You are the manager of a franchised, 90-room limited-service hotel property located across the highway from 7 Flags, a major amusement park that is extremely busy in the summer. One of the most popular family packages your hotel sells includes a two-night stay (in on Friday night, out on Sunday morning), complimentary breakfast, and tickets to 7 Flags. You purchase the tickets in a large quantity from the 7 Flags group sales department. Your packages are marketed directly by your hotel and sold through select travel agents to whom you pay a sales commission. At 3:00 P.M. on a Saturday afternoon in July, lightning from a severe thunderstorm strikes a major electrical transformer in the area, causing a power outage that includes the amusement park and results in the its immediate closure. Your hotel is sold out. The power company is unsure how long it will take to fully restore power, but its estimate is hours, not minutes. Your hotel has a backup generator—thus, essential hotel services such as emergency lighting and power to the property management system (PMS) are maintained. Your lobby, however, is filled with families seeking to check out (it is 4:30 P.M.) so they can leave the area and drive back to their homes (where most of them will have power.) Approximately 60 guests want to check out. None of these guests believe they should have to pay for their Saturday night stay because, due to the power outage, they will not use their reserved rooms. Some want a refund for Friday night as well, claiming the hotel did not provide the complete two-day "package" that was promised.

 

Questions

 

1. Would you bill these 60 guests for Saturday night's stay even if they elect to leave?
2. Would you give the guests any other compensation?
3. Would your course of action be affected if you learned the theme park had made the decision to refund the price of admission to all those who entered the park on that day?
4. If the theme park had made the refund mentioned, do you believe the amount of the refund belongs to the disappointed park attendee or to your hotel?
5. Describe briefly how the decision you make will affect:

• Your relationship with the theme park's management
• The relationship with your franchisor
• Your relationship with travel agents marketing your packages

 

Would you bill these 60 guests for Saturday night's stay, even if they elect to leave.

• The answer will be No, this is because I will not bill these guests for Saturday night's stay this is because as a hotel it was our core responsibility to provide continuous and promised serves to our guest and thus it is requirement for us to not charge the night charges but instead will be responsible to charge for the additional services availed by the customer which can include room service and foods staff which are requested by the guest for their stay .

   Would you give the guests any other compensation.

• No I will not be in a position to provide any other compensation requested or demanded by the guest due to that the event was a case of natural calamity and not human cause and thus as a hotel fraternity we have maintained the desired hygiene factor which is our requirement and also mandatory to do so but for the case of compensation we will not provide that .

Would your course of action be affected if you learned the theme park had made the decision to refund the price of admission to all those who entered the park that day

• No this is because my decision will remain unchanged because of the fact that the theme parks have decided to reimburse the charges and thus for that case I have already agreed not to bill customers for the Saturday's night and thus will not be in a position to reimburse the Friday's night stay as the hotel has provided the services as agreed with the customers .

If the theme park had made the refund mentioned, do you believe the amount of the refund belongs to the disappointed park attendee or to your hotel

• Thus if the park has decided to refund the mentioned amount to the guest then it should be refunded to the hotel this is because the hotel has purchased the tickets for the guests and also has the mandate to take back the compensation thus the compensation amount has to be adjusted in the settlement statement of the customer.

 Describe briefly how the decision you make will affect:  relationship with the theme park's management The relationship with franchisor and relationship with travel agents marketing your package.

• Thus the decision I will make will not affect the relationship with my stakeholders which are theme park's management, franchisor and the travel agent this is I have tried my best to provide and also give out an exceptional service to the customer and also as a group we have not charged the customers for not providing complete services as this will result to the increase in the brand value of our hotel and will invite more customers.