Service Quality and Operations - Literature review Example

Service Quality and Operations Since the late 80s and early 90s the travel, tourism and hospitality industry received a novel growth that was never experienced before. Prior to this time period travel, tourism and hospitality were mainly focused over those people, who used to travel only for amusement or relaxation purpose. It was since the late 80s and early 90s actual importance of globalization was properly realized. Traveling was not only centered upon the idea of amusement and leisure but it also expanded to the dimension of business and corporate trips. By the end of 90s and beginning of the new millennium people associated with the hospitality business clearly realized that the hospitality industry has emerged as one of the most fertile grounds for business. Compared to the other forms of business and management, the hospitality business in quite unconventional as it mostly depends over service to the customers. Despite its growth and abundance of opportunity offered, it must be admitted that hospitality business has not yet flourished up to the expectations. Management scholars and theoreticians have identified lack of service quality and proper co-ordination between operations responsible for such failure. In this context Jay Kandampully, Connie Mok and Beverley Sparks have mentioned in the preface of their book, “Service quality management in hospitality, tourism, and leisure”, “Evidence suggest that, despite the continuous emphasis on “service quality” for more than a decade, there is still lack of holistic understanding of what actually constitutes quality and how it can be nurtured and managed. The holistic understanding and interdisciplinary approach to service quality has become imperative for hospitality, tourism and leisure services managers in their efforts to design and deliver a superior quality of service.” (Kandampully, Mok and Sparks 2001: xvii) It is perhaps due to the unconventional nature of hospitality business, development of such “holistic understanding” has not occurred. Consequently, complaints of customers in case of hospitality facilities have increased. The recent global recession, like all other forms of business, has also affected hospitality business but rate of such damage could have been much less if requirement of customers could have properly been realized. Employee satisfaction in this type of business is another major obstacle that prevented it from receiving a complete flourish. In several cases, enhancing the profit margin is one of the major aims of the business holders and they often ignore important factors like employee satisfaction or employee empowerment. Naturally, people, who are assigned with the responsibility to take care of the customers and provide them with best service facility, feel de-motivated and do not provide them with perfect range of service. Ultimately, because of these reasons the hospitality industry represents quite a negative impression among customers and at the same time it also loses a huge extent of its total customer base. Quality of service provided and generating customer satisfaction these are two complementary factors for hospitality industry: it needs to be perceived at the first place. The modern scholars are also repeatedly stressing over these aspects, “One significant stand of the recent literature has been the examination of what service quality really means to the customer and has provided an important paradigmatic development in the subject. The terms ‘service quality’ and ‘customer satisfaction’ are central to such an emerging theoretical framework, and although there is an aetiological dimension to debate, it has pragmatic implications for the work of the practitioner as well as the discourse of the academic” (Williams and Buswell 2003: 2). Hence, it is clear from such observation that maintaining a certain level of service quality is not enough but at the same time the hospitality industry also needs to inculcate flexibility in their capacity to provide service. Providing uniform range of service is not sufficient for hospitality industry under every circumstance. It is very important that customer’s needs are properly realized and serviced accordingly. Keeping all these issues in mind, task of a manager of a tourism organization becomes quite challenging. On one hand, he has to take care of the fact that the customers are receiving quality service according to their demands and on the other hand, he also has to provide adequate attention to the fact that employees of the organization are getting job satisfaction so that they feel motivated to serve the consumers accordingly. Globalization, which has given birth to newer social trends and structures, has also enhanced the level of expectations among the common people. High quality service, nowadays, has become an integral part of the leisure and tourism business. In this context the scholars are of opinion that “There are several reasons for the significance of service quality to the leisure and tourism industry. They are concerned with the competitive edge, social trends, consumer behaviour and demand and technology.” (Williams and Buswell, 2003, p. 6) Integration of all these aspects in the social life of a common man has not only enhanced their expectation from life but in every small aspect. In the UK social context, since the ancient times, hospitality has always played a major role. Lashley and Morrison (2001) observe, “Apart from values relating to the treatment of strangers and travellers, hospitality played an important part in the local political economy. The redistributing food and drink to neighbours and to the poor helped to build social cohesion” (7). Though in the modern times most of the tourism and leisure organizations do not think exactly in the same way but there is no doubt about the fact that to fulfill the social cohesion aspect, hospitality industry is still playing a quite important role. Marketing or proper promotion of products plays a very important role in modern business. In case of the hospitality and leisure industry, performance of an organization undertakes the most vital role when it comes to its publicity. For instance, if a traveller is satisfied with the services of a hotel whether he is on leisure or business trip, he will surely inform his acquaintances about it. In this way a hotel develops its customer base and on several occasions, it has been witnessed that such interaction is even more effective than any other form of marketing. Such form of publicity is mostly relevant in case of developed economic system. However, when it comes to economic system of smaller regions, tourism potential of that place requires certain extra boost. In this context Gilmore (2003) observes, “… in many smaller regions, tourism as an economic activity suffers from a lack of impact on the world market. Often this because of a relatively small promotional voice, promoting different elements to different markets” (63). Pondering over the current situation of such promotional activity, it cannot be denied that marketing of service facility as well as operational integrity of tourism sector in such small economic systems have not been done accordingly. Consequently, despite having sufficient potential and capacity to provide excellent service to the customers, such tourism facilities are failing to flourish. Catering quality service is gradually becoming one of the greatest challenges for the tourism organizations across the United Kingdom. Quality service factor depends over customer satisfaction and “Customer satisfaction depends on the total customer experience and thus poses specific challenges for the tourism industry in the management of the service delivery interaction and service quality ….” (Jones and Haven-Tang 2005: 7). While a survey has been conduced over people having experience of staying in three or four star hotels, it has clearly emphasized five aspects, fulfillment of which is considered as receiving high quality service for them, “(1) Clean, comfortable bedrooms with all items in working order. (2) Good quality food and beverages. (3) Friendly, helpful, polite and efficient staff. (4) High level of room security. (5) Speedy, efficient check-in and out” (Lewis and McCann 2004: 10). Interestingly, none of the customers has claimed anything that is beyond capacity of the hotel authority to provide. It’s just due to their lack of sincerity towards the customers and lack of understanding about providing quality service that most of the people left unsatisfied and they never referred the hotels to their acquaintances. It is only the tourism industry which is suffering due to such reasons. According to the modern managerial reflection over tourism, this industry is definitely one of the most profitable sources but unless the aspect of quality service can be ensured, the total process can fail. The stress over ensuring quality service is nothing new in the history of tourism and leisure industry; rather the entire concept of attracting customers is standing over this principle, “Historically, tourism service-quality research has focused on measuring consumer perceptions of quality and its impact on consumer satisfaction and revisit intentions.” (Weiermair and Mathies 2004: 209) Thus, ensuring the distribution of quality service and operational integrity within the unit are perhaps the most important aspects that a manger has to keep in mind when it comes to success of his organization. At the same time, it will not be entirely correct to blame employees of the hospitality business for their inefficiency, “Empowerment … needs to be understood in terms of the unique pressures of large organizations” (Hughes and Kusluvan 2003: 686). Proper utilization of human resources does not actually happen in most of the cases. Unless the employees feel morally motivated, it is natural that they will not be able to deliver efficient service to consumers. Often in case of tourism and leisure business, owners become so obsessed with small monetary gain that they completely ignore requirement or expectations of the employees. Theoretically, however, it is proved that right utilization and empowerment of employees will surely encourage them to take more responsibility and provide better service to consumers: “It is felt that empowerment will enable firms to enthuse and employees to take responsibility for the service encounter and to wan to “delight the customer” (Lashley 1995: 27). It is not that finding skilled labor has become next to impossible or highly problematic but most of the time owners of hotels and tourism organizations cast a cold eye to this aspect. As they are sure about the fact that due to the local attractions people will keep on coming and they will earn their required amount of profit, these people provide secondary emphasis over the customer satisfaction issue. However, as in the long run, both customer satisfaction and employee empowerment receive inadequate attention, leading to decreased productivity and bad reputation of the firm, “One way of increasing employee productivity, thus reducing labor-related expense, is through employee empowerment” (Dopson, Hayes and Miller 2007: 316). One of the most important advantages of employee empowerment is that it motivates employees to work in a more efficient manner. Consequently, an owner is also relived from the pressure of additional recruitment. Keeping the benefits of employee empowerment in mind, manager of a tourism organization should also consider this aspect so that the employees are provided with proper support. If these aspects are properly fulfilled, it is quite sure that catering quality service and assuring operational completeness to consumers will not remain unachievable. List of References Buswell, J., and Williams, C. (2003) Service quality in leisure and tourism. Wallingford: CABI Gilmore, A. (2003) Services marketing and management. London: SAGE Haven-Tang, C., and Jones, E. (2005) Tourism SMEs, service quality, and destination competitiveness. Wallingford: CABI Kusluvan, S. (2003) Managing employee attitudes and behaviors in the tourism and hospitality industry. New York: Nova Publishers Lashley, C. (1995) ‘Towards an Understanding of employee empowerment in hospitality services.’ International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 7, (1) 27-32 Morrison, A.J., and Lashley, C. (2001) In search of hospitality: theoretical perspectives and debates. Oxford: Butterworth-Heinemann Mccann, P., and Lewis B. R. (2004) ‘Service failure and recovery: evidence from the hotel industry.’ International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management 16, (1) 6-17 Sparks, B., Mok, C., and Kandampully, J. (2001) Service quality management in hospitality, tourism, and leisure. London: Routledge Miller, J.E., Hayes, D.K. and Dopson, L.R. (2007) Food and Beverage Cost Control. London: John Wiley and Sons Mathies, C., and Weiermair, K. (2004) The tourism and leisure industry: shaping the future. London: Routledge Read More