Service Quality Management in Hotel Industry - Case Study Example

Service Quality Management in Hotel Industry Table of Contents I. Summary………………………………………………………………………3 II. Introduction……………………………………………………………………3 III. The Significance of Quality Management in Service Sector…………………. 5 IV. Service Quality Management in the Hotel Industry……………………………6 V. Conceptual Model of Service Quality in Hotel Industry (Figure 1)……………7 VI. The design quality and the quality of conformity with design…………………..10 VII. Conclusion……………………………………………………………………….14 I. Summary The excellence of service offerings in the hospitality industry, including hotels is a significant matter of winning business. The present trend of total quality management in the hotel industry makes sure that the accomplishment of competitive benefit of hotel business firms and is therefore the topic of current study into service quality in the hotel industry. The idea and the theoretical model of service quality are vital if one wish to have the knowledge of origin of service quality and possible gap in the quality. The aim of this academic essay is to show the significance of service quality in hotel industry from both the theoretical point of view and that of service quality assessment in the hotel industry as a whole. The essay takes a descriptive approach in which the ordinary principles for assessing service quality such as internal service quality and the SERVQUAL model with special reference to the hotel industry are discussed. II. Introduction In the modern business scenario quality is considered to be the most powerful factor for service organizations (which includes hotels, clubs, Educational Institutions etc,) so as to capture, retain and enlarge the customer base. Quality is ensured to the extent through products, services, processes and relationships provided to the customers without having any defects or any constraints on it. A higher quality can be ensured through proper planning and execution of service at the point of sale. The quality in an organization is said to be high, when the customer satisfaction is high and the business achieves many returning customers. So to plan and achieve high level of quality, it is necessary to understand and manage various dynamics in an organization in order to set goals and employ the resources judiciously. And the efficiency with which the resources are obtained and utilized will largely depend upon how the management practices are followed in an organization. In this context, quality management plays a dynamic role as a most effective enterprise strategy. Just as a tangible product, service quality is also a most powerful weapon and a significant differentiator that every service organization wants to achieve in their hand. To understand Service quality one should go through its definition. There are number of definitions defined in different ways by the researchers. To say Arora R and Stoner C (1996, p. 79) defines service quality as ‘how the consumer overall gets impressed by the relative inferiority or superiority of the organization and its services’. Other well known researchers Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry (1985, p. 48) defined service quality as the differences between anticipated and perceived level of services. The term quality is considered an abstract concept. Quality is recognized when the customer see it or lack it or when they don’t. To say when an article is purchased by the customer and the article purchased meets his expectations, it is judged to be of good quality and if it doesn’t it is judged to be of low quality. It is clear from this example what a quality exactly means. It is the ability of a product or services to meet the customer’s needs or requirements in every way. The Significance of Quality Management in Service Sector The supremacy of the service segment nowadays is established by the reality that a considerable amount of the world’s GDP is earned in the service segment. Moreover, this sector attracts not majority of the workforce in any country. This has necessitated chance of success of the industry in the present competitive world. However, as everybody knows the success of any industry is largely dependent on the quality of products and services it offers to its customers and service industry is no exception to this. As the present essay is about the service quality management at Hilton Group Hotels, it is necessary to discuss the concepts and service quality aspects in the field of hotel industry. There are two aspects which are going to be discussed here so as to explore how the service quality management is undertaken in Hilton Hotel. These two aspects are quality in general with particular attention to the scenario of hotel industry and the particular design quality and the exact quality of conformity with design (SERVQUAL model) III. Quality in general with particular attention to Hotel Industry Quality is an indescribable expression and is hard to delineate as a result of the diversity of connotations and interpretations. The term ‘Quality’ is taken from the Latin term ‘qualis’, which means ‘what kind of’. This was again defined from different viewpoints and points of reference (Tapiero, 1996). While some of the experts in the field interpret it as ‘excellence’ (Peters and Waterman, 1995); some have also defined it as ‘value’ (Feigenbaum, 1951). In addition to that some have tried as, ‘fitness for use’ (Juran and Gryna, 1988), and ‘conformance to requirements’ (Crosby, 1979). Some interpreted in a negative way as ‘defect avoidance’ (Crosby, 1984). Most connotations of the term ‘quality’ applied in the service sector are more or less customer-centered (Galloway and Wearn, 1998), with customer happiness being taken as a function of apparent quality (Anderson and Sullivan, 1993), or apparent quality being a meaning of consumer satisfaction (Parasuraman et al., 1988). However, in a common man’s language it can be defined as the presence of all requirements in the products or services they purchase. This can be attributed as the main reason why customers satisfied with a particular product keep on purchasing the same product or similar products. IV. Service Quality Management in the Hotel Industry To attain prudence in the models of industry distinction, it is necessary to determine whether or not the quality criteria have been met and the assessment of industry distinction is based not only on the accomplishment of the given quality criteria but also the consideration of the extent up to which the quality criteria have been satisfied. When examining the quality of service, it is advisable to scrutinize the possible figure of firms supplying the same type of service in the industry. V. Conceptual Model of Service Quality in Hotel Industry (Source: Lembcke, B. A., 1994, p. 64) The upper part of the model (Figure 1) exhibits experience attached to consumers, whereas the lower part is meant to show the phenomena attached to the provider of services. The probable service is the function of previous understandings of the consumer, their personal wants and spoken message. Message with the market also pressures the probable service. Probable service, here called apparent service, is the consequence of a sequence of inner decisions and behavior. The management’s awareness of the consumer’s potentials is the first standard when deciding on the stipulations of the excellence of service that the business should go after in providing service. If there are dissimilarities or discrepancies in the prospects or awareness between populace involved in providing and consuming services, a service quality gap may happen, as exhibited by Figure 1. Since there is a straight association between the quality of service and customers’ satisfaction of services in hotel industry, it is imperative that the business firms have to spot a gap in the quality of service and ensure that such gap is filled in at appropriate times. The aboriginal accessible gap is the ability gap. It is the aftereffect of the differences in managing ability and their absolute expectations. This gap can advance to added gaps in the action of account superior and is a part of added things, acquired by: Absence of correct information on demand and supply analysis in market researches Incorrect interpretations of advice apropos expectations Lack of advice about any acknowledgment amid the aggregation and the consumers directed to the management Too abounding authoritative layers that arrest or adapt locations of advice in their advancement movement from those complex in acquaintance with the consumers The additional accessible gap is that of standard. It is the after effect of differences in managing ability of the client’s expectations and the action of account accouterment (delivery). This gap is the aftereffect of: Mistakes in planning or bereft planning procedures; Bad administration planning; Abridgement of acutely set goals in the organization; Bereft abutment of the top administration to account superior planning; and The administration can be appropriate in evaluating the client’s expectations Develop business methods to amuse these expectations, afterwards the advisers getting actual experience in accouterment service. For example, a restaurant can adjustment the waiters to serve the barter in two accounts afterwards they sit at the table. Nevertheless, the waiters can avoid that blueprint and allocution amid them on the side. The fourth accessible gap is the advice gap arising if there is an aberration amid the delivered account and the account that the aggregation promised to the audience via alien communications. The reasons can be as below: The planning of advice with the bazaar is not chip with the services; Lack or bereft allocation amid acceptable business and procedures; Organizational achievement not in befitting with the specifications, while the action of advice with the bazaar abides by the accustomed specifications; and Tendency to amplify in accordance with abstract promises Therefore the need for service quality management and maintenance cannot be over emphasized. In order to manage quality, firms have to have the system or arrangements to give and offer what the ultimate customer expects and requires, and to confirm that these expectations have been awfully met with. VI. The design quality and the quality of conformity with design The design quality is an abstraction implying the presentation of products/services directed to the needs of the clients. The hotel industry can amuse the demands of the applicant (tourist) alone if they are included in its design, i.e. in adjustment to do that, his demands charge to be included or “built into” the product/service of the hotel. The hotels do bazaar analysis in adjustment to actuate who their barter is and which of their demands crave appropriate attention. Customers apperceive casework in agreement of the superior of the casework and how annoyed they are with their all-embracing experiences. These customer-oriented terms quality and satisfaction have been the focus of absorption for admiral and advisers akin over the endure decade or more. Companies today admit that they can attempt added finer by appropriate themselves with account to account superior and bigger chump satisfaction. Service quality is an analytical aspect of easy target perceptions. In the case of authentic services, account superior will be the ascendant aspect in customer's evaluations. In case area customer's account or casework are offered in aggregate with a concrete product, account superior may as well be actual analytical in free chump satisfaction. The lots of important characteristics of services, amid them neatly from products, are the impossibility to abstracted assembly from consumption; the impossibility to abundance services; their non actual quality; conciseness and heterogeneity. The impossibility to abstracted assembly from burning and the impossibility to abundance casework around include an accompanying assembly and consumption, which is appropriate for a lot of services. Since the casework are performances, account or concepts rather than objects, they cannot be apparent in the aforementioned way as articles and are, therefore, characterized by their getting immaterial. Furthermore, it is absurd to bottle services, which raises the affair of adapted action and appeal for services. The aforementioned account can be provided by altered bodies in an institution, and anniversary of them ability accommodate it in their own way so that adverse as well counts a part of characteristics of casework that differentiate them from products. The lot of broadly acclimated and activated account superior analysis apparatus has been SERVQUAL, based on the account superior "Gap model", and developed by Parasuraman et al. (1988). The apparatus of SERVQUAL is an antecedent attack to ad measurement account quality. Though there accept been critiques of SERVQUAL, it stands as the pre-eminent apparatus for appraisal and altitude of perceived account superior (Kettinger and Lee, 1995), and it is a lot of admired if it is acclimated periodically to clue account superior trends. (Parasuraman et al., 1991) In adjustment to accomplish an attack at barometer account quality, a business academy should be able to analyze the lot of important determinants of all-embracing account quality. Five General Dimensions of Account Superior Captured by the SERVQUAL Scale are: Tangibles: Appearance of concrete facilities, equipment, personnel, and advice materials. Reliability: Adeptness to accomplish the promised account anxiously and accurately. Responsiveness: Willingness to advice barter and to accommodate alert service. Assurance: Knowledge and address of advisers and their adeptness to affect assurance and confidence. Empathy: Caring, abundant absorption the close provides its customers. This defines account superior as an action of the Gap amid barter expectations of a account and their perceptions of the absolute account supply by the organization. The SERVQUAL forms the base of the Gap analysis. In a abstraction done by Pariseau and McDaniel (1997), on appraisal of account superior in schools of business application the SERVQUAL model, it was begin that while acceptance wish assurance, responsiveness, empathy, believability and accessories in that order; adroitness accept that assurance, tangibles, reliability, affinity and admiration is the actual rank order. On the added duke the account superior abstract commonly finds that believability is first, accessories are endure and the added three are in the middle. The abstraction assured that apprentice and adroitness expectations of accessories are decidedly altered and that the agency of affirmation would be accounted a lot of important in an educational environment. Since quality is what the chump says it is (Feigenbaum, 1991), and account quality managers have to analyze chump requirements and strive to accommodated and beat them. Superior Action Deployment (QFD) is a planning apparatus which focuses decidedly on chump requirements and expectations. It is generally said to act as the "Voice of the Customer" (VOC). Quality action deployment address is an accustomed important superior apparatus in the architecture process. It is about a planning apparatus which focuses decidedly on chump requirements and expectations. QFD offers a structured access to amalgam chump requirements with articles and account architecture specifications, through the use of archive and matrices. The aftereffect comprise of two arch portions of the incumbent allocation absolute advice accompanying to the chump i.e., a set of "the whats" (customer requirements) and the vertical portion, absolute advice accompanying to the supplier inputs, i.e., "the hows" (design characteristics). When there is a charge for greater compassionate of the accord amid chump requirements and architecture characteristics, the address of QFD can be acclimated to: Identify and rank the about accent of chump requirements; Identify the architecture ambit that accord to the chump requirements, and; Identify the accord amid the architecture ambit and the chump requirements and as well a part of the altered architecture parameters. While the SERVQUAL action is activated to analyze the gap amid acumen and apprehension and actuate the akin of account quality, the superior action deployment address which follows it, is acclimated to analyze the set of minimum architecture characteristics/ superior apparatus that accommodated the requirements of the apprentice as a chump of the educational system, amount effectively. VII. Conclusion In hotel industry, account quality, as an acutely abstract category, is acute to the achievement of the client. It is accordingly acute for managers in hotel industry to administer the SERVQUAL archetypal for the altitude of account superior in their own hotel company, in adjustment to amuse the guest’s expectations and ensure a position on the growing all-around day-tripper market. The after-effects of the quantitative appliance of SERVQUAL apparatus appearance that this archetypal can accommodate managers with advantageous advice for the appraisal of expectations and acumen of hotel guests, with the aim of acquirements about gaps in alone account superior dimensions. Charge for the appliance of SERVQUAL archetypal in hotel industry is accepted by the actuality that, in the empiric sample, hotel managers do not apperceive the expectations of their guests because the ambit of account superior they accede a lot of important, do not bout those that are a lot of important for the clients, which is accepted by the absolute SERVQUAL gap. To sum up, this commodity tend to analyze the SERVQUAL archetypal as not alone provider to the managers with a bright account of the superior of the provided service, but as well allowance in advertent the needs, wishes and expectations of the guests. The aforementioned is analyzed by free the characteristics of account superior that are a lot of important for guests. We can say that it helps managers in ambience the standards for the accouterment of casework in the accommodation industry. References Arora R and Stoner C (1996), The Effect of Perceived Service Quality and Name Familiarity on the Service Selection Decision, Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 10, No. 1, pp. 22-34 Crosby, P B (1979), Quality is Free, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Feigenbaum, A V (1951), Quality Control: Principles, Practice and Administration, McGraw-Hill, New York, NY. Galloway, R L and Wearn, K (1998), Determinants of Quality Perception in Educational Administration Potential Conflict between the Requirements of Internal and External Customers, Educational Management and Administration, Vol. 26 No. 1 Juran, J M and Gryna, F M Jr (Eds.) (1988), Juran's Quality Control Handbook, McGraw-Hill, NewYork, NY. Lembcke, B A (1994), SERVQUAL Model in Hotel Industry, New Directions for Higher Education, Vol. 86 p. 64-83 Kettinger and Lee (1995), Improving Service Quality Achieving High Performance in the Public and Private Sector, St. Lucie Press, Delray Beach, FL. Parasuraman, A, Berry, L and Zeithaml, V (1988), SERVQUAL: A Multiple Item Scale for Measuring Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 64, No. 19, pp. 12-40. Tapiero, C S (1996), The Management of Quality and its Control, Chapman and Hall, London. Read More