Grand Hotel Nuwara Eliya clinches Gold at National Productivity Awards

From left: Human Resources and Learning and Development Manager K.D. Wathsala Lakmali, Resident Manager Nazeem Mohamed, General Manager Suresh Abbas, and Accommodation and Quality Assurance Manager Saman Udagama receiving the award from Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena and Minister of Labour and Foreign Employment Manusha Nanayakkara

Winning and sustaining the win is what keeps Grand Hotel on the high elm. This time, the Grand Hotel walked away being accoladed with the Gold in the service sector – large scale at the National Productivity Award which was held at Temple Trees and presided over by Prime Minister Dinesh Gunawardena.

The competition is organised by the National Productivity Secretariat which comes under the purview of the Ministry of Public Administration and the core objective is to encourage institutions which are the driving force of the economic growth to apply the productivity concepts to maximise both efficiency and effectiveness

As an organisation with a proud history of more than 132 years in existence, the reason for always being in the forefront and limelight could be attributed to the mere fact that Grand Hotel is a learning and dynamic entity. It always envisages to grasp new ideologies and look at how to replicate it suiting to the culture and legacy that the Hotel has maintained over the years. Adopting of the 5S concept and the Kaizen methodology is also one initiative which was looked into. With careful study, many hours of theoretical sessions, cross exposures to already practicing institutions, subsequently applying the concepts suiting to the hotel’s vision paved the way to achieve this most respected award.

The judging of the competition was based on the process of transforming institutions’ theoretical knowledge on productivity concepts in to a practical approach. It evaluated the excellence of achieving the organisational objectives by utilising limited resources with maximum efficiency and effectiveness through technically systematic evaluation process. Grand Hotel is confident that with the winning of this accolade, the hotel would get significant recognition and the team would be energised.

It is true that winners get an instant morale boost and it was further maximised with the senior management team sharing the victory with the entire team during the following day breakfast with the entire team. However, The Hotel draws out on one important fact that winning is an achievement but sustaining and moving further up is the challenge that needs to be focused. And Grand Hotel draws from this fact to forge ahead by coming up with innovative strategies in order to differentiate itself from the competition.