Operation Management Strategies of Premier Inn

According to W. Edwards Deming (2000), continuous improvement is defined as "the belief that an organization must constantly measure the effectiveness of its processes and strive to meet more difficult objectives to satisfy customers". And in the opinion of Hutchins (2008), the process of continuous improvement is "at the core of all successful business improvement programmes". Hence, it may infer that continuous improvement has been regarded as an essential tool to long-term success. Indeed, with the development of globalisation, hospitality industry has become more and more prevalent. In front of the intensive competition, many companies especially the international ones are committed to the continuous improvement process in the operation management, in order to get the most out of the profits, and to maintain the customer satisfaction and loyalty. The purpose to this essay is to explore and critically analyse how Premier Inn implement operational strategies for continuous improvement, and to discuss why they are important to this continuous improvement.

Premier Inn is an award-winning hotel brand and the UK's largest budget hotel chain, with over 590 budget hotels and more than 43,000 rooms across the UK and Ireland. According to Trip Advisor (2011), Premier Inn is recommended as a premier destination containing excellent facilities, outstanding services, perfect food and beverage sector, and customer-oriented hotel for guests from home and abroad. Recently, Premier Inn has expanded and grown in India and Dubai, creating challenges for consistent implementation.

In accordance to Nigel Slack, Stuart Chambers and Robert Johnston (2004), an organization has three basic functional areas, and these are: finance, marketing, and operations. Definitely, Premier Inn not only focuses on finance and marketing, but operational management to maximise customers' satisfaction. One of the operational management is "the Good Night Guarantee", which is a quality management programme including brand standards and audit, and the guest recommendation survey (Premier Inn, 2011). If customers experience dissatisfaction from the hotel, they will be refunded all the money. It was launched in 2001, playing an important role in a customer audit, winning the National Business Awards customer service strategy of the year. Building on the Good Night Guarantee, the Premier Inn brand standards audit was implemented in 2002 and is a critical operational tool for continuous improvement in order to reduce the gap between standards and delivery. Since it was launched by Premier Inn, fewer customers experience problems. Furthermore, it enables all employees to take action, enhancing employees' engagement for the organisation, setting ‘clear performance standards' and generating ‘reliable data when performance is poor' focusing the entire organisation on customer perceptions (McCaskey D.