• Brunt Hotels PLC is a national chain of hotels in the UK
• There are currently 60 hotels throughout the UK, including 20 in London
• The organization’s revenue was over £220 million ($440million) last year
• They currently have over 7000 employees
• They have recently acquired a small chain of hotels located in France from the Bradley Group.
• Half of the new hotels in France will be retained and will be re-branded as part of Brunt Hotels PLC. The other half of the hotels will be sold.
• The organization has decided that they want to implement an ethnocentric approach whereby they send some of their existing managers (based in the UK) over to France to lead the change-over of the new hotels and then to manage them when they re-open.
• The organization has never owned any overseas hotels before so has engaged your services as external consultants to advise them on all of the key decisions.
• You will be working in three separate groups as Independent Management Consultants. You will be required to present appropriate suggestions and recommendations to the questions and activities that are provided.
• A large number of their existing managers have said that they would like the chance to work abroad
• None of their existing managers can speak French
• They will allow 4 weeks in which the re-branding of the hotels should take place and then the new hotels must be ready to open
• They expect to have to recruit a large number of staff to the new French hotels because over 70% of the employees have left to join new organizations
• They will require their managers to be flexible and move between different countries if any problems arise
Problem 1. Prepare the contents of an ad you would write to recruit for Brunt Hotels’ new management consultant positions. Be sure to mention what experience, education, training, and skills you would want an applicant to possess.
Problem 2. Prepare a list of items with which you would want a consultant to be familiar. What type of training would you provide to fully equip all management consultants, i.e. language skills, cultural knowledge of various countries, traditions and customs?