Strategic Hospitality Management Essay Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Strategic Hospitality Management - Essay Example The year 2007 saw a major restructuring for the Accor group with regard to its hotel businesses. The Sofitel group which was classified under the up-market luxury category repositioned itself as a hotel with a French touch. This could be because Sofitel's origins were in France. (Pouillat and Chabrot). The concept now is that each hotel in the chain will be unique in design and architecture that will be suited to the region where it is run. Two sister brands will be introduced in 2009 namely, Sofitel Legend and So by Sofitel. During the years 2006 Sofitel sold one French hotel and six hotels in the USA to streamline its operations and to improve cash flow. The US hotels were sold off for 370 million USD. In 2007 two more hotels in the US were sold for 225 million USD to a GEM Realty Capital of which Accor was a joint venture partner. (Press Release: Accor Announces Sale and Management Back of Sofitel Hotels in New York and Philadelphia). Earlier that year, thirty Accor properties in UK were sold off for 11 million Euros. "Financially, the transaction will enable Accor to reduce its adjusted net debt by '584 million, of which '172 million will be added to the Group's cash reserves. It will have no impact on EBITDA but will add '7 million to 2007 profit before tax." (Press Release: Accor Sells 30 Hotel Properties in the United Kingdom for '711 Million and Signs a Development Partnership with Land Securities, p.1). These are just examples of the selling spree set about by Accor to decrease its net debt and for its major restructuring strategies for the whole group including Sofitel. Human resources challenge: The major restructuring done at Sofitel has created some challenges in the human resources department. Because the hotel chain has reinvented itself under a French image, the staff will now have to be trained or hired accordingly to suit the tastes of lovers of French cuisine and style. As mentioned earlier the new image will result in each hotel having its unique style and architecture, depending on its location and will be blended with its French image. This will create challenges for employees because of the lack standardization and uniformity across its hotels. As a result the group has revamped its strategies to be brand specific. This will entail in creation of a diversified training program that will fit the needs of each of its hotels. The detailed human resources plan was presented to the Geneva based European Works Council as a part of discussion and approval. In order to support these changes at Sofitel and also other strategic changes in the groups the Accor group had started and training school for its employees called the Accor Academy. Apart from general and on the job training, the groups also have three certification programs for its employees. The first one is a skills certification process which it has just introduced and plans to expand worldwide by the year 2010. The success of any organization depends on its top and middle level leadership. With a long term vision in mind the group has started a program called the "GM Pass personalized career development program to train future hotel general managers." (Intensified Training Initiatives. 2007). The third initiative is a advanced training program for managers and future managers with high potential so that they can be developed further. They also have t he potential to become part of the top management of the company later. There have been two key area of challenge for Sofitel and

The Doctrines of Pythagoras- Doing in Ovids The Metamorphoses Essay

The Doctrines of Pythagoras- Doing in Ovids The Metamorphoses - Essay Example Overall the stories and connected by idea of transformation, starting with the physical changes which created the world, and in the manner in which the gods, in their longing to disrupt with life on the continent, are persistently changing their own presence and form. However, the most famous changes in the book are those remarkable time when a living being is transformed into something else. Many of the stories of transformation are concerned with severe suffering. This grants to practically all them a naturally dramatic superiority because they irregularly focus on a vulnerable and objecting character suffering from godly or human vindictiveness. Further, the main characters are frequently innocent females, trailed by celestial or human rapists. In more simple terms, Metamorphoses is a catalogue of famous Greek and Roma stories, most which deal with violence, phenomenal transformation of appearance and suffering, organized in a loose series. Ovid’s style so frequently change s the relatively simple details of famous legend into convincing, extremely dramatic, and multifaceted tale (Due 12-30). Befitting Ovid’s continual poem, interest in the precise meaning of the Pythagoras’s speech in â€Å"Metamorphoses† 15 has proved to ever be unceasing. ... Since it appears in the final book, we can presume that it has some kind of programmatic function or, as is always is the case with Ovid, numerous functions. With regard to the preceding 14 books, Ovid incredibly regales to us with an enormous assortment of style and genres. Further, it is absolutely clear that this multiplicity as opposed to the analysis in terms of generic restraints, is the actual importance of the function of genre in the† Metamorphoses.† However, there has been the lack of philosophical disquisition until the last book. One of the many reasons, therefore, for Ovid’s insertion of this philosophical boastful bluster is merely to round out his whole virtuoso collection with, yet still, another magnificent piece (Mandelbaum 20-50). Secondly, the selection of Pythagoras was agreeable for that function and numerous others. At his time, Pythagoreanism represented a syncretistic assortment of the teachings of various philosophical schools, pseudo-scie ntific assumption, spirituality, and spiritual and religious dispensations. Accordingly, Ovid’s Pythagoras provides an diverse cause of mixture indebted to all types of philosophical teachings, including his own, Empedocles’, Heraclitus’s, and the Stoics’, alongside irregular insinuation, mostly for the purpose of counterargument, to Epicureans and Lucretius. The process finds its appropriate analogue in Ovid’s consideration of the material for the masterpiece â€Å"Metamorphoses†, which in the same way varies, not dogma, and inconsistency. For this case, Ovid’s poem is amid other things a collection of themes and styles. Meanwhile, Pythagoras speech is a collection of philosophers (Brunauer 40-50). Hardie thus argues that through the