Managing Quality Service in Hospitality

Book excerpt: MANAGING QUALITY SERVICE IN HOSPITALITY: HOW ORGANIZATIONS ACHIEVE EXCELLENCE IN THE GUEST EXPERIENCE, International Edition teaches the concept of treating customers as guests and creating a "WOW" experience for them. Many other texts in this subject area skip over guest-focused service strategy in hospitality or service This text fully covers the topic of managing hospitality organizations by using academic studies and real life experience from companies like Walt Disney Company, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Darden Restaurants, Southwest Airlines and many others. The text is written in three sections: strategy, staffing, and systems.Each chapter includes at suggested hospitality activities for students, in which students are encouraged to visit local organizations to talk with guests, employees and managers to obtain a variety of perspectives on the guest experience. Other activities will have students going to the internet to visit established sites for hospitality organizations. Real and hypothetical hotels, restaurants, and other business types found in the hospitality industry are included as case studies giving the opportunity for discussion of hospitality concepts and principles. "Ethics in Business" segments encourage students to analyze ethical issues associated with chapter topics. Each chapter opens with learning objectives and discussion questions at the end. The included Instructor's Guide provides answers to the end-of-chapter questions and to the discussion questions following the chapter cases, additional field exercises in hospitality, true-false and multiple-choice quizzes, and additional material to assist the instructor in preparing course outlines and lesson plans, providing the best known about managing hospitality organizations big or small.