2016年3月22日 星期二

5th Visit - L'hotel



About the L’hotel Group…

L’hotel Management Company Limited or L’hotel Group, a member of Chinachem Group, is a contemporary lifestyle hospitality group which comprises of the L’hotel and Lodgewood series. The L’hotel Group endeavors to redefine the notions of hospitality, comfort and style in Hong Kong with its affordably luxurious hotels and modern chic fun-filled boutique hotels cum serviced apartments. L’hotel accounts for four upscale hotels spread throughout Hong Kong. All of the hotels offer an unwavering level of modern Asian hospitality, house exceptional facilities including swimming pools and fitness centers and feature high quality restaurants and trendy bars for guests and visitors alike.

About L’Hotel Island South...


-> Have a look at the official introductory video first! <-

Located 15 minutes’ drive away from Causeway Bay shopping area with close proximity to Ocean Park and Aberdeen Marina Club, L’hotel Island South, Hong Kong’s first Geopark Hotel, brings guests to the quaint Southern District on Hong Kong Island, where the richness of nature serves as stunning backdrop to the Hotel’s contemporary ocean inspired interior design. This 432-room stylish hotel is a relaxing urban oasis, ideal for both business and leisure travelers to take a break from hectic schedules. The Hotel also has a restaurant, a bar lounge, 3 function rooms, an outdoor swimming pool and a gym.


Design concept
L’hotel Island South embraces an aqua theme from its natural surrounding environment. The ocean and seafood play a significant role in this part of Hong Kong Island with the area able to trace its roots back to its fishing town days and boasts the Jumbo Floating Restaurant as a renowned attraction. The Hotel’s exterior imitates water ripples with the water element continuing to trickle through to every aspect of design and décor throughout the premises. All the art pieces in the Hotel and rooms are environmental friendly and linked to nature, conveying a sense of the area and what it used to be. Team members are exquisitely outfitted in clothing exclusively designed by internationally renowned designer Dorian Ho.

-> The Art gallery



Awards in 2014-201
2015  Luxury Green Hotel Country Winner (Hong Kong) - World Luxury Hotel Awards
2015  Lis Café and Bar LIS: Quality Tourism Services Scheme – accredited restaurants - Hong Kong Tourism Board
2014  Manpower Developer Accredited Organization - Employees Retraining Board
2014  A “Caring Company” - The Hong Kong Council of Social Service
2014  “Partner Employer” Award Outstanding Corporation - The Hong Kong General Chamber of Small and Medium Business
2014  Luxury Serviced Apartments Country Winner (Hong Kong) - World Luxury Hotel Awards


-> See more information from L’HOTEL ISLAND SOUTH FACTSHEET <-


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Our Visit to L'Hotel Island South...
Electronic Screen showing today's events @ Lobby

Guest eKiosk @ Lobby
Showcase of rocks to promote Eco-tour at HK @ Lobby
Front office @ Lobby
Info. corner about the HK Global Geopark of China @ Lobby

LIS Lounge @ Podium Level 5
LIS Lounge is the Hotel’s quiet space designed for intimate and exclusive gatherings for guests. Sit and enjoy a nice complimentary cup of coffee while browsing the internet at the computer stations or relax and read a book at the stunning 40 foot long redwood table from Cameroon.
Electric Car Charger, Carpark space, Hotel to airport limousine transfer service @ Podium Level 4
Bar LIS @ Podium Level 3
 LIS Café @ Podium Level 3
Art work: "Their Map Books" @ Podium Level 6 foyer
Gym @ Podium Level 6
Nestled under a 5 meter glass ceiling facing the outdoor pool is the Hotel’s gym for guests who want a good workout. Complete with a trainer, the gym boasts top-of-the-line equipment for a transformative session under natural surroundings.
Art work: "Butterflies" @ guest floor
Grand Aqua Suite
The crowning glory at L’hotel Island South is the Grand Aqua Suite nestled on its top floor, a stunning refuge for those who want a romantic getaway from the city or a relaxing weekend of indulgence.  Everything is catered to the soothing of guests’ heart, body and mind with living and dining areas separated from the comfortable bedding. This penthouse suite with the size of 81 sq.m. is a pure luxurious escape from reality, where nothing is too much - from your very own private Jacuzzi to the wooden inspired outdoor balcony overlooking the calm and peaceful Southern District.  
TV with customized label of "L'hotel" @ Grand Aqua Suite

Private balcony with stunning view @ Grand Aqua Suite
Environmental friendly card for guests @ All hotel rooms
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Questions & Answers


1. How many rooms can be made up on average per day? How long does it take to prepare a standard guest room on average?
Each room attendant is responsible for 14-18 rooms per day, usually 16. It takes around half an hour to prepare a standard guest room, however, it depends on the attendant’s experience and the room condition. It takes a longer time for preparing the check-out rooms while it takes a shorter time for preparing a room of over-night customers. The experienced room attendants will have well time management to finish preparing all rooms required in order to get off work on time ;D


2. How can L‘hotel differentiate itself from other hotels of similar positioning in terms of operations, service offerings and the number of headcounts?
The hotel targets customers who travel for leisure purpose. The hotel’s rooms are generally more spacious than those hotels in the hub of city. In terms of price, the hotel emphasizes “Affordable luxury” to customers, although it is a bit expensive, but it is affordable to most of the customers. Customers can enjoy luxury services and facilities at an affordable price.


3. Does the rapid growth of the hotel online booking platforms such as Agoda, Expedia pose challenges or opportunities to your hotel?  What would you do to deal with these challenges or opportunities?
The hotel treat these online booking platforms as partners. Although these platforms charge the hotel for commission fee, at the same time they will help introducing and recommending the hotel to the customers. However, the commission fee is relatively high which causes a challenge to the hotel. In addition, the hotel should have its own marketing strategy to design the percentage of relying on different selling channels, the percentage of relying online selling platforms should not be too high as there is a risk that the selling platforms collapse or become not popular to customers one day.

To deal with the above challenges, the hotel offers unique packages to customers who book directly from the hotel’s website. Moreover, the hotel provides higher flexibility to the customers as they may easily cancel or make special requirements of their room without any extra administration fee.


4. How do you position yourself since there are many hotels in Hong Kong?

The hotel focus on offering relax and leisure experiences to customers. Other than the spacious rooms provided, the location of the hotel makes customers able to enjoy a relatively slow pace of life in Hong Kong, compared to those hotels in downtown.


5. Are there any additional charges for the 24-hour medical assistance and baby-sitting service?

Some families choose to have the baby-sitting service as the parents have their own planned schedule and not convenience to bring their babies to go with. Therefore, the hotel offers baby-sitting services at a price of $80/ hour, and minimum charges for 4 hours. In terms of medical assistance, the hotel offers 24-hour medical assistance services, including calling ambulance in urgent cases for free, referral of nearby clinics for fee, and on-call doctor service to visit the customers directly which charges around $2000 for the doctor’s consultation fee.


6. How many cars and drivers are available to provide the hotel-airport limousine transfer service? Are they outsourced? If there are over-booked, what is your solution?

Many customers choose to take the shuttle bus provided by the hotel to the MTR’s airport express station then to the airport. Like other hotels in Hong Kong, the shuttle bus service is outsourced as it will be very expensive to operate by the hotel itself.


7. What would you do to maintain your business when facing the decreasing numbers of overnight staying tourists?

There is around 5% long staying customers in this season. The customers usually stay for a relatively short period of nights at the hotel (i.e. 2-3 nights). It is because they mainly joined tour group which offers different hotels in the trip or they would have tight schedule that will travel to Mainland or Macau right after visiting Hong Kong for a few days.


8. What technologies do you adopt to maintain the sustainability of the hotel?

The hotel uses LED light bulbs in rooms. There is a motion sensor at every room’s entrance to control the switch of some light bulbs. Moreover, it developed a mobile application to provide useful information to the customers instead of using printed materials.  Also, the room attendants will only change towels and linen base on cutomers’ request or base on conditions, so that it saves electricity and water used to wash these materials.


9. Why does L’hotel join the VIVVA membership scheme? How would L’hotel attract more people to join the membership?

Customers of the hotels who aged 18 or above, with valid credit card and email contact address can join the membership. The number of return customers has increased after launching the VIVVA membership scheme. It is because the hotel offers special discount and gift vouchers to members, members can also earn points (i.e. the VIVVA dollars) when they spend money at the hotel (earn 1 point when spending $1), and they can use the earned points to get rewards from the hotels under the L’hotel Group.


10. How do you manage the front office staff schedule? Are there any potential problems / risks to hire part-time staff?

The Food and Beverage (F&B) department usually needs part-time staff as it responsible for various services like in-house dining, room services, banquet and event F&B services, the other departments like front office should have enough regular staff to handle the hotel’s normal operations. The hotel hire pat-time staff base on actual needs, it calculates the number of part-time staff needed using ratios. And there is a system to manage the part-time staff recording their work time, a monthly report will be generated from the system to keep track on the revenue and labor cost ratio. The potential risks includes the hotel may sometimes cannot hire enough labor, and the hotel may face the sudden absence cases of the part-time staff.

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!! Reflection !!


L’hotel Island south is very impressive to us! From the first step we entered the hotel, we can smell nice perfume and see many art works. These give us a relax feeling with visible enjoyment. One special thing about the hotel is the promotion of Eco-tour in Hong Kong, which is quite different from other hotels. This hotel provides comprehensive accommodation, food, entertainment and Eco-tour services to customers. Moreover, their facilities are also attractive, for example there is a gym officer in the gym room to provide gymnastic advice for customers. We  really enjoy this visit! Hope we can have more chances to visit other hotels and learn their operations in the future!

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Reference


2016年3月15日 星期二

4th Visit - Kerry Logistics

About Kerry Logistics…


Company Background

Kerry Logistics, headquartered in Hong Kong, is a leading third party logistics company in Hong Kong. It owns 43m sq. ft. logistics facilities and hires more than 20,000 employees. It has extensive global network in 40 countries and territories, the graph below shows its network,

Besides, Kerry Logistics is an asset-based company, which means it owns its logistics center, container terminal, port terminal, etc. The benefits of owning its assets are more reliable and flexible, which can support the continue development of Kerry Logistics.

Services

The core business of Kerry Logistics includes integrated logistics, international freight forwarding and supply chain solutions.
Kerry Logistics is serving over 40 of the World’s Top 100 Brands, including fashion & lifestyle, electronics & technology, food & beverage, FMCG, to industrial & material science, automotive, and pharmaceutical & healthcare. It offers tailor-made supply chain solutions with value-added services to its customers
Value-Added Service
Different from other logistics companies, Kerry Logistics provides wide range of Value-Added Services (VAS) based on customers’ requirements. One of the example of VAS is postponement, which help its clients to replace some components into different standard in order to suit the standard of different countries and territories. For example, electronic devices such as cell phone, the socket and the instruction manual are in the standard of manufacturing country; however, when it enters into other market, the socket and the instruction manual should be in the standard of the entering country. Kerry Logistics helps to carry out this replacement in its warehouses.

The Visit
When we first entered the company, we are attracted by its interior design. The design of whole building is used the two symbolic colors of Kerry Logistics, that is orange and grey, which coherence with the image of company and provide professional feeling.

We first listened to the presentation by the speaker, he introduced the company, its core business, the special services and what make Kerry Logistics stand out from other logistics companies. The presentation was well-structure and rich in content that can deeper our understanding towards the company and logistics industry. After the presentation, it was the Q&A session. Apart from the questions we planned in class, students were active to raise additional questions. The speaker is so knowledgeable that he answered our queries with detailed explanation.



 Then, Kerry Logistics has organized a guided tour in its warehouse for us. The warehouse we visited was mainly for GAP to store its products. We separated into two groups to walk through the warehouse with a staff, who introduced the daily operations and the function of each item to us. We started from the inbound area to the storage area and finally to the outbound area, the staff explained everything very detail.

Q&A

1. As you using Asia as company headquarter, what is your comment on the Asian Transportation market? For example, the development of e-commerce in China (Taboo)?
Answer: Kerry Express is handling 2000 shipment per day for delivery B to C products. Kerry Express is the top company in the market in Taiwan and the first few company in Thailand and Vietnam. However, when comparing with DHL, UPS and FedEx such leading express companies in the market, it is no doubt that they are doing better than Kerry in the field of express. Now, Kerry is developing its express platform and building up the express capacity. However, it is very competitive since the price of using mainland express companies is very cheap.
2. Since your company is expert in warehousing management, how would you provide the premier value added services to the customer, like the services provided (labelling), as well as technologies used?
Answer: Kerry Logistics offers a wide range of value-added services (VAS) to its customers, those services can help the customers’ companies to sell its products. According to the needs of customers, Kerry will provide the suitable VAS for them. Example of VAS is the food label; Kerry helps company to replace the original food label by sticking Hong Kong standard food label.
3. What has Kerry logistics done to overcome the challenges of ever-increasing labor and fuel costs?
Answer: Fuel cost is not a concern as it is relative cheap now. For the increasing labor cost, Kerry decided to increase the productivity of labor instead of hiring more employees. It developed and provided some tools and technologies in order to smoother the operation flow and increase the productivity.
4. What kind of especial-care products still not included in logistics service currently?
Answer: There is one type of product which cannot be handled because of law is the Class 1 dangerous goods which is the explosive goods. And Kerry do not want to handle this kind of product as it is dangerous.
5. What is your core business in the future?
Answer: Vertically, Kerry wants to develop more on the drug and pharmacy industry because the demand for drug is increasing. Horizontally, Kerry plans to expand its business into express market, and it is now building up the express capability.
6. How do you determine the location of office in order to achieve an efficient network?
Answer: For better managing the operation, office is located near to the operation department.

7. perspectives would you consider when you offer tailor-made supply chain solutions for your customers?

Answer: Kerry Logistics provides integrated logistics service which is all tailor-made for customers. There are three things needed to consider when providing tailor-made solutions. The first thing with mist important is customers’ needs, Kerry designs the solutions based on the requirements of customers. The second one is the price; customers trust Kerry Logistics can help them to minimize the cost with providing professional services. And the last one is the service and system, which needed to be inter-connected and reacted very fast, if not, it is impossible to run the supply chain solution.
8. How do you allocate inventories to different warehouses?
Answer: The decision of placing inventories in which warehouse is made by customers, not the company. Kerry Logistics concerns on providing quality of services to its customers, so it makes the effort to satisfy customers’ needs and requests.

9. There are lots of cargoes movements in warehouses every day. How would you ensure they can be delivered on time? How do you plan the delivery schedules?

Answer: There are an Electronic Proof of Deliver (POD) in phone and GPS in the truck, these technologies can allow Kerry to know the exact location of the good. If there are some urgent situations, such as traffic jam or accident, that make the goods cannot be delivered on time, Kerry can ask others cars to help. In addition, the tracking system helps Kerry to calculate the approximate time for delivery. If the delivery is behind schedule, customers can know the updated delivery time.
10. What are your competitive advantages over your competitors in transportation market, such as DHL, FedEx, S.F. Express?
Answer: The other logistics companies in the market, such as DHL, FedEx and S.F. Express, are integrator, which focused on the express market. Comparing with Kerry Logistics, they only provide a few or no value-added services to customers.
Actually, they are not the direct competitors to Kerry since their core businesses are different. However, they are trying to offer more value-added service to their customers, and Kerry is developing its express service, it is believed that they will become competitors in the future.
Reflection:
Kerry Logistics has prepared a wonderful visit for us. It introduced information of Kerry Logistics and organized a guided tour in its warehouse. It showed the daily operation of the company and how to manage a warehouse in a more efficient way. We are surprised that Kerry Logistics offers a wide range value-added services and tailor-made the supply chain solutions for its customers. Facing increasing number of competitors in Hong Kong and from mainland China, Kerry Logistics still keeping its leading position because its customized services and its quality. We hope that Kerry Logistics can successfully expand into express market in the future.


2016年3月1日 星期二

3th Visit - Yakult

The History behind Yakult:

Dr. Minoru Shirota was the great creator of Yakult. He was a doctor of medicine and had begun his studies on the topic 1921 at the Kyoto Imperial University in Japan. During that period, Japan still hadn’t reached its economic prosperity and thus suffered a lot of poor sanitation conditions. Due to that, a lot pf people caught infectious diseases and eventually died. Dr. Shirota couldn’t bare such reality and decided to do something about it. In the research that he had conducted, he found out that lactobacillus was an element that suppressed the bacteria that was harmful in the intestines. After meeting up with other doctors, who were volunteers, they developed a drink that included the lactobacillus in the tasty beverage, that was drinkable by everyone as it was kept at a low price.
Dr. Shirota basically had his mind keen on preventing illnesses after watching his friends pass away. He didn’t want his focus to be on curing the sick but on prevent the disease as a whole. Thus, he built his drink on three aspects;
  1. It needs to help prevent diseases
  2. It needs to be at a price that everyone can afford and protect themselves
  3. Keeping the intestinal tract of humans healthy

How is Yakult made in the factories?

Explanation of Process

1. Skimmed milk powder is mixed with the other ingredients, like sugar, glucose and filtered, sterilized water to make a sweet milky solution
2. The solution is sterilized at a high temperature, destroying any available bacteria.
3. Temperature of tank is reduced to 37’C and live Lactobacullis casei Shirota strain is added. Solution is allowed to ferment for about a week
4. Tank is chilled to around 2’C.  Sterilized flavors, syrup solutions, are added to the solution
5. On site are where the plastic bottles are produced
6. Labels are added onto the bottles and are later packed in packs of five
7. Products finished are refrigerated before delivery to stores


Ingredients of the Drink

During the visit, the speaker also made us guess the number of ingredients the drink contained and what they were.
The ingredients are as follows;
-       Skimmed milk powder
-       Sugar
-       Glucose
-       Natural & Natural identical flavor
-       Water
-       Probiotic (L.casei strain Shirota)

Effectiveness of Yakult?

Yakult is one of the most highly concentrated drinks containing probiotics in the market. It has over 6.5 billion (L.casei strain Shirota) in each bottle. Our digestive system consists of both beneficial and harmful bacteria. Unbalanced diets, lack of sleep and stress gives way for the harmful bacteria to double up, leading to poor digestion or weakness in the immunity system. Thus, with Yakult, the probiotics increases the number of beneficial bacteria and to take over the harmful ones.

Questions and Answers:

  1. How do you forecast the market demand in different distribution channels?
    Yakult forecasts it based on historical data collected previously that suit the day, weather and other affecting factors. Factors such as the weather is important because it affects the buying behavior of consumers. For example, when it rains, the purchase rate is lower compares to when it is hot.  Thus, they really need to pay attention to the observatory.  

    Another way to forecast is based on the sales among stores in different areas. For example, to enable no losses, stores that sell out faster can get products from nearby stores that still have stock.  

  2. What is the most significant supply chain crisis in your company history and how do you tackle the problems?
    The most significant crisis our company had gone through would be when our delivery truck had issues on its way and all the products were sent for questioning and for a quality check immediately. All contaminated drinks were thrown away and quickly replaced by fresh new drinks by the Yakult Company and those still safe and sound were re-distributed. The company issued more trucks to help and speed up the delivery process, due to the delay caused.

  3. How does quality control help Yakult ensure the product quality? Once a quality problem is occurred, what Yakult can do?
    Quality control plays an important role in terms of standards. Yakult has regular quality checks, in which they randomly selected some bottles and send them to the quality testing room, in which the drinks are assessed to ensure they are of high quality. This not only helps the image of Yakult in front of customers, but also in front of their partners.

    Once a quality problem is occurred, such as in the Yakult drink itself, they would take corrective actions to understand the reason why the drink was not of quality, what led to it being like that and are there any ways of protecting it.

    The way Yakult sets quality standards with its retailers, requires them to place the drinks in a refrigerator.  Also, if there are any issues, the customer can call the company directly, and they will collect the product and return new ones as a substitute as they investigate the  problematic drink.
  4. How does the company maintain its product quality under different temperature change during transportation?
    The company has promised to keep the drink under 10°C at all times, even during transportation. Basically in order to help facilitate this, they have their own refrigerated trucks to ensure quality of their products. And for retailers that may not have resources to own a fridge at their store while selling Yakult, Yakult would give them a fridge to do so. Thus, no retailer should have any excuses in terms of refrigeration when it comes to the times for quality checks.
  5. Why does Yakult HK have less favor than the other neighbor countries such as Singapore?
    Hong Kong has less flavors of Yakult drinks when compared to Singapore because the concept of Yakult already exists in Singapore and more flavors were needed to capture the markets attention and to add a niche. Whereas for Hong Kong, the production locations are small and doesn’t have large factories, where more machines can be places in order to create additional flavors. Moreover, HK people, based on a market research do not appear to be very fond of Yakult due to the amount of sugar it has in each drink. There would be too big of a risk if people end up not buying it as well.  

  6. As the expiration date of the product is 30 days, the estimation of market demand becomes critical to the profit. How do you make and estimation of the market demand in an effective way?
    Due to the 30-day limitation, the estimated demand for the product is made two weeks prior to the date received. Historical data and other known factors, such as the weather are used to make a close estimate, as well as approximate sales over holidays and particular celebrations.

    Also, to better enhance the estimate, close relationships are maintained with the store managers to get a better understanding of the stores reality as well, which may differ amongst different areas.
  7. In order to protect the brand reputation and maintain the quality standard, what are your criteria in choosing the suppliers?
    The job selecting suppliers for Hong Kong’s Yakult manufacturing is done by the headquarters located in Japan. Japan selects some international supplier they know well in order to ensure the quality of the company. Those delivered mostly consist of the probiotic bacteria to ensure the quality and standards. The other ingredients are supplied by Hong Kong partners that also have a long history with Yakult.

  8. What technologies do you adopt for quality control?

    For Yakult the key technology would be the machines used for developing the bacteria and probiotics, especially to ensure the number of live lactobacillus. They need to measure the ingredients accurately.

  9. The population of Yakult drinks is increasing in the Mainland nowadays. How does Yakult adjust the production plan to respond to the rapid increase in demand?
    Since Hong Kong has had Yakult for quite some time now, it has reached its maturity level, especially since 2001. However, lots of Mainlanders visiting HK have been spending on Yakult. Thus Yakult has been constantly expanding in the mainland, opening up new factories.

    Based on festivities and inbound tourism to HK, Yakult can better forecast the demand then.
     
  10. There are many growing competitors from China these years. How does Yakult stand out from the market to gain back the market share?
    Yakult stands out from the market in terms of providing transparency to its customers to know more about the value of the company and reason of its existence. This enables them to build on their brand image.  They mainly do this through the visits they hold at their production office. They also have several marketing campaigns to boost up the sales and market value.  

Reflections:

Overall, our group was very over-whelmed with the experience we encountered at the factory, Knowing Yakult all these years, we had never tried to understand the importance of the drink and the efforts the company had put into it. The most unique moment during the visit, other than seeing all the machineries and the operations were firstly the air cleaner. A certain blow-drying type of door we had to pass through to ensure our cleanliness. It was quite interesting and the second would be getting to try the fresh Yakult. It was special because we hadn’t seen it before, as for the Yakult, the taste really changes after a few days. The one tried at the company was super sweet. Yakult is already criticized for adding too much sugar. However, the sweetness is already less when drinking it a few days later compared to earlier. Another interesting finding our group had was about the low-sugar Yakult. It was expressed as even better by the company representative and how people in other nations like Korea drink it almost everyday to maintain their weight and slim down. However, despite all the value-added elements of being healthy, having low sugar and helping one tone down weight wise, it still rose curiosity on why the Hong Kong market preferred buying the regular one compared to the low-sugar one.

References: