Running head: QUALITY SERVICE 1

Assignment 2: Providing Quality Service

Natalia Poplawska

Strayer University

HTM 150: Quality Service Assurance

Professor Marco Albarran

August 23, 2015

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Providing Quality Service in Luxury Hotels

According to research on the hospitality industry, luxury hotels are interconnected with

guests’ hopes and dreams thus they serve as a purpose of giving them an outlet to fantasize about

different lifestyles. (Chu, 2014, p. 7-10). To fulfill their basic function, luxury hotels developed a

long tradition of an excellent quality service and implemented unique standards in order to make

their guests feel like they are living a dream. For example, Ritz-Carlton will spend up to $2,000

to satisfy a guest. (www.riztcarlton.com). This paper illustrates how luxury hotels involve their

guests in providing a quality service, lays out some of the industry’s standards and provides

recommendations for improvement.

Involving the Guest

To start with, luxury hotels have developed techniques and strategies to involve their

guests in enhancing their own experience. Since the concept of luxury is based more on an

experience than a product, the luxury hotels need to understand guests’ expectations in order to

meet them. The literature review states that guests at luxury hotels tend to form lists of

expectations. (Peterhans, 2010, p.9). Those are valuable sources of ideas about the guests’ wants

and needs. Moreover, they provide managers of luxury hotels with things to implement or avoid

in order to satisfy their customers. To obtain the information, luxury hotels usually perform

qualitative research such as surveys, interviews, focus groups and observations. This creates an

opportunity to involve guests in creating their own experience. By forming the lists of

expectations, guests of the luxury hotels are a part of designing the facility and the service

delivery system. They partially set the service standards for the hotels. They feel included in the

decision-making process and eventually they become the co-producers of their experience. For

example, a business review in The Economic Times magazine states that luxury hotel groups

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are engaging the guest to help design their facilities and services. (Sathyanarayanan, and Khan,

2014). This quote is another evidence of luxury hotels being sensitive to their guests’ opinions. It

is also another example of involving guests in the process of the co-production of their own

experience.

Furthermore, luxury hotels involve their guests into being their unpaid consultants. The

guests give feedback about things that they liked or disliked about their experience after their

stay. Then, the managers of the luxury hotel can analyze the comments and implement changes

to improve the guests’ experience in the future. (Ford, Sturnman, & Heaton, 2012, p. 270). For

example, Ritz-Carlton, which is a luxury hotel, asks its guest to complete a short customer

satisfaction survey. The guests are asked to rate their overall experience, interaction with the

staff, cleanliness of the facilities, and timeliness of the service. They can also include additional

comments at the bottom of the survey. This methods of involving a guest creates an opportunity

for him or her to express an opinion and share recommendations for improvement in the future.

In addition to customer satisfaction surveys, Ritz-Carlton website provides information on how

to contact the hotel by phone or e-mail. This is a convenient way to involve a guest into

improving his or her future experience. (www.ritzcarlton.com ).

Service Standards

Service standards are the company’s explicit expectations for how the different aspects of

the service experience should be delivered every time to every guest. (Ford, Sturman, Heaton,

2012, p. 507). That means that the service standards define the company’s goals and reflect on its

mission and vision. They provide information to its customers about the way the things are done

and thus lay out what the guests should prepare for and execute from the employees in order to

experience the best possible service. According to Eastern Michigan University research, the

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service standards in luxury hotels provide the staff with guidelines as to what they should be

doing for their guests. Service standards should be set, implemented, and evaluated with the

guests in mind. These standards also help give the guests an idea as to what they should be

expecting. (Peterhans, 2010, p. 7). The quote implies that the service standards are like a road

map to quality service for employees and guests. They point out the details that differentiate

luxury hotels from regular hotels. They become a promise of providing an excellent experience.

They serve as guidelines of how to deliver the service to customers, meet their expectations and

consequently enhance their experience. They are there for the guests to review before choosing a

hotel. Finally, they lay out features that should be expected upon their arrival.

The luxury hotel industry uses two main service standards to meet customers’

expectations. They are: mystique and emotional engagement. The first service standard assures

the unique and memorable guest experience. It corresponds with explained earlier fulfilling the

luxury hotels’ function of creating a fantasy lifestyle and making a guest feel like he or she is

living a dream. For example, mystique is one of the gold standards that Ritz-Carlton stands by.

According to business review on this luxury hotel, every manager and front-line employee

carries a laminated card with 12 service values guidelines that are intended to help employees

create the mystique that attracts luxury travelers. They reinforce being proud of serving the

guests and remind about a promise of an exceptional customer service. Moreover, the hotel has

established a worldwide reputation for treating guests like royalty. This exclusive attitudes from

employees towards guests create a feeling of living a fantasy lifestyle and are not common in any

other type of hotels. (Gallo, 2007).

The second service standard in the luxury hotel industry is emotional engagement with

the guests. This means getting to know the guest, making sure all his or her needs are fully

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satisfied and providing a genuine care and comfort for the guests. This service standard is also a

part of the gold standards at the Ritz-Carlton luxury hotel. Its employees are trained to be warm

and sincere. They are also advised to use a guest’s name in greetings, conversations, and

farewells. Mentioned earlier business review illustrates that every employee, from the valet to

the front desk attendant to the waiter to the housekeeper, is warm, friendly, gracious, courteous,

and genuinely seems eager to make sure your stay is a memorable one. (Gallo, 2007). Building

strong relationships with guests is a way to assure their comeback and spreading a good

reputation. Emotional engagement is also a business strategy that luxury hotels use to please its

guests and provide an excellent and memorable experience. Getting personal with a guest and

showing interest in him or her in a positive and subtle way is a good method for enhancing the

guest’s experience.

Recommendations for Improvement

In hospitality industry, the “wow” elements are the characteristics and qualities that make

the experience more memorable. (Ford, Sturman, and Heaton, 2012, p. 477). The luxury hotel

industry can apply these “wow” elements to each of the service standards in order to make the

guests’ experience more memorable. First of all, to improve the mystique at luxury hotels, the

managers could pair up with interior designers and develop a theme to differentiate themselves

among other hotels. For example, luxury hotels could mimic historical or contemporary royal

residences to reinforce the feeling of living a dream. They could base their rooms, restaurants,

and hallways on the look of palaces such as Versailles. That would assure uniqueness and luxury

treatment for the eye. After all, luxury hotels serve a purpose of combining the art and beauty

with living.

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Second of all, to improve the emotional engagement with the guests, luxury hotels could

train their employees on proper communication with the guests as well as building relationships

with them. All employees should know how important being engaged and paying an interest in

guest’s stay is to maintain the customers and a good reputation. Front desk clerks especially

should be advised to make small talks and pay attention to details about the guests’ routines,

hobbies, expectations, etc. In addition, all other employees should always be warm and cordial to

all guests in all situations. That way they will be more emotionally engaged and establish strong

relations. Consequently, this assure more memorable experience for the guest because it will be

personal. According to the textbook, personalization of the experience is the key driver of an

outstanding service, as everyone wants to be special and treated like an individual. (Ford,

Sturman, and Heaton, 2012, p. 478).

Last but not least, the luxury hotel industry could better provide information to its guests

by developing interactive websites where guests can engage into conversations with employees

and other guest before they arrive. That will increase the personalization of the guests’

experience. Moreover, all important details, location, contact information and prices should be

available on the hotel’s website as well. In addition, a guest could receive a tour around the hotel

and its amenities during the first visit so he or she becomes familiar and comfortable with the

facility. Finally, the luxury hotels should advertise themselves more. They could have posters

and flyers in excusive malls, stores or beauty salons, as people from the target market for luxury

hotels visit sophisticated places like that.

In conclusion, the luxury hotel industry demonstrates a various ways of involving their

guests in providing the quality service. It has also established service standards such as mystique

and emotional engagement in order to meet the customers’ expectations.

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References

Chu, Y. (2014). A review of studies on luxury hotels over the past two decades. Iowa State

University. Graduate Theses and Dissertations. 1-80. Retrieved from Strayer Database.

Ford, R. C., Sturnman, M. C., & Heaton, C. P. (2012). Managing quality service in hospitality.

Clifton Park, NY: Cengage Learning.

Gallo, C. (2007). How Ritz-Carlton maintains its mystique. Small Business. Bloomberg.

Peterhans, S. (2010). Standards, training, and guests’ perception in luxury hotels. Eastern

Michigan University. Senior Honors Theses. 1-48. Retrieved from Strayer Database.

Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company. (2015). www.ritzcarlton.com

Sathyanarayanan, D., and Khan, S. (2014). Hotels accept guests' suggestions; Women-friendly

rooms, more charging outlets added. The Economic Times.