Four Seasons enjoyed a reputation as the world's leading operator of luxury class hotels and resorts, being particularly known for its ability to deliver highly personalized service. Isadore Sharp the chairman, CEO, founder and major shareholder, had an ambition of making Four Seasons one of the decade's great growth stocks. The company had already rejected growth strategies of acquiring other groups or chains of hotels or diversifying into related fields leaving continued expansion as the only feasible option.
             Katie Taylor, president of worldwide business operations was aware of the potential and the challenges this ambition would throw at her. She was pondering over some of the questions, the answers of which would help her face these challenges.
             Section 1) What distinguishes the Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts chain in the marketplace?
             Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts has distinguished itself in the market place by their quality of service. This is evident in their reputation as the world's leading operator of luxury class hotels and resorts and being particularly known for its ability to deliver highly personalized service.
             Four Seasons have managed to achieve this distinction by overcoming the following challenges typical to the service industry:
             Services are intangible and require consumers to interact with service providers (a product is tangible to a consumer based on one or all of the 5 senses of touch, taste, sight, sound and smell, a service is not). As a result of this a customer's satisfaction may depend not only on the quality of the service but also on the quality of the delivery too.
             To reduce the uncertainty faced by buyers, they will first look for the evidence of service quality. The first challenge for Four Seasons is to "manage this evidence", to "tangibilize the intangible" . by managing the elements from which customers will draw inferences about quali...