Hospitality Characteristics

To identify the unique characteristics of the hospitality and tourism product and discussing their implications in achieving service excellence in the Hospitality Industry.

Introduction

Service excellence is an extremely important for Hospitality and Tourism Industry as the cornerstone of the foundation of this business. Business depends on customers, they are number one for prosperity and for future development of a customer- focused Industry. Quoting Sarah Cook, that most people’s definitions will be based on personal experience: “A definition of good service is meeting customer’s expectations. Excellent service is exceeding customer expectations. To provide world class service, the need to improve the total relationship with the customer,

The first unique characteristic is intangibility. Phillip Kotler writes “services that cannot be seen, tasted, felt, heard, or smelled before purchase".

The nature of the hospitality product means that there is often little direct contact between the provider and the guest before the product delivery period. Providers may not be aware of the complete set of needs of the guest while the guest has only limited knowledge of the product on offer. The danger in this situation is a mismatching of needs, giving the potential that the guest may be dissatisfied early or that the product delivery is creating negativity which can be passed on to follow guests or translated into poor reviews on websites such as TripAdvisor.

This particular characteristic is called intangibility and it is considered to be a high risk to the success of a hospitality or tourism based business, because tangibilizing the intangible stimulates future feedbacks, recommendations, “word of mouth” and publicity whether positive or

The employees of organizations become part of the service where he or she performs such services. All staff represents their hotel, restaurant or hospitality business. They are building and reinforcing the strong image and corporate brand of the company and their behaviour should be in accordance with the corporate rules, procedures and regulations. A hospitality company should have a strong corporate culture and standards based on its mission, vision and values. A great example is at The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C., whose motto is ‘We are Ladies and Gentlemen serving Ladies and Gentlemen." This motto exemplifies the anticipatory service provided by all staff members. One of the service values is: “I am proud to be Ritz-Carlton”. The Gold standards of Ritz-Carlton are the foundation of the company. They encompass the values and philosophy by which the hotels in group have operated since their inception in the early 1900s being “the king of hoteliers and hotelier to