1. Front Office and the Guests: Planning for Quality Service
Chapter 2
Front Office and the Guests:
Planning for Quality Service

2. Lodging Is a Guest Service Business
Service (Hotel): The process of helping guests by addressing their wants and needs with respect and dignity in a timely manner.

3. Developing a Quality Culture
Quality: The consistent delivery of products/services according to expected standards.
Empowerment: The act of granting authority to employees to make key decisions within the employees’ areas of responsibility.

4. Developing a Quality Culture
Role of hotel senior managers in quality:
They must consistently “walk and talk” the philosophy of guest service
They must empower staff members
They must establish systems that allow defects to be measured

5. Developing a Quality Culture
Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI): Ongoing efforts within the hotel to better meet (or exceed) guests’ expectations and to find ways to perform work with better, less costly, and/or faster methods.

6. Developing a Quality Culture
Planning tools:
Vision
Mission statement
Long-range plan
Business plan
Marketing plan
Operating budget

7. Developing a Quality Culture
Repeat Business: Revenues generated from guests returning to the hotel as a result of positive experiences on previous visits.
Word-of-Mouth Advertising: Informal conversations between persons as they discuss their positive or negative experiences at a hotel.

8. Planning Guest Service Processes
Service is not the same as servility.
Helping guests requires addressing their wants and needs:
What do guests want?
What do they need?

9. Planning Guest Service Processes
Benchmarking: The search for best practices and an understanding about how they are achieved in efforts to determine how well a hospitality organization is doing.
Zero Defects: A goal of no guest-related complaints that is established when guest service processes are implemented.

10. Planning Guest Service Processes
Moments of Truth: Any (and every) time a guest has an opportunity to form an impression about the hospitality organization. Moments of truth can be positive or negative and may (but do not have to) involve the property’s staff members.

11. Guest Service Is Delivered by Employees
Accountability: An obligation created when a staff member is delegated duties/ responsibilities from higher levels of management.

12. Guest Service Is Delivered by Employees
Front office employees can be empowered to help guests after they:
Learn about their service mission
Receive the training and obtain the resources required to meet the needs of guests
Show ongoing interest in providing exceptional guest service

13. Guest Service Is Delivered by Employees
Strategies for empowerment:
Accepting the philosophy that supports empowerment
Pointing staff in the right direction
Recognizing the role of the guest
Removing the barriers that inhibit pride in work
Monitoring work to assure that standards are consistently attained

14. Guest Service Is Delivered by Employees
For empowering to be effective, FOMs must:
Treat employees like adults
Respect employees as individuals
Recognize that employees can make significant contributions to the department and the hotel
Ask for and utilize their employees’ suggestions
Trust their staff members
Allow employees to find pride and joy in the workplace

15. Guest Service Is Delivered by Employees
Today’s FOMs do not wait until problems become significant before they are addressed!