6,139 research outputs found
Service quality of front-line staff in the South African hotel industry
ThesisThe hotel industry is a developing, dynamic, diverse and complex industry.
As competition becomes tougher, service quality becomes an increasingly
important issue for hoteliers. It is perceived to be the means by which a
hotel can gain a competitive edge in the marketplace, differentiate itself from
competitors, retain existing customers and attract new ones.
The overall goal of the study is to investigate the factors that influence the
quality of service rendered by front-line staff in the Free State and Northem
Cape hotels.
The population for this survey includes all graded hotels, motels,
guesthouses and guest farms within the central tourist region (Free State
and Northern Cape). A sampling frame was selected with the assistance of
SATOUR and a detailed address list of fifty-six graded hotels was obtained
from SATOUR. A postal survey was completed by means of a questionnaire
that was mailed to each one of the fifty-six hotels. The response rate was
51 .98%.
The service performance of the front-line staff in the hotel industry is the key
factor when assessing their customers' perception of quality. Hotel
managers should stress that everyone is part of a team and that the success
of the hotel depends on the performance of everyone involved. Effective
performances are influenced by work opportunities, motivation and the
working environment.
The key to competitive advantage in the hotel industry is largely a superior
plan that must fit the particular circumstances of front-line departments and
prevent the occurrence of poor service quality. Otherwise the service will lack direction and the quality of performance will vary considerably both
between hotels and also between individual staff members within hotels.
Dimensions of service quality can be quantified by obtaining measures of
expectations and perceptions of service standards. Analysing different
perspectives of the measurement will be conducive to the improvement of
service quality. The control of service quality is a management function to
ensure that the hotel's goals and standards are met. Both dimensions and
control of service quality can guarantee standardised service performance.
In-service training can be a key instrument in maintaining optimal level of
performance in a hotel. Staff cannot be expected to render high-quality
service unless they know what is expected of them. Training programs
should be designed to enable all the staff members to perform their service
well, and fully develop their capability. The training must be interesting,
detailed, and frequently reinforced. The training methods should be unique
and effective in producing results under different circumstances.
Continuous improvement of service quality is a vital task for both hotel
managers and staff. Market competition means that innovation is always
required in all of the hotel's activities, and all the components of service
operations must be taken into consideration to achieve this improvement.
The vast majority of the respondents indicated that personal service, and not
material service, is the most important aspect in the hotel industry.
Managers and front-line staff see a positive attitude towards customers as
the most important service quality factor.
From the survey it is clear that managers prefer their front-line staff to "tackle
difficult situations", while also caring for the basic characteristics, such as "accuracy". The managers of the participating hotels see promotion to a
higher position and money as the most important methods to motivate their
staff. Helping staff to become aware of their goals and letting the staff know
where they fit in best are the most important motivation factors, according to
the front-line staff.
Cleanliness, value for money and comfort are key elements in measuring
service quality in participating hotels. The main techniques to assess
service quality are cleanliness check-lists and customer comment forms.
Hotel managers and front-line staff indicated that on-the-job training is the
most important training method used in the participating hotels. It is also
clear that front-line staff need more formal training courses to improve their
knowledge and skills. According to the respondents, improved staff
performance and productivity are the most important results of effective
training.
Service quality is one of the key issues for survival in the hotel industry, and
is a major factor for achieving commercial success. Faced with rapidly
increasing competition, the South African hotel industry simply has no choice
but to improve quality through a well-designed training program
Search for Heavy Right-Handed Neutrinos at the LHC and Beyond in the Same-Sign Same-Flavor Leptons Final State
In this study we explore the LHC's Run II potential to the discovery of heavy
Majorana neutrinos, with luminosities between and fb in the
final state. Given that there exist many models for
neutrino mass generation, even within the Type I seesaw framework, we use a
simplified model approach and study two simple extensions to the Standard
Model, one with a single heavy Majorana neutrino, singlet under the Standard
Model gauge group, and a limiting case of the left-right symmetric model. We
then extend the analysis to a future hadron collider running at TeV
center of mass energies. This extrapolation in energy allows us to study the
relative importance of the resonant production versus gauge boson fusion
processes in the study of Majorana neutrinos at hadron colliders. We analyze
and propose different search strategies designed to maximize the discovery
potential in either the resonant production or the gauge boson fusion modes
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Existing UNIX kernels cannot easily deliver IP packets containing IP options to applications. To address this problem, we have defined and implemented a new protocol family called PFIPOPTION or the FreeBSD kernel. We have verified the implementation with some of the commonly used IP options. Measurements in kernel and user space showed that BSD socket I/O is the performance bottleneck
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