Exam 7: Managing Guest Service

Quality control is maintained by several techniques, including fear of job loss; reduction in salary; and assignment of poor working hours (hotels are opened 24 hours per day).

The same guest holds different expectations about the service to be received because the type, plan, rate and size of every hotel differs.

Managing for quality adds "leadership"to the traditional management functions of planning, organizing, staffing, directing and reviewing.

Preparing for complaints includes recognizing the best practices for solving them since complaints often follow the same pattern within a given department.

Public areas, such as lobbies, are the best place to resolve guest complaints because guests are less likely to make a scene.

Total quality management (TQM) is difficult to define and identify because both the lodging industry (the seller) and the guest (the buyer) are segmented into many parts.

Avoiding mistakes rather than correcting them is the essence of total quality management.

Bedbugs:

"Customers are always right"is so true in fact that every complaint requires the hotel to make some type of adjustment.

A counter revolution is taking place because hotels that were once smoke-free are quietly switching back to allow smoking.

AAA requirements include:

Amazingly, cleanliness ranks lower in guest survey results than does a good mirror and an in-room coffee maker.

Employee empowerment has emerged because the hotel industry no longer has a traditional top-down line organization (manager-supervisor-supervised) structure.

"Road warriors"protect travelers against mishaps and are more evident in the USA since the attack on the World Trade Center.

Despite all the fancy amenities available, guests still rank a good alarm clock high on the "must-have"list.

Meeting planners have started asking for guarantees from the hotel (coffee served with 5 minutes after the meeting session breaks) to balance the guarantees they give (so many hundred covers for the final banquet).

Sheraton's "Service Promise"awards discounts, frequent-guest points and even cash for failing to meet given levels of service. That sounds like a Quality Guarantee.

Public areas, such as lobbies, are the best place to resolve guest complaints because guests are less likely to make a scene.

To show that the every complaint is seriously considered, first-class hotels compensate every complaining guest, no matter how small the payment.

Hotel labor unions are strongest in the large hotel cities, best represented by southern cities: such as Orlando, New Orleans and Memphis.