Hospitality Essay Example for Free

Hospitality Essay I. Case Background Serving people is the foremost activity in hospitality, and being expertly served is the reasonable expectation of a guests. If theres any place where customers are likely to be paying attention to the type of service they receive, its within the hospitality industry. From restaurants to hotels, it is the job of the hospitality service provider to maintain customer happiness and satisfaction. Nowadays, it is not enough for a hospitality business to know that their guests were happy just receiving â€Å"thank you† or getting service with a smile, although it is the proper etiquette. Customer satisfaction isn’t just about the service. Satisfied customers are looking for a memorable experience and a dynamic service from the establishment they visited. Customer service begins the moment an individual calls your business, either to make a reservation or to gather information. High quality service means meeting and exceeding your guests expectations to feel warmly welcomed. While high-quality customer service requires that employees interact with guests in a friendly manner. They must perform their daily duties with a smile, responding appropriately to the guests needs. Complaints must be handled in an empathetic manner. When the guest is satisfied with his experience, the company earns revenue, return visits, new clientele and positive recommendations. One good thing if an establishment was able to exceed the expectations of the guest is customer loyalty. Customer loyalty is one of the most important keys to the restaurant’s success. Happy customers are the loyal customers. Not only is it important for a hospitality establishment to provide stellar service, but awesome products as well. A customer who has to continuously wait for a restaurant or a hotel, for example, to do their part may grow tired, no matter how loyal, and venture off to their competition. Keep customers loyal by focusing on them at all times. Customer loyalty leads to higher customer retention rate and to continuous business success even in situations where failure to satisfy customers would normally cause an early termination of business. Therefore the restaurant operation must focus not only on attracting first-time customers but also on developing long term relationship with customers. One of the negative results of an unsatisfied guest is the customer complaint. This is one thing that hospitality businesses try to avoid. Fairness is typically the biggest concern of customers who have lodged a service complaint. Because a service failure implies unfair treatment of the customer, service recovery has to re-establish justice from the customers perspective. Handling customer complaints doesnt have to always be a battle, with the right tools and responses an establishment can use complaints to their advantage. A hospitality establishment should always know how to properly handle customer complaints, this is to assure that the complaint of the guest was addressed properly and they will still be considered a repeat customer on their establishment. Giving the customers an outlet for telling the establishment about their poor experiences is one thing they could do. And make it a point to correct issues that went wrong and look into those that could stand some improvement. II. Time Context A week after the appointment of the new General Manager of Pauli’s Restaurant and Brewery, they received a comment in their corporate Web site from one of their customers. The problem takes place when one of the loyal customer experience lousy service when they dined in one Saturday night before they went into a theater and have a movie night. After experiencing that kind of service, they posted a comment in the customer feedback section of the website of the establishment so that they could address the problem immediately. III. Viewpoint In any establishment, managers should always take charge when there is problem regarding the guests. They should act immediately to the complaint of a guest to reduce the occurrence of much bigger problem that could hurt the operation of the establishment. After the manager did the first step, the staffs of the establishment should support the action of the manager to ensure that the problem can be avoided in the future. The overall in charge of the problem is the whole team in the establishment. If they don’t work and help one another, surely the problem they encounter in the past would still occur. IV. Problem Statement Pauli’s Restaurant and Microbrewery is a famous pub in the city. It has established a good position in the market. They have loyal customers who are repeatedly coming back to their establishment. The establishment operates a corporate Web site; one of its features is a customer feedback section that is sent directly to the corporate Vice President and to the appropriate general manager. Once they received a feedback from a customer where they complained about the lousy service they experienced when they dined in at the restaurant one evening. The guest was really disappointed because it is their first time to experience that kind of ridiculously slow service from the establishment usually they do not experience from their past dine in.