Introduction As tourism industry has been increasing dramatically during the last two decades, hotel industry is at war. In global competition, hotel chains are required to offer not only standardized facilities, but also standardized services. To meet the different needs of customers in each individual country while maintaining the same standards of services, global marketing strategy plays a critical role. Being a leader in upscale hotel chain industry, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel took a unique path to compete with its rivals. Founded on principles of groundbreaking levels of customer service, and with guest satisfaction being the highest mission, the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, is the first and only hotel company to win the desirable …show more content…

At Ritz-Carlton, a focus on these criteria has resulted in higher employee and customer satisfaction, increased productivity and market share. Perhaps most significant is increased profitability. Research shows that the stock price of companies with effective Total Quality Management implementation outperformed the S&P 500 Index by approximately 34% over a five-year period. (www.ritzcarlton.com)

Service Quality at the Ritz-Carlton Hotel The Ritz-Carlton has 17,000 staff people and over 15,000 guestrooms; these conditions give it lots of opportunities for both preventing defects and beginning improvements every day. According to Horst Schulze: former President and COO, The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., LLC, "leadership drives an organization." The Ritz-Carlton started in 1983 without any hotels. The dream was to create the standard for a world class hotel company. As the company grew, the leadership found that many of their customers did not agree that Ritz-Carlton was successfully meeting their needs. To remedy this condition, Ritz-Carlton started benchmarking with quality winners and began incorporating the Baldrige approach. Today, Ritz-Carlton has more than 50 hotels worldwide and new ones under construction. Every hotel implements the Baldrige criteria. Ritz-Carlton leadership is involved in all its corporate areas, both administrative and operational. It makes sure the organization is a learning organization, is caring, and has a heart. It also makes sure that all