Theoretical Approaches to Quality Service in Tourism and Hospitality - Term Paper Example

Identify and criticise theoretical approaches to quality service in tourism and hospitality Introduction Tourism is a global activity that involves recreational travel for the purposes of leisure, business and study activities among others, in locations away from home areas for a period of more than 24 hours but less than a year. Hospitality on the other hand refers to the relationship formed between a guest and their host. More precisely hospitality refers to the comfort levels of the guest in regards to the relationship formed in terms of interaction, location, accommodation and food choice services among others (Cooper et al. 2005). Tourism and hospitality industry plays an important role in the economy of a country by earning foreign exchange and creating employment opportunities to the residents of that country. Also knowledge and concepts that will be beneficial to the country are exchanged indirectly contributing to its development. Furthermore, an opportunity for cultural mix and exchange is created and this explains the existence of intermarriages between citizens of different countries (Prideaux, Moscardo and Laws 2006). Quality tourism and hospitality is determined by the state of the goods and services offered. According to the marketing context, goods and services are commonly referred to as products. Goods are tangible products for example food while services are intangible products like advice on the choice of food to be made. Tourism and hospitality services refer to deeds, activities, performance, processes and benefits extended to tourists. Tourism and hospitality services are offered to tourists with the aim of satisfying their needs and desires while they are away from their home areas for example transportation, accommodation and entertainment services (Prideaux, Moscardo and Laws 2006). Due to the marketing mix and force changes, today customers expect quite high standards of tourism and hospitality services. This has resulted to an increase in market competition in this economic field as more tourism destinations are being identified. Therefore, there have been formulations of strategies focusing on extension of quality services to customers. These strategies usually revolve around theoretical and practical marketing and customer care concepts (Brotherton 2003). Approaches to quality services in tourism and hospitality aim at exploring the practical operational environment of tourism and hospitality services with the main goal of understanding the operations that are required to achieve quality in services extended to customers. Poor services undermine the experience of customers because the services provided involve an interaction between the customer and staff members over an extended period of time (Brotherton 2003). Tourism and hospitality services are complex dynamic systems within which clients and staff interact. They are the stepping stone on which the image and brands of an organization are built. They form the fundamental foundation for establishing a long lasting relationship between the customer and staff members. Therefore, these services should attain a systematic customer focus approach. This can be achieved by offering consistent services that should however evolve with time to comply with the ever changing market forces thus remain appealing to customers (Prideaux, Moscardo and Laws 2006). With this in mind a tourism and hospitality organization will be able to strive in the stiff market competition. This report will therefore analyze how aspects of tourism and hospitality services influence customers’ satisfaction. It will further elaborate on strategies that can be employed to curb customer dissatisfaction in the tourism and hospitality field. Moreover, the report will give recommendations that will further improve the design and delivery of tourism and hospitality services. Theoretical models of service quality The attitude and behaviour of staff members in the tourism and hospitality industry play a big role in influencing the quality of services provided thereby dictating customer satisfaction and loyalty. Various service quality models have been outlined to emphasize on the importance of positive employee attitudes and behaviour which depicts customer’s satisfaction and loyalty. These models outline mechanisms that can be employed to attain empowered and highly motivated employees who will emanate positive attitudes and behaviours (Brotherton 2003). For instance, social control factors can be used. Social control factors rely on the cultural values that define the personal or national, occupational and organizational culture that employee’s practice and believe in. Personal culture refers to cultural values instilled in an individual’s life and occupational culture refers to cultural values adopted while an individual acquires professional training. Organizational culture refers to the norms practiced in a workplace. Therefore, establishment of a strong organizational culture can emanate high organizational performance, service quality, customers’ satisfaction and loyalty. This is because organizational culture will decrease the gap that exists between delivery of services and customer service expectations and perceptions (Brotherton 2003). This report will focus on the service profit chain model and service quality gap model to analyze how aspects of tourism and hospitality services influence customers’ satisfaction and loyalty. The service profit chain model was established by Heskett, Jones, Sasser, Schlesinger and Loveman in 1994 (Heskett et al. 2001). It introduces a relationship between customer loyalty, employee satisfaction and profitability of an organization. The service profit chain explains that an organization experiences an increase in its productivity, growth and profit margins because of the loyalty emanated by customers. Customer loyalty is depicted when customers become satisfied with the services offered by the organization which meet the target of their needs and desires (Heskett et al. 2001). However, customer satisfaction can only be attained when employees feel empowered and motivated thereby providing quality services. This is because employees become satisfied from the high quality support services and policies that are offered by the organization such as employee engagement and workplace design among others. Customer satisfaction does not only leads to customers’ loyalty, but also enables customers to deepen their relationship with the organization, recommend the organization to their family members and friends and become less sensitive on the prices of services offered by it (Heskett et al. 2001). Fig 1: Retrieved from Harvard business review (Heskett et al. 2001) The service quality gap model was introduced by Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry in 1985 (Zeithaml and Bitner 2003). It identifies five major gaps that organizations experience in an attempt to meeting customers’ expectations to satisfy their needs and desires. The first gap depicts the expectations that customers have on the quality of services provided by organizations and the definition of customer expectations that managers of the organizations have. The second gap displays the perception of mangers towards the quality of the services their organizations are offering. The managers predict that the services they offer will satisfy their customers’ needs giving them a pleasant experience (Zeithaml and Bitner 2003). The third gap exists between the customer experience specifications that are stipulated by managers and the actual delivery of these specifications. The specifications are usually formulated from the audit response of customers’ experience. The fourth gap exists between the delivery of the specified expectations to customers and how the experiences are communicated to the customers. In most occasions customers do not get delivery of the speculated experiences as they are communicated. The last gap exists between the perception of customers experience towards the services provided by an organization and their expectations from previous experience and gathered information either through word of mouth or individual research among others (Zeithaml and Bitner 2003). Therefore, the service quality gap model aims at eliminating the five levels of gaps that exist in customers’ experiences and perception. This can be achieved through emanation of efficient and competent management skills. The manager should stipulate the goals and objectives of the organization to the employees to enable execution of quality maximum work output which results to an increase in the organizations profit margin. This can be achieved through implementation of strategies that will control and improve the consistency of the organization’s operations such as introduction of employee development and training programs and effective decision making strategies on communication and staffing among others (Zeithaml and Bitner 2003). The gaps in the Service Quality Gap Fig 2: Retrieved from Services marketing: integrating customer focus across the firm (Zeithaml and Bitner 2003). Evaluation of the theoretical models of service quality Tourism and hospitality industries that have adopted the service profit chain model can attest to the efficiency of this strategy in attaining service quality. For instance, from a number of conducted surveys on airline and hotel employees, the behaviour of employees depicts the level of customer satisfaction on the experience they have from the services provided. Studies conducted on hotel managers and employees reveal that their employment satisfaction increases the quality of services provided to customers. Also several researches that have been conducted on resorts reveal that customer loyalty is depicted by the performance level of their employees (Jones 2002). Studies conducted on tourists show that guests treasure responsive, prompt, confident, competent, polite and empathetic behaviours from employees. Recent studies that were conducted in five Australian hotels showed that the hotels managed to achieve customer loyalty by instilling the above attributes into its workforce (Jones 2002). Therefore, application of the service profit chain model in the tourism and hospitality industry manages employee behaviours in reference to taking care and respecting the feelings, attitudes and property of guests. This in return influences customer satisfaction which results to improvement of the industry’s performance and profit margins. However, for service quality to exist the culture of the industry should advocate employee empowerment and engagement (Jones 2002). Today many tourism destinations are successful because of identifying gaps between the expectations and experiences of tourists. The services they offer are comparable to the amount of money the tourists spend. Successful hotels and airlines have used the service quality gap model to add benefit to the quality of their services and even go to an extra mile of delighting their customers by offering services that are above their expectations. The service quality gap model ensures that tourism and hospitality industry offers not only service quality but also design quality. This enables the industry to provide services that directly attend to the needs and desires of their customers. To achieve this, the industry does prior market research to identify their potential customers and determine the specifications of their demands. This enables the industry to constantly improve its services to attain the quality that customers expect (Cooper et al. 2005). Hotels that implement the service quality gap model are able to attain total quality management (TQM) strategies which enable them to strive in the stiff market competition. This model further explains customer phenomena and the phenomena experienced by the management of the tourism and hospitality industry. Therefore, implementation of this model enables the tourism and hospitality industry to effectively communicate with the market and therefore design and provide high quality services. A well defined guideline for implementation of specifications that will contribute to customer satisfaction and loyalty will also be formulated (Cooper et al. 2005). Conclusion From the above we can deduce that theoretical approaches to quality services in tourism and hospitality aim at exploring the practical operational environment of tourism and hospitality services with the main goal of understanding the operations that are required to achieve service quality. Tourism and hospitality services are the stepping stone on which the image and brands of an organization are built. These services should therefore focus at attaining a systematic customer focused approach. This will enable countries to enjoy the benefits emanated by the tourism and hospitality industry such as leisure, foreign exchange and employment opportunities. Therefore, to attain service quality in the tourism and hospitality industry it is essential to define an effective organizational culture. This will define an appropriate working environment that will provide employment satisfaction through employee engagement and empowerment. The organizational culture thus defines internal quality services which influence employees’ satisfaction. Satisfied employees will always be motivated to perform high quality operations thereby satisfying the needs and desires of customers. They will also protect and preserve the assets of the organization further enabling it to grow by increasing its productivity rate. In return customers become loyal to the organization as they deepen their relationship with the workforce by trusting them. They also act as advertising agents for the organization as they recommend their family and friends to seek their services. Customers may advertise services provided by an organization directly or indirectly. The former can be achieved through word of mouth while the latter can be advertised by use of media and internet services (for example use of blogs). Service quality can also be attained by identification of gaps that exist between the expectations and experiences of customers. This can be achieved through conduction of market research and implementation of effective and competent managerial skills. Market information can be gathered by use of online services, reviewing customers’ responses and studying the mechanisms used by other companies that provide the same services to the market. Therefore, any attempt to close the gaps will result to provision of high quality services which are in accordance to customers’ expectations and perceptions. To some extent the services offered may be beyond the expectations of the customers and far much better than the experiences they had previously come across, positively influencing their satisfaction in the services provided and loyalty to the industry. Tourism and hospitality businesses need to establish strategies of providing quality service to their clients in order to survive the stiff market competition and increase their sizes, scope as well as profit margins. References Brotherton, B 2003, The international hospitality industry: structure, characteristics and issues, Butterworth Heinemann, Oxford. Cooper, C. et al. 2005, Tourism: principles and practice, 3rd Ed, Prentice Hall, New Jersey. Heskett, l J, Jones, OT Loveman, W G W, Jr. Sasser, E & Schlesinger, A. L 2001, Harvard business review, Samsung Economy Research Institute, South Korea. Jones, P 2002, Introduction to hospitality operations: an indispensable guide to the industry, 2nd Ed, Continuum, London. Prideaux, B, Moscardo, G & Laws, E 2006, Managing tourism and hospitality services: theory and international applications, CABI, Wallingford. Zeithaml, V & Bitner, M 2003, Services marketing: integrating customer focus across the firm, 3rd Ed, McGraw-Hill, New-York. Read More