Evaluating Service Quality In Hospitality Industry Tourism Essay

Background and motivation:

The concept of service quality has been gaining importance since the 1970s; the basic concept behind premium service quality is delivering and meeting more than the expected from the customer. “Service quality is son intangible that objective measurement is impossible, it is largely believed that the main challenge lies mostly in managing appearances and perceptions (Harvey, 1998). Majority of the study in on service quality started during the 1970s and 19780s and the reason for this study gaining such rapid importance and becoming a matter of research and development is because of the attributes of complete intangibility associated with it. The four main attributes associated with measuring service quality and the views of a few major researchers and scholars in the related feel are as follows:

Intangibility: “Customers cannot evaluate a service prior to consumption, during consumption and cannot store the service after consumption” (Zeithaml, 1981; Shostack, 1984).

Heterogeneity: “Heterogeneity relates to the potential variability in the actual performance of services” and is supported by Booms and Bitner (1981) and Looy et al. (1998).

Perishability: The element of intangibility adds to the services being completely perishable that is the customer or consumer can neither save nor inventories it for consumption in the near future.

Inseparability: One of the key aspects associated with service is that the acts of production and consumption are simultaneous, this act is inseparable.

Service quality and business performance:

Although the performance of business is measured by more quantitative financial methods like profitability, market share, comparative growth rate, image of the business as perceived by the customers and the reoccurring business generated by consumer loyalty. These statically or financially calculated results definitely reflect a clear image of the health of the business, but factors like service quality have a deep impact on the performance of the business, as mentioned by Heskett et al. (1994) “Service quality is directly associated with customer satisfaction and customer loyalty”, and the factor that a satisfied customer would be a loyal customer and both these behaviours impact increase the profitability and growth of the business. “A satisfied customer will be loyal to the company and this loyalty is measured through customer retention which eventually is a measure for business performance”. (Jiju Antony Frenie Jiju Antony and Sid Ghosh, “Evaluating service quality in a UK hotel chain: a case study”; International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management Volume 16 · Number 6 · 2004; Emerald Group Publishing Limited).

Motivation:

Cases like the case of the Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) are landmark examples of relationship between service quality and business performance, in this particular case the CEO of Scandinavian Airlines System (SAS) Jan Carlson in the early 1980s turned a $ 8 billion a year loss making business into a $ 71 million profit making business, he states he achieved this only by treating service quality as a key driver to achieve commercial success, this example reflects the impact delivering quality service can bring to the performance of an organisation.

With the exponentially growing importance of service quality arose the issues of having a system that would control and measure the quality of the service rendered and the flag areas of concern and commitment. Since the 1970s organisations have been using methods simple inspection which were then replaced by quality assurance and quality control organisations since the last decade organisations are adopting and implementing the culture of Total Quality Management (TQM) (Dale, 1999). Research results over the last decades very confidently claim that TQM has affected the financial performance of the firm in a very positive manner (Shetty (1993), Hendricks and Singhal (1997), Easton and Jarrell (1998), Handsfield et al. (1998), Samson and Terziovski (1999), Reed et al. (2000), Allen and Kilmann (2001) and Tena et al. (2001).

Organisations have been using TQM as a tool to measure service quality and it has been gaining importance and both in the areas of management theory and practice, this rapid expansion of the service industry and the importance of service quality in regards to business performance has really motivated me investigate in to service quality measurement and issues, the dynamics of TQM and evidential proof that over the years it has positively affected the financial performance of an organisation has directed me towards evaluating it as a service quality management tool, taking the hotel industry as an area of concern and development.

Research Problem and central research problem:

There has a been a lot of research and plenty of literature available on the implementation and the accountability of the Total Quality Management, but that mostly concerns with the manufacturing industry, which does not has fight the forces of intangibility and the product attributes associated with it. There is a very limited resource of literature and the implications that TQM would have in a completely service oriented industry. The developing literature on quality management includes: quality planning (Papic, 2007); quality assurance (Blackmur, 2004); quality auditing (Goodwin- Stewart and Kent, 2006), quality control (Tang et al, 2007); (Hoyle, 2007), and quality improvement (Maiga and Jacobs, 2005). Keeping in view the limited research and literature available in the area of service driven industry there are many questions and concerns regarding the success of quality management systems like TQM, hence it is a growing concern to investigate the implementation, factors involved in adapting to a TQM culture and most importantly the achieving the desired output, this has formed the basis of my research problem further leading me to the following research questions:

Is having quality in service a competitive advantage? And can TQM be the ideal tool to capitalise on this advantage?

How a service based business approach and adopts TQM in there area of business?

What are the critical factors that can enable the introduction of TQM culture in hotel operations?

These questions have been a concern among many in the service industry, specially the hospitality industry.

Significance of the research:

With the help of my research I feel I would be able to address the above mentioned questions and build a base which would act as a platform for further academic and professional research. With this paper I aim to establish the importance of quality and quality management for the service industry sector with focus on the hospitality industry, to better understand the implication I have further divided my researched and restricted it to the UK hotel industry as It is generally understood that these hotels benefit from improved quality levels and more experienced management (Hayes and Ninemeier, 2007; Stutts and Wortman, 2006).My research on TQM and the principles and significance of the different factors those are necessary to establish successful functionality of TQM culture within an organisation would definitely be significant.

Aims and Objectives:

The aim of this research is to explore and evaluate Total Quality Management system as a toll to measure and support the performance of the hospitality sector, with a specific interest in the UK hotel industry, the aim definitely reflects the importance of introducing TQM in the hospitality industry. Keeping in mind the aim, the research following objectives have developed:

Evaluate and analyse previous literature pertaining to quality and quality management.

Introducing Total Quality Management system to a service industry.

Exploring hospitality and hotel industry and applying TQM to the UK hotel industry.

Evaluate the critical success factors relating to the introduction of TQM through various case studies.

I believe these objectives would like milestones in my journey towards achieving the aim of my research eventually answering my central research question.

Structure of study:

In order to successfully convey my research hypothesis and make my research a platform for academicians and students for further research and development, I have divided my study on the topic into five different chapters, where with each chapter I intend to clarify and support my research question by means of facts, historic performance and realistic forecasts. The structure can be studied with help of the illustration below:

Chapter 1

Background, introduction, problem discussion and aim of the study

Chapter 6

Bibliography

Chapter 4

Methodology and Analysis

Secondary Data

Primary Data

Analysis

Chapter 5

Conclusion and recommendation

Chapter 2

Literature Review: Quality measurement in service industry

Chapter 3

Introduction to TQM, theory and models, TQM in the UK hotel Industry

Chapter 7