Hospitality And Guest Service Management

INTRODUCTION

Hospitality and guest service management are responsibilities for managing and handling customers and other hotel operations. He ensures that all tasks are executed in a proper way. There is major role of this person to increase customer engagement and satisfaction. The responsibilities of the manager involve an essential part in outcome of the hotel. The hospitality organisation considered in this report is Marriott organisation. This is an American multinational diversified company that manages and franchises a large portfolio of hotels and other related lodging facilities. This was founded by J. Willard Marriott. This is the third largest hotel chains in the world and there are around 30 brands with approximately 7000 properties. This report discusses about guest service management. It shows how hotels can adapt to changing consumer preference and how changing consumer preference impacts guest service management.

When it comes to defining excellence in guest service the first challenge is to remain objective. One person’s service expectation may not be the same as another persons. Let’s first agree that our needs as clients are generally the same; courtesy, a listening ear, an understanding of our requirements and a willingness to help when we need it.( https://www.customerservicemanager.com/definition-of-excellent-guest-service/)

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Service provided

Beverage

• Per person consummation is significant proof of the good wealth of each part of beverage industry due to the fact that that reflect increases and decreases in the marketplace (Mayer T., Chon K. 2010) that is affected by trends.
• Due to social acceptance demographic graphics shows that beer, wine and spirits has an increase in business and societal trends, instead for the young people with age under twenty-one it’s an increase of soft drinks.

Foodservice

• Restaurants that has a theme has a binder to offer to the clients a better experience and distinct.
• Instead this kind of restaurants has a higher price.
• Meeting, conventions, and special events
• Meetings was on a second plan of the hospitality industry, but nowadays are serious business and offer a significant boost to host destination.

Spa

• Hotels offer luxurious spa facilities like steam, sauna, fitness, swimming pool and offer massages, facial and body treatments.
• Nowadays the spa encourage the families to come with their children, and they provide services like gymnastic and dance classes.

Quality management

Guest service manager is focusing on needs and requirements of clients and ensures that they are being fulfilled. They have to implement various strategies which will help in improving hotel facilities and eventually leads to increase exceptional services. It is ensured that the customers are accompanied in their rooms and they are pleased with the rooms received after they are helped with check-ins procedure. For verifying of inventory suppliers and making order in proportion with the request. When organisations make use of total quality management, there is high probability of improving effectiveness and efficiency of all organisation. This can be explained by an example- Marriott International has applied various techniques of total quality management for ensuring a positive outcome. By the assistance of executive management, employees are trained on the concepts of offering good quality services to customers and clients. (James L. Heskett, W. Earl Sasser, JR, Leonard A. Schlesinger,1997 ) Marriott International is using technique of employing qualified staffs who are responsible for providing a positive approach to various sensitive areas such as serving customers within short time, check-in drinks, solving customer problems and offering a friendly approach.

Cleanliness of rooms and good housekeeping services provides pleasant experience to customers. This overcomes all other wrongs that they face in the organisation. One of the aspects that contributes to good reputation of the company is cleanliness especially the attractive housekeeping services which are offered.

Also, for making their total quality management systems more effective, Marriott organisation provides extensive training to various area managers by hiring a lot of people on regular basis. If this organisation is not having effective leadership, it can be very challenging for it to provide best services to customers and accomplish organisational goals and objectives.

When managers are hired in Marriott, these are provided one-week training program where they are equipped with necessary knowledge and skills for enabling them to serve customers in a well-mannered way. When this training is done, they are responsible for teaching other members of staff on how to provide quality services to clients and customers.

It is analysed by study of various researchers that outcomes of poor-quality services in business are very expensive. Poor service experience that happened due to employees who are not motivated for solving quality services to the organisation. It is occurred by the employees who are not willing to provide adequate results. Negative experiences of customers and guests within the organisation is not thing for the company as it results in decline of customer satisfaction (Frank Hochsmann, 2014). The management of the organisation is source of poor service delivery because of failure to acknowledge that each individual is held responsible for what they are doing.

How the hotel adapts to changing consumer preference

There are various approaches towards improving customer care. Marriott International has managed to launch 18 lodging brands which include limited service and full service which has variety of services to serve needs of any guest. This hospitality organisation is managing and contracting different hotels and resorts under Marriott. Due to this expansion, there is growing in customers at global level. Marriott is having a good documentation of expansion for the period and also financial base of the company is also high.

Marriott is one of the biggest hotels which operates globally. It provides quality services and has good reputation. This has adopted general system of formal total quality management. This system is made for ensuring increase in customer coverage with best services of good and high quality. Another deal of responsibility depends upon guest service manager. For ensuring success, there must be demonstration of excellent organisation and time management skills. There must be good and effective leadership skills in these managers, and they have to supervise and train staff and employees effectively.

Marriott International concentrates making customers happy and satisfied by sharing positive experience of company with employees. Reputation and image of brand depends by the reaction of customers. It is easy to achieve customer satisfaction by the application of quality management. Because of the wide experience of management of Marriott International for long period of time, there are basically two main areas which are criticised by guests. Check-ins and rooms are most sensitive areas which needs high quality services in front office. In context of Marriott International in these areas are highly qualified staff and employees. The impression and first contact that guests receive in a service industry is essential as these guests can come back or may never desire such experience.

Quality management is useful for Marriott International but on the other hand, it faces various criticism. Quality issues are part of functional side and should not be treated as separate parts.

How changing preferences impacts guest service management

As technology is becoming more advanced and people have become more modern, requirements and preferences of people changes at a fast pace. Due to this, it became important for an organisation to cater these changes as efficiently as possible so that their customer base can be retained for maximum time period. In case of hospitality sector, requirements and needs of people are constantly changing. Due to this guest service management is also influenced and need appropriate changes. In earlier time, main preference of people while staying at hotel is to have a decent place to stay and good food to it so that they can complete their journey in a comfortable manner. But now these aspects have changed considerably. In present time, people expect highest level of hospitality where each and every service is required to be highly standardised.

Also, instead than getting a comfortable place to sleep, people now a days prefer to stay at theme-based rooms which will provide them a soothing experience for their journey. In case of Marriott hotel, changing needs and preferences of customers have leads to changes in guest service management. (Frank Hochsmann, 2014) Guest services in context with Marriott hotel are the amenities and services which are offered by the staff of hotel to their customers. It includes activities like laundry, room service, concierge etc. At present, people have become very sophisticated and they cannot handle any single mistake while getting served. Below are mentioned some aspects that will denote the manner in which changing preferences and expectations of the customers leads to change in guest service management:

In case of laundry, guests prefer to have washed clothes as soon as possible due to which housekeeping manager has to upgrade their machines to wash and press clothes. This will help the hotel management to do laundry of customers in fastest time possible.

Earlier, people prefer to come on the reception of hotel for booking and reservations but due to changing preferences of customers, they now prefer to perform reservations via online.(Valerie A. Zeithamal, A, Parasuraman, Leonard L. Berry,) In this context, front desk department at Marriott has improved their social media presence so that appropriate interaction and communication with customers via digital media can be carried out.

During the stay at hotel, in earlier time customers do not requires rooms with themes and elegant environment. But now, they are very particular about the rooms in which they are staying. Due to this, Marriott hotel provide themed rooms to their customers. Other than this, to provide pleasure, hotel has also decided to offer customised rooms which will be decorated as per the requirements of customers.

Services and facilities are changing needs of customers will help the Marriott hotel in earning high revenues and profits due to which they will be able to sustain a strong presence in market against their rivals. Also, by this, customer base of company will be retained for maximum time period without any distress.

CONCLUSION

Aforesaid, it is seen that guest service management is fundamental and play a very important role in providing good services to customers. This is important as there is huge competition in market of hospitality sector. There is drastic increase in number of hotels within market. Therefore, for a hotel to keep the guests and clients, it is essential to offer quality services. As result the application of this is beneficial for every organisation. The teamwork of management team and all levels of employers can work best for this system. If employees want to follow this system, there is need of big support from top level management of the hotel.

REFERENCES

1. Frank Hochsmann, 2014. Service quality from the guest’s view. Manual for more service quality in hotels and restaurants
2. Kaye Chon, Thomas A. Mayer, 2010. Welcome to Hospitality… an introduction
3. Guest Service Manager Responsibilities, 2019. https://www.customerservicemanager.com/definition-of-excellent-guest-service/
4. Valerie A. Zeithaml, A. Parasuraman, Leonard L. Berry. Delivering Quality Service, Balancing customer perceptions and expectation
5. James L. Heskett, W. Earl Asser JR, Leonard A. Schlesinger ,1997. The service profit chain , How leading companies link profit and growth to loyalty, satisfaction, and value
6. M. Jesus Alvarez, Carmen Jaca, Elisabeth Viles, Anna Colomer, Quality management in hotels in the Basque Country
7. Robert C. Ford, Duncan R. Dickson, 2008. The journal of applied management and entrepreneurship, vol 13, no.3
8. Rebecca Klein, Kevin Steele,2014. “Be our guest” :crafting a magical client experience