Service Operations Management Tools and Skills - Assignment Example

Running heading: Service Operations Management Tourism Industry - Service Operations Management Name: Joel Macdonald Student #: 22113444 Course Coordinator: Due Date: 25th October 2010 TOURISM INDUSTRY Executive Summary The first part of the paper seeks to understand tourism in the perspective of leisure, defining and interpreting it in the current society’s view. Making readers understand the needs of tourisms and its collaboration with other industries. The major industries affiliated to tourism are the travel and hotel industries. The second part of the paper identifies trends in tourism in social perspective. These trends include cultural tourism, festive tourism, urban and rural tourism. Identifying dominant players in this industry is also important as we benchmark our services on their performance and look for gaps to fill. The paper also tackles service delivery and customization of services offering reasons why there is room for improvement in this industry. I identified major stakeholders in tourism industry and their importance to an upcoming company with an interest in hospitality industry. The final part explains customer satisfaction, needs, behavior, in relation to employee competence and management strategies. Understanding the changing customer preferences and behavior is a key tool to effective customer management. We should also understand our customer’s buying behavior and culture in order to maximize their buying ability. Employees and customers are very important to a business and especially in this industry. There must be systems to manage both and a working plan to attract and retain them. Employee selection, training and motivation are the key areas all managers should look into to effectively manage them. Introduction The world is globally a beautiful place to live. We are born, live and die, and in the process, meet people from different parts of the world. Moving from one geographical place to another, it is sometimes difficult to notice that we are exploring the world without much choice. Traveling for leisure is important to break the monotony of our daily routine lifestyle. People move out and about for different reasons among them visit friends and family, business trips, educational trips, and at times, for tours. Tourism can therefore be defined as traveling for leisure and exploration. To systematize our vision of tourism, we look at the leisure part of tourism, and its industrial dimension, especially at improving people’s lives. This paper will therefore present the tourism industry in its different dimensions. It is written in parts in order to facilitate easy understanding of the industry. Service operations can be characterized according to their level of contact or interaction with customers, their labor intensity, extent of customization and degree of interaction. Leisure and tourism The above two are so intertwined; it’s almost impossible to talk about one, without referring to the other. Leisure is independent of tourism in that you can have it without moving an inch. Leisure time is free time, when some one does what he /she pleases. This can range from sleeping, chatting, doing pleasurable activities or touring. Touring has to do with movement. Importance of tourism This is limitless, just as its scope and involvement in our daily lives. Tourism helps us gain knowledge by experience. We see and experience things in a reality basis. This acts as motivation and a form of relaxation. Tourism also plays a big role in economy as it gives government revenues through its taxation, offers job opportunities to locals, and enhancement of culture and lifestyle. Tourism is quite a competitive industry because people are always looking for fun and willing to learn new things. The world is a big place and there is no end to it. There are big airline and hotels that are already in this industry these include American express, Finn air, Virgin Atlantic, etc (Sethi, 1999, pp. 42). Tourism & Other Industries Tourism is closely linked with other hospitality industries like travel and leisure, accommodation, transportation, entertainment, food and beverages, among others. These industries are also dominant players in the tourism industry. Since tourism involves movement of people, they can not do so without needing a transport system, food to eat, where to stay and sleep, and other forms of entertainment. These industries offer tight competition to tourism industries. Hotels are the biggest competition as they take the role hosting a tourist, they offer transporting system, food, accommodation, and any other help tourists may need. However, tourism industry is bigger than the hotel industry and more often than not, most tourists companies own hotels that take care of all the above. We can therefore say that hotel industry is under the tourism industry. Service Delivery / Offering This refers to the process, which customers receive and gets to experience the services offered by the company. Services can be categorized as tangible and intangible, controllable and uncontrollable services. Tangible services are quantifiable while intangible ones are experienced. Service delivery also take different forms like door to door, face to face, over the internet, immediate experience, etc. in tourism industry, customers need to experience it firsthand. They come, buy the service, use it and give feedback, usually immediately. However the service is delivered, these factors must be considered. Speed of the delivery, efficiency, accuracy, reliability, and safety. Customers need to get what they expected and paid for. Their safety must be upheld and given first priority. Experience of a service involves participants who are concerned providing evidence of satisfaction. These participants are employees who deliver the services and the tourists (customers) use the services (Sharma,1998, pp. 79) Operating systems that improve system delivery include use of computers in all customer care centers. Computers are fast, efficient and reliable. They are able to store customer information in mass number for a long time. A 24 hour 7day customer care system and high employee professionalism all ensure services are delivered effectively. Service offering, according to Ftzsimmons, demands a critical evaluation and includes service innovations. A service delivery systems design like the NSD innovations Matrix helps in the enhancing customer contact. Gap Analysis This requires professionalism and skills to cover. In analyzing gaps, a manager needs to highlight discrepancies between competitors and business requirements. Every business always has room for improvement. If this is analyzed with skills, a manager is able to see what is being offered and what is required in line with ever changing tastes of customers. To effectively do this, customer care needs to be taken to a higher level in an attempt to understand them. Customer retention, (retaining the already available ones), is key factor, as they act as our marketers to prospective customers. It is important to put in place an effective customer relationship management system that handles specific customer needs, and customizes our services. Understanding the behavior of past and present customer allows us to predict and improve the behavior of future customers, which leads to customer satisfaction (Conrady, 2010, pp. 97). Operating systems The operating systems used in the tourism industry are the ones generally used in hospitality industry like the hotel and travel industry. They track customer records, aid in online bookings, used at the point of sale, record and calculate call, and generally manage customer and employee operations. Different software companies come up with different software for these operations. The most common operating systems include the lodging touch property management systems which enhance communications at front offices; offer history of clients/ guests, tracts accounts, and enables interactions with travel agencies. Other operating system is the Paragon AS/400 front office systems, which aids in planning in the offices, accommodation of guests, enhances pricing and marketing strategies. Microsoft window-based PMS produced Front office Version 7, which helps managers control the front office. Other systems are OPERA customer Information Systems and OPERA reservations systems, among others. In service operations, the most common software tool is the ProSLSCE, which contains the Pro BUILDER and ProSIMULATOR. It addresses management limitations in helping to define and develop processes, and research requirements. Customer behavior Customer behavior can be analyzed through: Observation Focus groups Surveys Personal interviews Understanding of customer culture Understanding of customer demographic variables Observing customer behavior is the easiest simplest form of analyzing their behaviors. An angry, dissatisfied customer complains to a manager while a satisfied happy customer normally shows by coming back, recommending others, and congratulating management and employees. However, not all customers are so open with their feelings. Some will keep to themselves. To be able to reach such customers, a manager could use other methods like surveying, personal interviews, customer care centers, and focus groups. This ensures anonymity and they are able to air their views openly without fear (Swarbrooke & Horner, 2007, pp. 68). It is also important to understand customer culture in an attempt to understand their buying behaviors. Culture is wide and involves customer language, knowledge, beliefs, morals, etc. customers are generally static, or dynamic. i.e., they are either flexible or accepting to change or static, not welcoming change. Demographic variables of customers should also be considered. This involves personal characteristics that affect their buying behaviors such income, gender, education, location, either urban or rural, etc. Customer behavior as we see, generally affects company performance (Weirrmair & Mathias, 2004, pp. 84). Dimensions In tourism There are certain and generally used dimensions in tourism. They describe types of tourism, and include: Ludic dimension - Which involves mass tourism? Its rest and fun type of tourism that customers wants a break from their daily routine tasks. Ecological dimension - Is the conscious, or ethical tourism where tourists str4ive to conserve the environment, and improve the living standard of the local people. Ecotourism - has no change to culture and social structure. It’s similar to ecological tourism. Creative dimension - is the active tourism that tourism moves in search of beautiful artifacts and items for the opportunity to acquire beautiful things that improve their own lives and connect with different people while at it. Festive dimension - is educational and cultural. Urban tourism- tourists go for business purpose like congresses and conventions Rural tourism- is tourism for sports and enjoyment of nature and environment Religious tourism- concerns people of a particular religion or faith traveling together for missionary work, pilgrimage, and fellowship. In the service operations systems, the general dimensions used are the Service operations dimension, which controls the front office processes, (deals directly with customers), and the back office processes, the service product dimension, which defines the type of product, and the service process dimension. New trends in tourism Cultural tourism This is the traveling to other geographical areas to learn about other people’s traditional and indigenous ways of ways of life, history, art, and cultural elements that is unique to other cultures. It also describes urban traveling to historical site like the museum To offer new dimensions and offer competition to the already big names in the tourism industry, one needs to customize their services to satisfy the dynamic status of customer taste. This should be done by offering reliable services at a considerably lower cost, offering discounts, after sale service, among other things that can be done are: Increase in more flexible services, where a company takes into account small but important factors that could seem casual to others like style of food service, preferences of accommodation location, etc. it is also important to increase preferences for individually organized trips as compared to mass traveling, wish for service delivery guarantee, and others. lower costs can be achieved by scrapping off some unwanted services, controlling employee turnover, and outsourcing some services instead of having internal departments specific to them some services that can be outsourced involve public relation services that the company rarely use like organizing parties. To mange customer impact, customers need to feel important to the business. This happens when they are involved in certain company activities. Information about company performance in the market should be communicated to them and their views or feedbacks should be implemented. Positioning When positioning your services, it’s important to consider the gaps in the market and try filling them. Position yourself as a particular service provider incline to narrow down the gaps. I.e. position yourself as a personalized tour company, offering private transport at considerably low price. I doing so implement your targets and maintain a strong competitive advantage. Employee selection When selecting employees, it’s important to do a profile analysis that maximizes the probability of matching people to job position that best complements their personality, ability, and professionalism. This is done through analyzing the data collected from their applications, experience s in the tourism industry and their educational level (Glaesser, 2006, pp. 98) Professional job interview also outlines these qualities in an individual helping in choosing the best person for the job. Once employees are selected, it is important to train them in order to make them familiar with your user tailored services that are not taught in schools, and are not available in other companies. With the understanding that employees are our eyes to customers as they interact with them in a more personal level than the management, they must be well motivated to do this and avoid cases of disgruntled employees. Motivation includes offering better pay for good services, setting targets for them and if achieved, they are recognized, offering employee benefits that are competitive in the market, involving employees in decision making, and communicating with employees especially about information that relates to them and their services. The ongoing management should also be analyzed as they manage the existing employees and select future ones. The corporate image of the company is pit into consideration while doing this as it best describes the role and performance of the ongoing management. According to Goeldner & Brent (2009) sustainable tourism should be the goal for all tourism industries. Sustainable tourism takes into account future generations welfare in their attempt to fulfill their present objectives. This does not only include environmental issues but also economic, political, social, and cultural. They address the conflicting factors present in the concern for the future generations. To maintain sustainable tourism implies adapting new management models based on Consideration of civil rights for both the tourists and the locals, conservation of environment, preservation of cultural heritage, strategic planning, conservation of bio diversity In conclusion, a service operation is a management tool and skill that all managers should have. All organizations are involved in one or more kinds of services, and we all engage in service operations on a daily basis. Learning to effectively handle others in a way that they are happy and motivated with our services is the main goal of service operations. As an up coming business, we cannot ignore service operations as it helps analyze the current market that we are about to venture in. References Goeldner R.Charles & Brent J.R., 2009, Tourism: principles, practices, philosophies, London: John Wiley & sons. Glaesser D, 2006, Crisis management in the tourism industry, New York: Butterworth- Heinemann. Sethi P, 1999, Handbook of Sustainable Tourism, Anmol Publications PVT.LTD, Sharma K.K, 1998, New Dimensions in Tourism and H. Industry, Sarup & sons. Swarbrooke J & Horner S, 2003, Consumer Behaviour in Tourism, Butterworth-Heinemann. Weirrmair K & Mathias C, 2004, the tourism and leisure industry: shaping the future, New York: Routledge. Read More