Managers’ perceptions of critical success factors in hotels : the case of Moat House Hotel-Glasgow

Abstract

This research is about the concept of critical success factors (CSFs) as applied in the management of hotels. The concept has its origins in the field of management information systems although has since been applied in the fields of strategic and operational planning/management, core competency, and value chain and business process perspectives. According to Wheeler and Hunger (1988), the information system should focus a manager’s attention to the CSFs in the jobs thus enabling the manager to concentrate their efforts or attention to the areas that influence results.Therefore, CSFs are those few things that must go well if a corporation’s success is to be ensured.This study has its roots in Brotherton and Shaw (1996) exploratory survey into nature, and relative priority of critical success factors in UK Hotels. That study adopted a disaggregated application of the CSFs concept to individual department/functional aspects of hotel operations. The study identified the CSFs and associated critical performance indicators (CPIs) as identified by practitioners in the hotel industry. This study is set out to gather, through interviews, what managers in one hotel unit (The Moat House Hotel-Glasgow) perceive to be the CFFs and CPIs of their functional areas/departments. These findings were compared to the ones of the Brotherton and Shaw study.The results reveal that there is not much difference in the results of the two studies.From analysis of the findings in the two studies, CSFs in hotels lie on the customers,the employees, financial performance and the business process. For hotels to succeed, they need to pay to pay attention to these areas. Hotels, therefore, need management systems that recognize the importance of these areas. It would be of future research interest to expand this study to a larger sample frame to test the reliability of the findings. It would also be of interest that future research investigates the effectiveness of the customer satisfaction tracking systems in relation to the CSFs identified in hotels.