The American Lodging Industry's Best Practices

T his issue of Cornell Quarterly presents the first installment of articles examining U.S. hotels’ best practices in specific function areas, as well as con- sidering travelers’ views of how hotel practices create value. The study on which these articles are based was a mammoth under- taking that was con- ducted under the umbrella of the School of Hotel Administration’s Center for Hospitality Research and underwritten by American Express. The study involved several college professors, a support group compris- ing hotel-school staff members, and a host of outside consultants, not to mention the American Hotel Foun- dation, which published the study.

The introductory article to the series, which appeared in the August 1999 Cornelf Quarterly (pp. 14-27), explained the study’s procedure of

inviting nominations, screening prospects, conducting field inter- views, and rechecking facts as cases were written. Yet that article hardly captures the immense effort that went into developing the cases on which this issue’s articles are based. Working under a tight deadline the research and writing team of Profes- sors Dub&, Enz, Renaghan, and Siguaw divided the work along the lines you can infer from the bylines of this issue’s articles. Judy Siguaw wrote the bulk of the individual

practice cases, while Cathy Enz wrote the remainder of the indi- vidual cases and developed the overall-champion cases that will be presented in a future issue. In writ- ing the individual cases, Professors Siguaw and Enz sifted through a myriad of detailed reports to focus on the key aspects of each case. In the process they had to check hun- dreds of individual facts. Indeed, they returned drafts of each case to the chief contact person for final approval. The overall cases offered a different writing challenge for Pro- fessor Em. Whereas the individual cases involved careful focus on the specific, the overall cases required synthesis in addition to consider- ation of detailed facts.

Meantime, Professors Dub& and Renaghan developed and con- ducted the customer-based research study described in this issue. Their work adds a remarkable facet to the study-that being the guests’ reac- tion to the hotel industry’s practices. The key question for this part of the study was, What creates value for the guest? Since the industry has been discussing value chains and creating value for many years now, a specific examination of value from the guest’s point of view should be indispensable to industry practitioners.

The written result of this consid- erable effort was strictly formatted for the AHF’s final publication, American Lodging Excellence, which contains the individual case studies in a conveniently parallel presenta- tion. While that format is handy for the reader, it does not allow for lengthy reflection on the prov- enance and lessons inherent in the many practices. The focus sections in this and subsequent issues of Cornell Quarterly allow a summation and analysis of the industry’s best practices and, thus, serve as a complement to the study’s main publication.-G. LK

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