Business

After reading this case study, I came to conclusion that value chain of Novotel is its competitive advantage over other competitors. All strategies such as hospitality concept, service, marketing, training, and control, all are interrelated, and as a whole it develops a very competitive value chain configuration. Lets discuss them in detail.

For hospitality concept, Novotel has designed similar layout throughout the world. Whenever a guest enters a Novotel hotel, he will observe bar and restaurant which are adjacent to the reception. Novotel also exchanges its staff with other Novotel hotels which allows them to have a multi cultural environment and through multi culture environment they provide services to all types of customers in a similar pattern. So customers dont have to worry that how they will be treated in other Novotel hotels. When it comes to marketing, they have developed partnership program through which they build strong relationships with preferred suppliers and even win their good word of mouth. If we talk about training, it has been limited and centralized to the headquarters which is located outside Paris. All trainings are designed and delivered over there. This result in standardized management practices and consistent service standards are provided to the customers. One more idea which gives an edge to Novotel is the multi skilling of work force. By this they save employees cost as well as they produce more skillful human resource.

If we look at Novotels practices through VRIO framework, its service design is very valuable. The multi skilling of workers not only enhances their operational efficiency but also cuts their costs. Moreover the similarity of training, management process and service is very rare and it is near to impossible to imitate. Other firms might be able to imitate its training and management process but copying the building structure is not possible for other firms. And its for sure that Novotel is getting full advantage of their competitive edge because its value chain is very coherent in structure and it would surely satisfy its customers to large extent.