The Palomar Hotel is located in downtown San Francisco and it’s close to Market Street. It is also near the Museum of Modern Art and the Moscone Convention Center, as well as the Powell Street Cable Car Station. Palomar Hotel is a boutique style hotel and the lobby is furnished with fine art and plush carpets. Business offerings at this hotel include a 24-hour business center with 3,000 square feet of four meeting rooms, multiple large conference rooms with audio-visual equipment, a technology help desk and event catering and banquet service desk. Complimentary high-speed wireless Internet is available in public area. Town car/limo service is available. Customers can find easy access to the concierge and tour service and complimentary newspapers. Valet parking is available for twenty-four hours. The Hotel Palomar's 195 guestrooms provide premium bedding with down comforters and pillows, armoires, contemporary rugs and plush lounge chairs. Every room has access to high-speed wireless Internet. There are in-room spa/massage services, and roll-away beds are also available upon customer requests.
         The goal of Palomar Hotel is to provide great customer service and personal attention, to make sure that every customer feels as comfortable as he is staying at home. On the home page of the Palomar Hotel that presents room reservations, there are exterior and interior photos of the hotel. The special offer feature helps customers easily figure out different types of discount packages. The hotel option gives a brief introduction about kinds of available services the Palomar Hotel provides, such as the type of rooms, suites, services/amenities, in-room spa, pet-friendly policy, fitness and wellness center. The option of meeting events provides more benefit options for business travelers or local businesses for meeting and event reservations. As a 4-star hotel, Palomar provides various kinds of services as it illustrates on the home page and it emphasizes customer’s satisfaction as its top priority. Pet-friendly policy is one of the specialties at Palomar. On the Palomar hotel website, the hotel welcomes customers to take in their pets with no size or weight limitation and no extra charge. Customers just need to make a prior phone call for reservation and there will be pet toys, beds, water and food bowls provided upon request. In this report, by referencing data collected from revinate.com on customers’ ratings and feedback, we will further investigate the reported issues on Palomar hotel, which are alleged lack of communication from staff members and the complaints of a short-staffed front desk.
    Problem Identification
       The section of problem identification is to further analyze two areas that apparently need to be improved in Palomar hotel. One is the small number of staffs at front desk while the other one is the lack of communications between servers and customers. The goal of this section is to examine evidences on how these issues exist and how they would impact the target market if improvements were made.
    Data collected from December of 2013 to Sept. of 2014 indicates that Palomar hotel has an opportunity to improve on the aforementioned issues. A sample of customer feedback from tripadvisor.com, hotel.com and yelp.com indicates that a whopping 80% of customers complained about the issue of lacking staff at front desk. As most travelers know, the first thing at a hotel is going to the front desk and waiting for checking in. Understandably, customers will want to cut down the time for checking out as well. Therefore, front desk service is vital in presenting an image and service quality of the hotel. However, 16/25 customers complained that the Palomar hotel did not do a good job at this part. "They were short on front desk staff, and front desk time took too long", commented by a user from priceline.com. “When we checked in, there was only one staff at the check-in counter and she was also a concierge. The Hotel was undergoing renovations and refurbishments which were incomplete at the time of our stay but the price for the property reflected that these upgrades and refurbishments were in place to for us to enjoy, as did their website,” complained by a user from booking.com. Another user from expedia.com said:  "The hotel lobby was in shambles and empty and in the middle of a massive construction overhaul. The interim lobby was on the 9th floor and checked in - everything was a complete make shift mess”. A hotel cannot attract customers with a poor service from front desk. Short staff of front desk will give customers a very negative first impression.
       Couples and business travelers are the primary clientele of Palomar hotel. These customers need prompt and convenient services during their stay. No staff at the front desk will embarrass customers when they are ready to have a wonderful service from the beginning of checking in part. Sometimes this issue will upset, or even anger business travelers because of their urgent and busy schedules. This means the service should be efficient and prompt, which means something needs to change if it takes long to wait for check out when customers need to leave as soon as possible. Perhaps one cause of this is because of the shifts of staff was not arranged properly. The manager has to plan and manage the schedule of each staff well on a daily basis. Also, another reason of this issue could be the hotel that simply isn’t aware of this issue, which leads to a bad reputation on this particular part of the business. Palomar Hotel is a boutique style hotel that is not as big as other luxury hotels, so the system of management might not be as thorough as other corporate luxury hotels.
The other issue mentioned above to be improved is the lack of communication between customers and staff. Customer’s comments posted online site like tripadvisor.com, hotel.com and yelp.com that indicate almost 50% customers complained about the issue of lacking communication from staff members. This significantly impacts on customers’ overall opinions on Palomar’s service and quality. There are many types of travelers with different accommodations who need friendly and convenient service when they are having their stay away from home.
       Another very important thing for a hotel is to have a good communication with customers when they are staying in hotels. The reason is simple because the hotel’s purpose is going to know what customers need before they ask. Providing excellent service is the top priority, because judging the quality of a hotel is dependent on the evaluation of its service.  15/25 customers stated that they did not have a good communication between staff. “The bellman who was supposed to return to our room to give us tips on where to find a good sushi restaurant. He never showed. Just took his tip and split” that is from expedia.com. “The following night/morning someone from the work staff opened out door at 5 am, saw that it was not vacant and turned around and ran out" that is from yelp.com. "The Hotel was undergoing renovations and refurbishments which were incomplete at the time of our stay but the price for the property reflected that these upgrades and refurbishments were in place to for us to enjoy, as did their website” that is from hotel.com.
Evidence#2   It is quite important to have a good communication with customers when serving them. The purpose of a good service is letting customers feel comfortable and be understood exactly. The issue about lacking communication between staff and customers will directly impact the rating and evaluation of Palomar hotel. Like one of the evidence that staff did not send emails to notice customers the hotel is under renovations. This action absolutely made customers upset more or less. Assume that customers perhaps have already prepared a good mood to enjoy the vacation and expected a wonderful hotel to stay, however, what they got is a hotel under renovation on the first day when they came. This is kind of surprise for customers in a negative way. Lacking of communication will impact the reputation of the hotel. The reason why this kind of thing happened is because the staffs are not  trained professionally and in lack of work experience. Those staffs cannot present a right reaction when they are facing or dealing with some events. Both of these two issues are quite important to avoid the hotel to improve in the future way. Lacking communication between customers and staffs is absolutely the big issue. It is no need to emphasis how significant why communication is necessary to be built between customers and staffs because no excellent service comes from not talking to customers.
Performance Evaluation & Competitive Benchmarking
         The first level of analyzing Palomar hotel is to gather some primary information of Palomar and it would be helpful to move to the next level of investigation. This part is going to present and analyze the data of Palomar of performance evaluation and the competitive benchmark. Utilize revinate.com and other sites to analyze how the Palomar operates the business and the level of service performance. Picking Marriott as the competitor is good to see the different operation and performance from Palomar. Using charts to go further to illustrate some evidence of the area of strength and the area needs to be improved in Palomar hotel.
        Data collection sheet is an efficient way to see how the performance and operation level of the hotel are. Utilizing revinate.com to create data collection sheet is clear to check the performance of every single category of Palomar hotel. Normally, there are seven categories that can clearly show the basic information of a hotel. Site, date, rate, location, trip type, product and service will be the seven parts that can show basic performance of a hotel. There are also some details that will follow the product and service section that are area and review. Counting the amount of positive and negative aspects can be obvious to see what the hotel did during a month. The data collection sheet has gathered the data from January through December in 2013 and 2014 of Palomar. There are over thousands of comments and feedback from customers that can prove what the true situation that Palomar is recently in. Using revinate.com that can search the random data to evaluate how the Palomar hotel does in every section, just as how positively or negatively Palomar did in product section. Under the product section there are room, location, restaurant, lobby and valet, showing in each specific branch that what kind of performance that Palomar has presented. There is a chart below which can show the performance.
          As the charts show, the revinate.com can provide credible feedback from customers who were staying in Palomar and observed the overall performance.  From the comments that customers left in yelp, trip advisor, booking, hotel and expedia.com, the data shows that the most positive thing is the location of Palomar hotel. A lot of customers said that the location is near the center of San Francisco and the transportation is convenient. Although sometimes the noise made customers feel bad or hard to sleep, well, the benefits of the location can still attract customers to live in Palomar. The location is just in the downtown of San Francisco and many customers mentioned in the feedback that they did not need to worry about no restaurant nearby. Almost 52 positive rating is added in location section. The overall evaluation of room of Palomar hotel is that rooms are clean and the bed is comfortable. Few of the customers left the comments to write that the size of the rooms were too small. Those are the most positive things about the rooms. There are over 40% customers who wrote in their comments complaining the renovation of Palomar. The hotel did not notice customers in emails that the hotel was still remodeling. Many customers cared about that the hotel did not send them an email when they were booking rooms online. However, the empty lobby is another problem that makes customer feel bad at the first time when they are arriving at the hotel. This percentage of complaining the empty lobby and the shortage of staff  represents the patience extent of customers. This type of problem often happens. Good location, clean room, nice and helpful staff make Palomar hotel reach the four star level. However, the performance needs to be improved to form a good atmosphere in details for customers.
        Obviously, it is not hard to see what is the good thing that Palomar hotel has. The area of strength is apparently the location and the quality of the room. A lot of travelers recommend to use the local transportation to visit San Francisco. Customers like to choose the location that can bring them conveniently and help them to save time. However, it is not enough if the hotel only utilizes the good location to attract customers to come back again. Actually, those comments were about the service that is not enough to satisfy customers with their needs. Just like the comments mentioned from random customers that Palomar hotel was under the renovation, but staffs did not send any emails to customers who had already booked the room; the second usual issue is that the lobby is always empty. That causes nobody there to help customers immediately. All complaints are about the daily details. The chart below can show the most popular issues that the Palomar needs to be improved. Customer service is an important thing to be noticed and some details are also very important to present the performance.
         The target market is the couple traveler as the data showed. Most of complaints come from couple travelers. They need to pay the same price as group of family or a group of friends. That is why they do notice the details of every signal thing. The quality of the service is the key to keep and raise the rating and attract customers. As the chart shows below, the couple travelers take the first seat in amount and family and business the second and third in amount.
         The competitor, Marriott Marquis has the same location and similar type of customers during the year 2014. The random data is collected from January through September. Use the same method to analyze the data of Marriott and still through revinate.com to gather the information. The average of rating of Marriot is almost five stars. Utilizing the same sections from Palomar hotel, we will give an evaluation to the performance of Marriott. No matter what the location, rooms, service, staff and bar are, the positive evaluation occupies the most. According to some comments of customers, it shows no complaints to Marriott. The chart below can show the performance of Marriot during the January and September.
         The good location and spacious room can attract customers. Noticing who is the target market and adjusting the operation system are quite important to satisfy what customers need. The whole paper is reporting the basic information about how Palomar hotel presents its performance and how the competitor Marriott presents the performance under a same situation. The area of strength and the area that needs to be improved are also important to be noticed in daily work. Keep doing the excellent area and compare a model to fix the problem. It is necessary.
 Solutions of Palomar Hotel
         This part is an important step to present two solutions to solve a service problem of Palomar hotel. Revinate.com, some credible sites like expidia.com, tripadvisor.com, hotel.com have already presented customers’ comments to explore issues of Palomar hotel. To avoid lacking communication between customers and staffs,the big issue, Palomar hotel has to improve further more after analyzing data of those days. Efficient solutions will help Palomar hotel become a better hotel in the future competition of hospitality industry.
         One of the solutions that could probably avoid this lacking issue is to separate the staffs into groups and compete for their achievements every two weeks. Making a positive competition among staff themselves could be a good way to encourage staffs to focus on their duties. 20/30 customers complained on sites that they felt noisy in their rooms and could not sleep well. In fact, Palomar hotel is located in downtown San Francisco near the market street that is a bustling street. Because of the special geographic location, the customer service must contact customers whose rooms are near the street and ask customers whether they mind the noise or not before they arrive. The other way to have a good communication with customers is to change the rooms for customers who feel noisy. Manager can reward outstanding employees a short vacation or movie tickets to encourage them to participate in their jobs totally. The method has two benefits. One is to help employees have a clear schedule to work on with and the other is to create a positive competition among employees. Actually, supervisor can schedule employees into four groups and each group completes the job for one week. Supervisor needs to give each group a score to evaluate their jobs during a month based on revinate or comments of customers. A small meeting is necessary to be held every evening because the summary every day can remind employees to fix their mistakes immediately. Making group will reduce the pressure of job because it naturally consumes employees’ passion if they are under huge pressure of their duties for a long time.
         This solution will let customers feel the team of this hotel is full of energy and passion all the time. Customers will trust customer service team of Palomar hotel. They can satisfy their demands if they ask. The reputation of Palomar hotel will get better and better. Obviously, the benefit of this solution can attract customers and increase the rating.
         Lacking of communication between customers and staffs will present non-professional service to customers. Training staffs regularly is necessary to upgrade the service. Training is not only for the first step-telling employees how to work in the future, but also updating the service skills of employees to be more professional than before. Like the case that Palomar hotel was under renovation and the customer service did not email or call to let customers know the sudden events, customers felt embarrassing when they saw the lobby is like a mess. Naturally, customers will be upset with this because they were not noticed. 25/30 customers left their comments on some sites like tripadvisor.com, expidia.com and yelp.com  writing they felt bad when they saw the renovation of Palomar hotel. The problem is that those staffs did not realize their duties would always be linked wit the details, like sending email to notice customers the sudden things and some changes before they arrived. Supervisor schedules the shift of all employees and trains them twice a month. The more the employees are trained the more professional they can be.
        The professional service will always satisfy the customer’s needs before they ask or complain. Not all the customers will be nice or never mind the fault of the hotel. Being professional is the basic thing for hospitality industry to serve customers well. Palomar hotel should notice the issue of this part that employees are the important cores for giving a good service. 
         Upgrading the service by training the staffs regularly is the most important one to implement in Palomar hotel. A good staff or a good team is quite important for a hotel to improve. No matter what good the strategies or plan the hotel has,  it will be the big tragic when there is nobody who can fulfill the task. Assuming that the supervisor has already prepared a perfect schedule and used the most good system, but staffs do not know how to handle it or even apply those skills into real work. On the other hand, staffs are the key link to present the excellent hotel or just reach the average level. How to handle a good skill of communicating with customers needs more experience or training. Those issues like the renovation or changing the rooms need staffs to have patient attitude and professional skills. Palomar hotel will make a big improvement if the hotel gives those staffs a good regular training. Those staffs will know how to finish the job in an efficient way. It is not that hard to schedule the training plan of staffs. No matter what expenses for hiring teachers or finding a meeting room is, to organize the training is not a big problem for a hotel itself.
         Assuming that when Palomar hotel separates their staffs into groups next day, they just need to reschedule the shifts and timetable. Supervisor evaluates the performance of staffs of each week and gives them score for internal competition. By tracking the evaluation of each group, it is easy to see the weakness of each staff. The training will be held once or twice a month and it depends on the real situation. It won’t be quite expensive to hire a teacher for teaching classes because the hotel can invite an experienced staff to teach and train staffs and use their own meeting room to teach classes. Supervisor can choose weekdays to hold training at night group by group. That is more helpful to know the weakness of each team. Actually, the cost is totally under control and implementing the training plan is imperative.
         In conclusion, Palomar hotel needs to make a big move on the service part. Once Palomar hotel does not notice its weakness, it will lose the competitiveness among the competitors in hospitality industry. No matter how good the quality or equipment the Palomar hotel is, a professional service and experienced staff will more more progress for the hotel.
Reference
1. Hospitality and Tourism Marketing Data, THE 2011-2012 TRAVEL&TOURISM MARKET RESEACH HANDBOOK, Ch36, Family Travel, USA Today.
2. Hospitality and Tourism Marketing Data, THE 2011-2012 TRAVEL&TOURISM MARKET RESEACH HANDBOOK, Ch78, Condé Nast Traveler, 4/10
3. Palomar, San Francisco A KIMPTON HOTEL, Our Hotel, Pet- Friendly.
http://www.hotelpalomar-sf.com/hotels-san-francisco/pet-friendly-hotel/index.html