The purpose of the proposed study is to assess and evaluate issues and challenges a UAE based hotel company faces relating to the implementation of service quality. Focus is on the assessment of company internal processes and systems used to implement (and manage) service quality; from corporate to hotel(s), departments, managers, supervisors, and front-line staff. Preliminary findings from the initial literature review suggest that there may be discrepancies between (i) management’s perception of service quality (vision / aspiration) and how the company manages (specifies) service quality implementation (processes and systems) as well as (ii) different perceptions of service quality and delivery at management and employee level. Therefore, a gap analysis of two (2) gaps of the extended SERVQUAL model / Model of Service Quality Gaps (Luk & Layton, 2002) will be used to assess and evaluate: a) “Gap 2: Management perceptions versus service specification b) Gap 7: Discrepancy between employee’s perceptions and management perceptions” (Shahin, 2006) The above is further detailed in section 3.4. of this document. Based on (Shahin, 2006), it is assumed that potential friction losses (i.e. gaps) exist in the form of different perceptions of service quality at different levels of the organisation; i.e. senior (corporate) management, hotel management, and hotel supervisory / line staff. The proposed study aims at identifying such potential ‘friction losses’ (where existing) with the objective to assess the underlying root causes (where feasible), and to present senior management with a set of key findings, conclusions, and recommendations on how to potentially overcome the issues identified. Data will be obtained using a combination of interviews (senior management, corporate and hotel level) as well as questionnaires (supervisors and line staff, hotel level). More specifically, interviews are planned with the following functions / positions: • Corporate: (i) CEO, (ii) VP Marketing / Sales, (iii) Area General Manager (Operations); (iv) VP Quality & Customer Service Excellence, (v) VP Learning and Development. • Hotel: (i) General Manager & Department Heads: (ii) Marketing / Sales, (iii) Operations (e.g. Front Office, Food & Beverage), and (iv) H/R (Training). To complement the above interviews, questionnaires will be used to obtain data from hotel line staff (same departments as mentioned above.). To facilitate the sourcing and data processing of a larger number of questionnaires, the intention is to use an online survey software such as e.g. SurveyMonkey (https://www.surveymonkey.com/).

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