Quality and Problem Solving (global tourism management) - Essay Example

The organization has successfully captured a favorable contract from a tour operator in the United Arab Emirates and will be receiving a significant proportion of guests. The customers are Emirati guests who espouse a culture highly divergent from western orientations. The challenge is to determine how to successfully address the quality issues in such an arrangement. Before venturing into determining what is required in addressing the needs of the Emirati (citizens of United Arab Emirates) guests, the driving philosophy should first be identified.

The staff of the Royal Edwardian Hotel should adopt a quality policy that stresses service quality as opposed to value for price paid or maximum profit. The relationship between service quality and business performance has long been established in hospitality (Hakes, 1991; Bowen and Shoemaker, 1998; Pizam and Ellis, 1999). Researchers such as Caruana (2002), Cronin and Taylor (1992) and Teas (1994) have shown that service quality is antecedent to customer satisfaction. Furthermore, customer satisfaction is antecedent to customer loyalty (Bloemer and Kasper, 1995; Caruana, 2002; McDougall and Levesque, 2000).

In the hotel industry, service quality is considered as defined and the discerning customer will evaluate quality and develop satisfaction or dissatisfaction in each encounter (Bitner et al., 1990). As hotel experience is made up of individual discrete encounters, it is important to make sure that everything is perfect (Min et al, 2002). The quality management scheme should therefore emphasize gathering and interpreting correctly the traits and characteristics of the customer. It is important to survey the Arab customers to find what they are specifically looking for in a Royal Edwardian Hotel stay.

The hotels should determine customer expectations regarding a British hotel experience. According to Clow & Vorhies (1993), the customer forms expectations through a