Handling customer complaints in hospitality - Essay Example

This essay examines the various ways through which resources and activities can be reconfigured to accommodate and reduce variability in the handling of customer complaints. CAPACITY The main structural features of hospitality have significant implications for the management of operations in the sector. These structural factors also influence the nature of operations in hospitality. The most important of these structural considerations are related to the effect of seasonality on demand for the hospitality industry (Hayes, 2011).

Most activities that are attractive to tourists also play a significant role in leisure consumption at the local level are highly seasonal in terms of feasibility and entertainment. Take Skiing as an example, it plays a role in both tourism and leisure, and at the same time an activity confined to winter and as such localities and operations relating to the provision of facilities and services are time limited (Hill, 2012). Likewise, outdoor activities depend on warm weather such as water sports are limited to summer unless one is in the tropical and sub-tropical locations.

Most of the time ‘the operational season’ can be exceedingly short in ‘extreme’ tourism destinations, lasting between six weeks to two months. During which time suppliers seek to maximize on profits from tourism activities to generate sufficient income to cover the full year (Sloan, 2009) However, these structural considerations extend beyond seasonality. Location and distance from key centers of population, while essentially geographical in nature, may lead to the impact of peripherals on hospitality provision (Barrows, 2009).

Peripheral locations suffer poor communications and access, and incur competitive disadvantage associated with destinations that offer the same opportunities and facilities, but found closer to the main urban areas with near excellent transport points. For example, Island locations have been the subject of wide study due to the specific influence that insularity brings on the performance and nature of the hospitality sector. Maintaining operations in remote areas can bring in a challenge in hospitality (Jones, 2002).

SERVICESCAPE AND PROCESS DESIGN The business ownership within the hospitality industry can be termed as another operational consideration. The weighing scale between large, chain-owned multiples and small, independent operators in the hospitality industry outlines the way the industry operates and how businesses are shaped (Krajewski). In most parts of the developed world there is a trend of increasing multiple operation and ownership, either by means of various forms of management or franchise or a direct model.

This enacts requirements and standards on the operational standards adopted in these businesses. In other destinations mainly in the developing world, hospitality operations experience substantial contrast between micro operations of local entrepreneurs and big multinational operations in terms of market activities food or souvenir. Some states in the developing world that have pushed forward the early stages of growth in hospitality based on multinational investment currently recognize the importance of micro businesses to the future sustainability of the hospitality industry (“Managing service quality”).

In hospitality customer expectations vary considerably across the sector on the basis of the type of business, where it is located, and the price-value benefit that