Tourism and Hospitality Industry

Tourism and Hospitality Industry

• Tourism is a significant economic activity encompassing travel, lodging, retail, and entertainment
• Tourism is a socio-cultural activity providing cultural experiences
• Tourism has two main elements: movement to and from a destination, and overnight stay outside permanent residence.
• Movement to and from a destination is temporary, implying an intention to return
• Tourism destinations exclude employment or permanent relocation.
• Tourist activities are distinct from the routines of residents and workers

Hospitality Industry

• The hospitality industry is large and fast-growing, focusing on customer satisfaction
• It focuses on pleasure, luxury, enjoyment and experiences
• Tourism requires customers to travel
• Hospitality provides recreational solutions, like meals and accommodation
• The relationship between tourism and hospitality is symbiotic
• Tourism requires hospitality, and if one ceases, the other can't meet customer needs.
• The tourism and hospitality industries function together to meet customer needs
• The hospitality sector provides food, beverage, and accommodation - hotels, resorts, and restaurants
• Both are service industries requiring human interaction for customer satisfaction.

Characteristics of Tourism/Hospitality Products

• Tourism/hospitality products focus on service
• Intangibility: Tourism products cannot be experienced before purchase
• Travelers mainly purchase experiences; tangible items consist of tickets or receipts
• Inseparability: Tourism products are services linked to their provider
• A tourism product only exists upon consumption, requiring the tourist to go to the source
• Perishability: Products/services cannot be stored for future sale
• Variability: Services rendered by humans have high variability due to producer/consumer interaction
• Variability depends on the company, product owner, purchase time, and profession
• Absence of Ownership: Purchasing a hotel stay grants rights to benefits, but not ownership
• In airline travel, the traveler uses a seat without owning it
• Tourism relies on multiple producers
• A single enterprise can’t provide a tourism product.
• Components are combined by travel agents to create packages
• Products have seasonality
• Seasonality has predictable yearly changes based on calendar or commercial seasons
• Tourist areas have peak seasons as short as three months, creating unemployment and impacting services.

Introduction to Quality Management

• Quality management oversees activities ensuring consistent products/services, essential for maintaining desired quality
• The four key components of quality management are:
• Quality planning: Identify quality standards for a project
• Quality improvement: Change processes to improve outcome reliability
• Quality control: Maintain process reliability and achieve outcomes
• Quality assurance: Systematic actions to ensure reliability and requirements
• Quality management ensures stakeholder collaboration to improve processes, culture, products, and services for long-term success

Quality Management Process

• Quality management involves guidelines for ensuring products/services meet standards
• Organizations set quality targets agreed upon with customers
• Targets are based on target market research to achieve satisfaction and loyalty
• The target market refers to the most likely customers
• Organizations define how targets will be measured
• Level of quality that is achieved and then reported on

Total Quality Management

• Total quality management (TQM) is a continuous process to eliminate errors, streamline processes, improve customer experience, and train employees
• It makes all parties accountable for the quality of the final product/service
• It ensures long-term success through customer satisfaction
• TQM involves all members in improving processes, products, services, and culture
• TQM principles include:
• Customer focus: Internal and external customers drive quality
• External customers define product/service quality; internal customers the quality of associated elements
• Total employee involvement and empowerment: All employees work towards business goals
• Employee involvement increases the chance of making a good decision
• Employee involvement promotes ownership of decisions
• Empowerment involves participatory structuring of work for improved processes
• Process-centered approach: Processes take inputs and transform them into outputs for customers
• Products are developed, and services are delivered via processes/systems
• Peak performance: All personnel and processes operate at their best in a competitive environment
• Strategic basis: Incorporate vision, mission, objectives, and activities into a strategic plan with quality as a core element.
• Scientific approach: Structure work, decision-making, and problem-solving using data to establish benchmarks and improvements
• Obsession with quality: Exceeding output quality through continuous improvement
• Long-term commitment: Implementing a new corporate culture for future success
• Education and training: Improving people continually to leverage hard work and smart work
• Freedom through control: Humans controlling processes and work methods, not technology
• Unity of purpose: Collaboration without internal politics
• Employees should feel involved and empowered towards a common goal

TQM in the Tourism Industry

• TQM in tourism empowers employees at different levels to improve guest services and customer satisfaction
• Leaders should motivate guests and employees to set goals and objectives
• Proper TQM improves customer satisfaction, cost-effectiveness, and competitiveness
• Controlling quality in tourism is tough due to varied guest preferences
• Quality problems via complaints in tourism directly impact operations and cause negative feedback
• Integrating quality management into business strategy enables successful TQM implementation
• Excellent service helps tourism establishments increase market share and price advantage through positive feedback