Hilton Hotels during the Covid-19 Pandemic

Hilton Hotels during the Covid-19 Pandemic
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Hilton Hotels during the Covid-19 Pandemic
Introduction
Planning, organizing, controlling, and leading are essential functions of management that when applied appropriately can make an organization overcome numerous challenges. Hilton Hotels and Resorts encountered problems due to the Covid-19 pandemic. First, it was difficult to ensure workers' and guests’ safety by eliminating the spread of coronavirus within the facility. Second, employees’ relationships dwindled since they feared whether they will be the next in line to get infected with the deadly viral disease. Third, some workers were uninspired, unfocused, and demotivated since they were not certain about keeping their jobs, bearing in mind that numerous companies were closing their operations. However, the three primary recommendations that Hilton Hotels would have implemented to address these challenges include setting proper strategies to increase employees' and guests’ safety by encouraging effective communication to all stakeholders and distributing resources appropriately based on where they were needed the most. Additionally, Hilton Hotels should have provided personal protective equipment and counseling services to foster good employee relationships.
Management Issue
Hilton Hotels and Resorts was not immune to challenges emanating from the Covid-19 pandemic. The primary challenge that was encountered by this multinational hotel company was ensuring that its guests were safe and that there was no contraction of the deadly viral disease between the staff and visitors (Hilton, 2022). Based on a statement by Christopher Nassetta, the chief executive officer (CEO) or president of Hilton Hotels, the company was obliged to enact and implement various measures to thrive during the pandemic (Simon, 2020). The major priority was safeguarding the security and safety of team members and guests. As such, Hilton Hotels faced planning and controlling issues related to developing new strategies to improve its employees, guests, and other stakeholders’ safety to avoid the spread of coronavirus.
The other challenge that Hilton Hotels faced was to enhance proper employee relationships to ensure that its products and services were not compromised (BBC News, 2021). In reality, due to the government’s directives that individuals should stay at home to avoid contracting the disease, some workers feared interacting with their colleagues to avoid being infected. When the omicron variant was announced, around 45% of Americans said that they were unlikely to travel for the next three months until scientists determined the consequences of that coronavirus variant (Fox, 2021). In addition, social media impacted travelers’ mentality since individuals received news from various sources, some of which were incredible. The issue of lack of proper workers’ relationships is related to the function of management known as organizing (Gossling, Scott, & Hall, 2021). As such, Hilton Hotels’ managers and leaders were required to come up with strategies that would retain proper interpersonal relationships among employees to achieve the set organizational goals.
Employees from different sectors feared that they would lose their jobs, particularly when some companies closed their operations in an effort to reduce the spread of the coronavirus (Gursoy & Chi, 2020). The majority of Hilton Hotels’ workers became demotivated, uninspired, unfocused, and did not emphasize fulfilling the company’s vision since their jobs were threatened (Krishnan, Mann, Seitzman, & Wittkamp, 2020). Some of these individuals relied on their jobs as the primary source of income, and the more the Covid-19 pandemic rate of infection increased, the more it was hard for them to be motivated. According to the World Travel & Tourism Council, the coronavirus pandemic was likely to contribute to the loss of about 50 million jobs globally (Dogra, 2022). The tourism and travel industry was affected significantly as countries continued to issue travel bans. As a result, the problem of motivating employees and ensuring that they meet set objectives is related to the function of management called leading.
Scholarly Management Evidence
Planning and controlling are vital functions of the management and they involve selecting the most appropriate strategies to meet the goals of an organization. Nidzara Osmanagic Bedenik and Mirjana Pejic Bach depict that controlling entails supplying the information as the responsibility of the management that facilitates goal orientation and coordinating various activities (Bedenik & Bach, 2019). The authors conducted the study to determine the purpose of planning and controlling in contributing to organizational success. They found that the five primary controlling tasks are cost accounting, budgetary monitoring, budgeting, variance analysis, and financial reporting (Bedenik & Bach, 2019). The fascinating thing about their results was that strategic and normative control widens a firm’s ability to succeed in the future. They include things, such as mission, vision, culture, values, compliance, company integrity, corporate governance, and corporate social responsibility (Bedenik & Bach, 2019). As such, the authors offered various new insights about controlling and planning.
Leading is an essential function of management that entails motivating and inspiring employees so that they can achieve the set mission, vision, and organizational goals. Pennington-Gray et al. (2011) argue that leaders in the hospitality industry ought to be always prepared on how to respond to various challenges that might emanate in this highly dynamic sector (Pennington-Gray et al., 2011). These researchers focused on how leading influences resource allocation during a crisis to ensure that an organization can thrive. They found that effective planning, communication, and coordination among various departments are crucial when allocating resources to ensure that they are not going to waste. The interesting thing about their findings is that employees must be trained to promote preparedness during a crisis (Pennington-Gray et al., 2011). Moreover, the channel of communication significantly determines whether an organization will overcome the crisis or not.
Organizing is another crucial function of management that involves building and maintaining proper employee relationships so that they can cooperate and work together to meet set organizational goals. Ioannis Gkliatis and Dimitrios Koufopoulos investigated the importance of organizing and strategic planning in the Greek hospitality sector (Gkliatis & Koufopoulos, 2013). They found that numerous five-star hotels fail when they overemphasize strategic planning and forget about organizing. Even if an organization has the best strategic objectives, without organizing it cannot meet such goals. In that light, leaders should r...