Lesson Proper for Week 1 (Quality Service)

Service Quality Management

Any hotel business, to be successful, needs to ensure that it is providing quality service to its customers.
Service quality in hotel management is crucial for developing brand value and increasing the customer base. Every
reputed hotel should strive to not only conduct proper presentation and improvement of quality services but also
exceed customer expectations. Such a mindset is very beneficial especially for hospitality management
domain, where the competition is ever increasing with time. With numerous

hotels offering similar services, it has thus become imperative to

adapt to specific service quality management principles to retain old customers as well as attract the new ones.

How to ensure proper service quality management?

Customer satisfaction is what drives hotel managers to ensure that quality services are delivered in the best ways
possible. And since service quality in the hotel industry is determined by customer feedback, strategies should be
devised to compute the level of these services.

1. Measurement

Measurement helps hotels to identify the standard of their delivered service and determine problems related to
the quality of the same. Measuring the quality of service and the achieved level of customer satisfaction can
benefit the hotel business on both qualitative and quantitative aspects. This will not only boost customer loyalty
but also increase ROI, cost reduction, market share, employee satisfaction, etc.

2.Rating

Thousands of hotels aim at securing the top position on hotel ranking indexes. It officially certifies the high level of
quality service offered by a reputed hotel. Travelers searching for hotels go to these sites and analyze the index to
filter out the best hotels and make their final choice. Securing a rank on the first page of the hotel index is a great
competitive advantage. A higher rating will motivate hotel managers to improve their operations and deliver an
optimum level of service quality management.

3.Benchmarking
To enhance customer satisfaction, many hotels adapt to the strategy of benchmarking. This method helps the
management to determine their potential competitors and what they should do to stand out in the market. Hotel
inventiveness is what separates a good performing hotel from the relatively poor performing ones. Thus, to ensure
proper service quality management, hotels should definitely adopt benchmarking as a performance tool.

Importance of service quality management in the hospitality and tourism industry

Systematic quality management improves the overall health of hospitality and tourism industry. The benefits are
highly lucrative and can help in boosting the brand value. Customers, after all, are satisfied only when they receive
quality services in the best possible way.

1. Customer Loyalty

In any kind of business, a satisfied customer is the one who is happy with the services. And with increased
satisfaction, comes increased customer loyalty. In case of hotels, it is the service quality that has a direct impact on
customer experience; and with the help of service quality management, a hotel manager can determine the level
of customer loyalty on their brand.

2. Happier Environment

While the physical perception of a hotel is one of the most important aspects for determining customer
satisfaction, it is not important, however, to invest time and resources in building over-the-top designs. Service
quality management discourages the practice of incorporating too flashy appearances that make customers feel
alienated. Simple, personalized architecture offering homely feel is ensured by service quality management.

3. Improved Security

The hotel security level has a direct impact on the brand reputation of the business. Service quality management
ensures that customers are not only relaxed about their belongings but also about their safety. Be it a fire breakout
or a theft, practicing proper service quality management can eliminate such adverse possibilities.

4. Brand Value

Every business on earth thrives on brand value. Be it the market share or customer experience, maintaining
optimum brand value is a top priority for hotel businesses. Service quality management can help in creating and
preserving the brand value of a hotel business.

Characteristics of the Hospitality and Tourism Industry

The first thing to do when designing a business

strategy for any industry is to have

deep knowledge of its most important product.

1. Intangibility

Tourism products are services and, as such, they are largely intangible though with tangible, concrete elements.
The importance of the abstract elements is such that we must make them tangible in order to apply marketing
techniques to the services we provide. A direct consequence of intangibility is that the properties of tourism
products cannot be transmitted, displayed or tested in advance. It is their use what is transmitted. This implies that
the purchased product is unique and, in contrast to tangible products, tourism products are fundamentally
experiences. Besides, intangibility implies that buyers are not sure about what they buy or about what they will
get. This is why those who are planning to contract the services of a tourism package will look for information
about it in advance in order to reduce uncertainty to the maximum.

2. Limited life-span

Tourism products cannot be stored so, unless consumed when planned, they are waste. This affects hotel industry
in such a way that we must choose between selling at the market’s pace and selling in advance (through agents). In
fact, overbooking is a consequence of this limited life-span, an inherent feature of tourism services that we must
try to counterbalance.

3. Aggregability

A tourism product can be formed by aggregating various products, and this makes its commercialization and
quality control more difficult. Prices can vary by eliminating or adding services to the existing pack, creating new,
customized, products.

4. Heterogeneity

As mentioned, aggregability implies a difficulty when it is about controlling all phases so that they are at the same
level of excellence. A single mistake in any aspect affects the final product. Nevertheless, aggregability allows
preparing custom-designed products, no matter how standardized they are initially. In this sense, we can talk
about “heterogeneous standardization”. It is not only the product what is being customized but a given trip will be
different from any other even if they share the same characteristics.

5. Simultaneity of production and consumption

While other products are created, stored, purchased and then used, tourism products are purchased first and then
produced and consumed simultaneously, at the same place and time. This implies that services cannot be
separated from their providers and, therefore, consumers have to travel to the location of the product, not vice
versa. For this reason, the human component in the provision of services is extremely important.