Management and Outrigger Hotels

Outriggers IS organization. – Appendix 2 * A highly centralized organizational structure * Outrigger’s senior management thought that OMAHA hotels had no direct competition, but condominiums competed with small local management companies and Individual owners’ beliefs that they could do a better Job alone. * In 1999. A new brand-Omaha Hotels and Resorts * Providing guests with a rewarding experience and a sense of place, enabling employees to reach their potential and being an Integral part of the community.

Question 2- The Outrigger’s critical success factors The external factors of success (Appendix 3) * The flourished global economy and increased numbers of employees. * The social tendency of have vacations in the beaches and fancy hotels. * Widespread adoption of The Internet. * The excellent tourist destination of Hawaii Islands in terms of nature and location. * The easy regulations of acquiring lands and properties in America. Internal factors of success (Appendix 4) * High quality and variety of services. Excellent distribution network. * Innovation & technology. Richard White IS Case Questions 1-3 1 . Outrigger Hotels and Resorts strategic position is to remain one of the largest, fastest growing privately held lodging and hospitality companies in the Pacific. Outrigger positioned

its properties in places where people could enjoy a vacation that was respectful of the culture and enabled them to experience a destination as much or as little as they would like. Outriggers’ strengths are it’s mid-size and attention to detail with guests.

Outrigger has been able to leverage Information Technology as a strength because of it’s available capital to spend on increasing the integration of services, as well as the storage and retrieval of data to help it’s operations run smoothly. Outriggers weaknesses are competition from major well renowned brands that have consumer loyalty that are in more markets where customers come from. The critical success factors for Outrigger are as follows; providing guests with a rewarding experience and a sense of place, enabling employees to reach their potential, and being an integral part of the community.

IS resources for Outrigger are doing very well according to executives they are infinite that it was enabling the firm to compete effectively. Being a smaller company they have the ability to implement change a lot faster than hospitality 2. Giants and are able to remain ahead of the curve as it relates to their information system strategies. 3. The IS function should be one that allows the most convenience for not only the firms business operations and end users but for its consumers as well. I believe the primary function of any information system is convenience by reducing the amount of work done by those who use the system. Continues] Executive Summary Outrigger’s current strategy is to position its properties in places where people could enjoy a vacation experience leveraging Outrigger’s own core competencies. Within the company’s current strategy, Outrigger’s key assets are having strong brand name and recognition, their relationship with internet travel sites, local knowledge and community ties, and excellent employee relationships. Currently, Outrigger is being faced with major issues – the main being they do not have a modern, centralized system to integrate all of their properties.

Secondary issues include an inability to recognize return, PIP and “special event” guests; a lack of technological amenities for clientele; and a dearth of congruity between retail space technology and the technology of the lodging properties. Of course, all of these issues are key factors in allowing for future growth. Outrigger can continue business as usual, and suffer the addressed in, essentially, one of two ways: either attempt to mitigate the problems individually as they become increasingly detrimental to the business, or venture to unique the obstacles with a comprehensive, multi-pronged plan of attack.

While addressing the issues on their own is cheaper in the short term, and perhaps easier to integrate initially, Outrigger will undoubtedly find itself playing catch-up in the long term, faced with higher overall costs and longer man hours spent on implementing the solutions. For example, while moving operations to a cloud-based system may drastically reduce maintenance costs associated with having on-site hardware, there still remains the problem of lacking a unifying IS between all Outrigger properties.

If, as they claim, Outrigger wishes to eventually add absolute consistency throughout its properties, an overarching (and updated) IS must be developed. Thus, it is our recommendation that Outrigger try to address all of… Case study: Outrigger hotels and resorts The case study is about the Outrigger Hotels and resorts that whose foundation was kept by Roy C. Kelly in 1963 with the mission of bringing the dreams of vacation in paradise to reality for a middle-class consumer.

In the next two decades it expanded through new construction and acquisitions and became the largest among its imitators with a centralized management structure. It also diversified its product portfolio with international expansions and refrained its fifteen hotels by the name of OMAHA for budget travelers on one hand and Outrigger hotels and resorts for high end travelers through the addition of condos that represented a unique business opportunity. With the international expansion the management style also changed from centralized to decentralized with independent operations and organized like traditional resorts.

Competition: The hotel group operated in direct competition with ell established brands like Marriott International, Hilton Hotels and resorts, Stardom hotels and resorts, GASTON Hotels and resorts and Marc Resorts Hawaii which had a big market presence but the Outrigger group scored over them by long- term relationships with distributor network, local knowledge, strategic focus and good employee relations. Its IT infrastructure was also considered to be strong which is exemplified with the fact that it implemented JDK Edwards ERP years before its large scale implementation across industries.

It also bought a business intelligence application from Epiphany to gain an insight into its business. In spite of all the above stated competitive advantages Outrigger Hotels and Resorts group is facing the following changes: Problem of integration of business operations across the countries The proliferation of choices for a consumer with respect to entertainment budgets The Hawaiian tourism industry was dependent upon the airlines industry which itself was under extreme financial pressure after terrorist attacks Inefficiency of wholesalers to utilize the changing technology and rely on fax machines for the same.