and a trained workforce that is empowered "to move heaven and earth" to satisfy customers. Of these, committed employees rank as the most essential element. All are schooled in the company's "Gold Standards", which set out Ritz-Carlton's service credo and basics of premium service.
In 1983, when Horst Schulze took over the office as the President and Chief Operating Officer of The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, he and his team, comprise of 13 senior executives, decided to personally take charge of managing for quality because they realized that managing for quality could not be delegated!
The upper management participation of Horst Schulze and his team ranged across a broad spectrum, but most significant activities consisted of:
"h Defining the traits of all company products which are set out in The Credo.
"h Translating The Credo into basic standards to clarify the quality responsibilities for our Ladies and Gentlemen; the most important of which include:
o Anticipating the wishes and needs of the guests
o Resolving their problems and
o Genuinely caring conduct towards guests and each other.
"h Personally train the Ladies and Gentlemen of a new Ritz-Carlton on The Credo and Basic Standards, commonly referred to as The Gold Standards.
As a whole,