Quality Service Management in Tourism & Hospitality PDF

TH2303 INTRODUCTION TO TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM) IN THE TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY The Tourism and Hospitality Industry (Goldstein & Schroeder, 2021) Tourism is a...

TH2303 INTRODUCTION TO TOTAL QUALITY MANAGEMENT (TQM) IN THE TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY The Tourism and Hospitality Industry (Goldstein & Schroeder, 2021) Tourism is a significant economic activity of the travel, lodging, retail, and entertainment subsectors supplying the needs of tourists. It is a significant socio-cultural activity providing cultural experiences to tourist markets. The following are the characteristics of tourism: It has two (2) main elements: movement, referring to the travel to and from a destination, and overnight stay outside the permanent residence in various destinations. The movement to and from the destination is temporary, which means there is an intention to return. Destinations are visited for purposes other than employment or taking up permanent residence. The activities tourists engage in during their journey and their stay outside their usual residence and work are distinct from those of the working populations and residents of the places visited. The hospitality industry is large and fast-growing. It refers to a variety of services and businesses focusing on customer satisfaction. The defining aspect of this industry is it focuses on the ideas of pleasure, luxury, enjoyment, and experiences instead of catering to necessities and essentials. Tourism refers to activities requiring customers to travel, while the hospitality industry provides recreational solutions, such as meals and accommodation. The relationship between the tourism and hospitality industries is symbiotic, wherein one cannot function without the other. For example, tourists visiting an attraction overseas (tourism) will need a place to stay (hospitality). If one ceases to exist, the other won’t be able to satisfy the customers’ needs and wants. The tourism and hospitality industry is considered one industry because they function together to meet and deliver all the customers’ needs when they avail of each industry’s products and services. Customers of the tourism sector need food and beverage and accommodation facilities, which the hotels, resorts, and restaurants in the hospitality sector provide. Both are also part of the service industry, wherein human interaction is vital to customer satisfaction and service quality. Characteristics of a Tourism and Hospitality Product Tourism and hospitality products are focused on service and have different characteristics making them distinct from other industries. These are the following: Intangibility. Tourism products cannot be seen, tasted, felt, or heard before purchasing and consuming. In tourism, services and experiences are what a traveler mainly purchases; the only tangible items are the tickets or receipts of payments. Inseparability. Tourism products are primarily services and cannot be separated from the person or company that provides them. A tourism product only exists when consumption has occurred, and the tourist has to go to the production site to utilize it. Perishability. It is a characteristic of products and services that do not allow the product or service to be stored for sale at a future date. Variability. In the tourism industry, services are rendered by humans to humans. These services have a high level of variability when producers and consumers interact. The services may vary depending on the company or the product owner, the purchase time, and other professions involved. Absence of Ownership. Purchasing an overnight stay at a hotel is not the same as buying material things. The tourist only acquires the right to certain benefits offered by the seller or hotel, but the 01 Handout 1 *Property of STI 🖂 [email protected] Page 1 of 4  TH2303 rooms’ ownership remains with the hotel. The same goes when buying an airline ticket. The traveler can sit on a specific flight seat but does not own it. Manufactured by Many Producers. A tourism product involves other sectors in its production, and a single enterprise cannot provide it. Each tourism product component is highly specialized and, when combined, makes the final product. The travel agents, for instance, book airline tickets and contract accommodation and car rental services to create an entire tour package sold as a single tourism product. Seasonality. It refers to predictable changes over a year in a business or economy based on the calendar or commercial seasons. Almost all tourist areas have a short season that is popular as a peak season, which may be as short as three (3) months. This seasonal usage of the product creates unemployment and impacts transportation and hospitality services and most other services. Understanding these characteristics of tourism and hospitality products is vital to satisfy customers’ needs and wants. It allows the business to focus on developing the quality they provide to their customers, making them loyal and contented. A business focused on delivering quality products and services will enable customers to feel that they are the priority and taken care of. Introduction to Quality Management (Arenas, 2022) Quality management oversees different organizational activities and tasks to ensure that products and services are consistent. It is essential to achieving and maintaining the desired level of quality set by the management within an organization. Key Components of Quality Management The following are the four (4) key components of quality management: Quality planning refers to identifying the quality standards pertinent to the project and deciding how to meet them. Quality improvement is the decisive change in the process to improve the reliability or confidence of the outcome. Quality control pertains to the continuing effort to uphold a process’s reliability and integrity in achieving an outcome. Quality assurance is the planned or systematic actions essential to offer sufficient reliability to meet a particular product or service’s specified requirements. Quality management aims to guarantee that all the organization’s stakeholders collaborate to improve the company’s processes, culture, products, and services to achieve the long-term success that stems from customer satisfaction. The quality management process involves a collection of guidelines developed by a team to ensure that the products and services they offer are of the correct standards or fit for the correct purpose. The following is the process of quality management: 1. The organization sets quality targets to be met and agreed upon with the customer. The basis for setting quality targets depends on the target market research a company conducts to achieve the satisfaction and loyalty of customers. The target market refers to the people who will most likely avail of a business’s products and services. 2. The organization then defines how the targets will be measured. 3. The final step involves reporting the level of quality achieved. 01 Handout 1 *Property of STI 🖂 [email protected] Page 2 of 4  TH2303 The process ensures that the products and services match the customers’ expectations. The customers’ main concern in buying products and services is the quality of their purchase, resulting in their satisfaction. This challenge to tourism and hospitality businesses can be met by focusing on and implementing total quality management in their services and products. Quality management in tourism and hospitality businesses is essential to ensure consistency in their processes, ensuring customer satisfaction. Total Quality Management Total quality management (TQM) is the continual process of detecting and reducing or eliminating errors in manufacturing, streamlining supply chain management, improving the customer experience, and ensuring that employees are up to speed with proper training. It aims to hold all parties involved in the production process accountable for the overall quality of the final product or service. It is a management approach of long-term success through customer satisfaction, where all members of an organization participate in improving processes, products, services, and the culture in which they work. The following are the principles of TQM: Customer-focused. The internal and external customer is the driver in a total quality setting. External customers define the quality of the product or service delivered, while internal customers define the quality of the people, processes, and environments associated with the products or services. Total Employee Involvement and Empowerment. All employees participate in working toward the business goals. The following are the benefits of involving employees: o First, it increases the likelihood of developing a good decision or plan. o Second, it promotes ownership of decisions. Empowerment involves including people and engaging them in ways that give them a real voice, like structuring work that allows employees to make decisions concerning improving work processes within specified parameters. Process-centered. A process is a series of steps that take inputs from suppliers and transform them into outputs delivered to customers. These products are developed, and people deliver services using processes/systems within environments to improve the quality of products or services continually. Peak performance means that all personnel and processes operate at their best performance. It is essential to organizations that operate in a global environment where competition is intense, constant, and unforgiving. Strategically based means formulating a strategic plan incorporating the elements of vision, mission, broad objectives, and activities that must be completed to accomplish the broad objectives while integrating quality as a core component. The scientific approach refers to structuring work, decision-making, and problem-solving by utilizing hard data to establish benchmarks, monitoring performance, and making improvements. Obsession with quality. The organization must become passionate about meeting or exceeding the quality of outputs through continuous improvement. Long-term commitment involves the implementation of new corporate culture in the entire organization to achieve future success and long-term growth. Education and training are fundamental to total quality as these improve people continually. Through education and training, people who know how to work hard also learn to work smart. 01 Handout 1 *Property of STI 🖂 [email protected] Page 3 of 4  TH2303 Freedom through control pertains to the concept that humans should control the processes and work methods and must not rely entirely on technology to reduce variations in output. Unity of purpose means that internal politics have no place in a total quality organization where collaboration should be the norm. Employees should feel more involved and empowered in a total quality setting than in a traditionally managed situation. It means that all employees must work toward a common goal. TQM in the Tourism Industry TQM in the tourism industry is a sharing process that authorizes employees in different levels to work in groups/departments to start guest service prospects and determine the most suitable approach to meet or exceed them. An organization’s leader must create the required motivation to incorporate the guests and employees in setting goals and objectives. Proper implementation of TQM in tourism organizations will improve customer satisfaction, cost-effectiveness, and competition condition of the business. It is tough to control quality in the tourism industry because of the diversity of guests’ wants and needs in terms of preferences. Quality problems in tourism establishments directly impact their operation via customer complaints. These will result in negative feedback on the tourism establishment’s quality of products and services. Incorporating quality management within the whole business strategy and directing the company goals toward quality within the organization at all levels will enable the successful implementation of TQM in the tourism industry. In general, the performance of excellent service helps tourism establishments increase their market share and price advantage because of the positive feedback from the guests. References: Arenas, C. (2022). Quality service management in tourism and hospitality. Edric Publishing House. CFI Team. (2022, November 28). Quality management. Retrieve 3 January 2023, from https://corporatefinanceinstitute.com/resources/management/quality-management/ Goldstein, S. & Schroeder, R. (2021). Operations management in the supply chain (8th Ed.). New York: McGraw- Hill Education. Investopedia. (2023, March 28). What is total quality management (TQM). Retrieved 3 January 2023, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/t/total-quality-management-tqm.asp Kenton, W. (2020, November 30). Seasonality. In Investopedia. Retrieved 3 January 2023, from https://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/seasonality.asp Nipe Pesa. (2022, May 20). Relationship between tourism and hospitality industries. Retrieved 3 January 2023, from https://nipepesa.com/2022/05/20/relationship-between-tourism-and-hospitality-industries/ 01 Handout 1 *Property of STI 🖂 [email protected] Page 4 of 4