Quality Expectations by Customer
Tools of Measuring Customers’ Quality Expectations in a Hospitality Organization
Introduction
Hospitality organizations such as recreational facilities, lodges, and hotels, among others, have radically increased across the world, leading to stiff competition in the industry. The greater guest hotel sophistication has made the quality of the services rendered to the customers more critical. For this reason, hotel managers in every guest hotel are faced with two crucial issues to be addressed. Such issues include increasing competition and the expectations of the guests. In the process of addressing these issues, managers have been ensuring that their customers are satisfactorily served (Pelegrín-Borondo, Arias-Oliva & Olarte-Pascual, 2017). They achieve this objective by ensuring that they assess the immensity at which the quality expectations of their customers are met. Several tools are being used in different hotels to measure the quality of their services to their customers. However, several factors have been affecting the selection of effective tools to be implemented in a particular hotel (Pizam Shapoval & Ellis, 2016). Such factors include but not limited to the guest inconvenience degree, the cost of implementing and maintaining, and the accuracy of the tool.
In China, guest hotels are some of the areas that call for substantial improvements to ensure that the quality expectations of customers are met. Different customers have different expectations in a restaurant; the first critical customer restaurant expectation is about the restaurant meals. Restaurant meals are a crucial consideration since they have a great health impact on the customer’s health (Pelegrín-Borondo, Arias-Oliva & Olarte-Pascual, 2017). Therefore, the guests, when selecting a hotel to spent their time or have a meal, expect such a restaurant to offer. China guest hotels have been selected in this discussion since the country is now among the leading fertile ones in tourism. A vast number of tourists are experienced in China since 2001. According to a study conducted on the Chinese hospitality industry, it was found that China had 203 hotels in 1980, whereby there were 31,788 rooms for foreigners’ accommodation. However, in 2007, the country was reported to have star hotels amounting to 13,583. In implication, the country’s hospitality industry is alarmingly growing (Yuanqiong, Wenli & Kin, 2010). Despite the fast pace of development, different customers are complaining about the high prices offered in Chinese guest hotels. Some of the complaints include high prices for the foods and beverages, poor customer orientation, and employees’ commitments are not portrayed.
The Chinese hospitality industry, specifically guest hotels have been using comment cards in assessing the quality of the services offered to the customers based on the customers’ perception of the hotels’ services and service climate (Yuanqiong, Wenli & Kin, 2010. Additionally, these hotels have been using suggestion boxes that are installed outside them to collect comments from their customers about their satisfaction level. Although these tools have been effective in collecting the information from the clients, there are some customers who do not get time to write about their satisfaction level, and due to that, they end up not being considered. Additionally, there are those clients who cannot read or write, and to them, these tools never work. This implies that several customers are not considered in the collection of data about the quality of services offered by Chinese guest hotels.
Following the limitation of the tools used in data collection in guest hotels, I would recommend some of the changes that should be implemented. For instance, since management does not know the illiteracy level of the customers experienced, there should be employees from diverse families whose work should be interacting with the customers and collecting information from them about the services offered (Pizam Shapoval & Ellis, 2016). This will supplement the comment cards and suggestion boxes. Also, hotels can create their internet webs whereby customers can commend about the satisfaction level they had on the hotel services. This program will help in collecting information from the customers who visit the hotels with limited time and not to commend using the comment cards or suggestion box. These tools, among others, are fundamental in assessing the quality expectations by customers since those with limited time and the illiterate ones will be put into consideration (Pizam Shapoval & Ellis, 2016). Additionally, management should immensely focus on the employees’ commitments. The employees are key determinants vital competitiveness of a hotel since their services are the customers’ attraction. Generally, management should ensure that the service climate of the hotel is enhanced.
Ethical and Legal Handing Of Guests’ Data by Guest Hotels
Most of the guests use credit cards that are swiped by the accountants in the restaurants. This implies that such staffs have access to financial information of customers (Zhang et al. 2018). This information, among other confidential information about the customers, ought to be given high privacy. Some of the practices that should be performed to ensure that confidential information of a customer s kept private include strong passwords and guidelines to the employees on the privacy issues. Management should ensure that their system passwords are strong enough and cannot be guessed or hacked, and guest’s information is accessed (Zhang et al. 2018). Also, employees should be given drafted guidelines governing their operations. For instance, there are those employees who post on social media about their workplace. This practice may expose some confidential information, and thus customers’ privacy is said to be affected. Such practices should be banned in guest hotels.
References
Pelegrín-Borondo, J., Arias-Oliva, M., & Olarte-Pascual, C. (2017). Emotions, price and quality expectations in hotel services. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 23(4), 322-338.
Pizam, A., Shapoval, V., & Ellis, T. (2016). Customer satisfaction and its measurement in hospitality enterprises: a revisit and update. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management.
Yuanqiong, H. Wenli, L. & Kin, K. L, (2010). Service climate, employee commitment, and customer satisfaction: Evidence from the hospitality industry in China.
Zhang, S., Choo, K. K. R., Liu, Q., & Wang, G. (2018). Enhancing privacy through a uniform grid and caching in location-based services. Future Generation Computer Systems, 86, 881-892.