Pearson New International Edition International pcl tp indd 1

What Is Quality?
Role of Hotel Senior Managers in Quality
How Managers Plan for Quality
Model for Quality
PLANNING GUEST SERVICE PROCESSES
Recognizing Basic Concerns
Determining Guests’ Service Expectations
Establishing Quality Processes that Yield Exemplary Guest Service
Designing Work Processes
Process Revision Is Ongoing
Evaluating Work Processes
Managing Work Processes
Enhancing Moments of Truth
DELIVERING GUEST SERVICE THROUGH EMPLOYEES
Empower Staff with Service Authority
Ensure that Guest-Friendly Processes Are Used
Emphasize Continuous Quality Improvement
Front Office
and the Guests: Planning
for Quality Service
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Chapter Preview
A hotel is much more than a building with guestrooms, function areas for preparing
and serving meals and beverages and for facilitating meetings. Successful hotels today
differentiate themselves from their less successful counterparts with an ongoing and
significant emphasis on guest service. Creative advertising, the property’s brand
name, or a discount incentive may be sufficient to encourage guests’ first visits.
However, what occurs between the time guests reach the hotel’s parking lot or front
door and the time they depart influences (1) their perception of the hotel, (2) their
interest in returning to it (or even to another hotel of the same brand), and (3) what
they say about their lodging experience to friends, family, and others.
Guest-friendly tactics should be incorporated into work processes and standard
operating procedures. The front office manager (FOM) might specify how a front
desk agent should meet and greet guests at the time of registration. For example,
“Greet the guests by name, welcome them to the hotel, complete all registration tasks
efficiently, smile, look each guest directly in the eye, and inform each guest that any
hotel employee can be contacted for assistance at any time.” However, the concept of
the hotelier as a genteel host (i.e., refined and polite) who genuinely wants to please
guests and who is empowered to perform in an extraordinary way to do so, goes
beyond the dialogue and training needed to meet the goals established by the FOM
in this example.