Report on Guest Services Strategies and hospitality service provision

Upon the successful completion of this module, the student should be able to demonstrate the ability to:

Understand the importance of Guest Services strategies and appreciate their use in understanding guest needs and the value of empowerment and guest service measurements.

Evaluate the range of hospitality services and provision in terms of the changing nature of consumer demands, understanding operational systems and resource provision required to deliver service excellence.

TASK DESCRIPTION

Within this report, you will consider why hospitality should appear effortless and spontaneous for the guest, including customer service standards, how they vary and how this relates to brand-consistency standards.

You must include the five service systems that are:

• Preparation,
• Execution,
• Guest preference and experience tracking,
• Recovery and
• Continuous improvement.

You should include your own recommendations for customer experience failure recovery for a business. How would these be implemented and what are the benefits? Also, the skills that are needed by hotel personnel to allow them to maximise the quality of guest experience and the recommendation that you would make to allow them to achieve this.

Remember that within any organisation the best system that can be introduced is one that allows recognition of failures and a system to rectify this- consider that within your writing and especially within your conclusion to the report.

Within report format you must include the following:

You must present your report with a front page, this to include:

• The title of the report – The Secret Weapons of Service Report.
• Your name
• The module title and number
• Your lecturer’s name

Your report should also include a clear contents page and headings throughout.

Microsoft Word settings:

Please use:

• Arial Font 12
• 1.5 line spacing
• Justify Text

You must include in-text citations, along with a Reference List that conforms to IHM Referencing Guide (available on the Module Moodle page).

NOTE: The guidance offered below is linked to the five generic assessment criteria overleaf.

1.Engagement with Literature Skills

Your work must be informed and supported by scholarly material that is relevant to and focused on the task(s) set.    You should provide evidence that you have accessed an appropriate range of sources, which may be academic, governmental and industrial; these sources may include academic journal articles, textbooks, current news articles, organisational documents, and websites.  You should consider the credibility of your sources; academic journals are normally highly credible sources while websites require careful consideration/selection and should be used sparingly.   Any sources you use should be current and up-to-date, mostly published within the last five years or so, though seminal/important works in the field may be older.  You must provide evidence of your research/own reading throughout your work, using a suitable referencing system, including in-text citations in the main body of your work and a reference list at the end of your work.

Importance of Guest Services strategies

You should show a wide level of reading from a variety of sources including textbooks, academic journals and websites.  You must reference academic sources for theory.

2.Knowledge and Understanding Skills

At level 4, you should be able to demonstrate knowledge of the underlying concepts and principles associated with your area(s) of study.  Knowledge relates to the facts, information and skills you have acquired through your learning.  You demonstrate your understanding by interpreting the meaning of the facts and information (knowledge). This means that you need to select and include in your work the concepts, techniques, models, theories, etc. appropriate to the task(s) set.  You should be able to explain the theories, concepts, etc. to show your understanding.  Your mark/grade will also depend upon the extent to which you demonstrate your knowledge and understanding.

Make reference to relevant theories/models.  You do not need to explain these in depth, but introduce them briefly before analysing and applying them.

3.Cognitive and Intellectual Skills

You should be able to present, evaluate and interpret qualitative and quantitative data, in order to develop lines of argument and make sound judgements in accordance with basic theories and concepts of your subject(s) of study. You should be able to evaluate the appropriateness of different approaches to solving problems related to your area(s) of study and/or work. Your work must contain evidence of logical, analytical thinking. For example, to examine and break information down into parts, make inferences, compile, compare and contrast information.  This means not just describing what! But also justifying: Why? How? When? Who? Where? At what cost? You should provide justification for your arguments and judgements using evidence that you have reflected upon the ideas of others within the subject area and that you are able to make sound judgements and arguments using data and concepts.  Where relevant, alternative solutions and recommendations may be proposed.

The task specifies what is required of you.  Take care to answer only the question set fully. You may find it helpful to keep the task to hand when writing to remain focused on it.  Make sure you draw conclusions from the content of your work and provide a direct answer to the question in summary at the end of the task.

4.Practical Skills

At level 4, you should be able to apply the basic underlying concepts and principles to evaluate and interpret these within the context of your area of study. You should be able to demonstrate how the subject-related concepts and ideas relate to real world situations and/or a particular context.  How do they work in practice?  You will deploy models, methods, techniques, and/or theories, in that context, to assess current situations, perhaps to formulate plans or solutions to solve problems, or to create artefacts.  This is likely to involve, for instance, the use of real-world artefacts, examples and cases, the application of a model within an organisation and/or benchmarking one theory or organisation against others based on stated criteria.  

You should deploy your chosen techniques, models and/or theories and wider reading to illustrate the points you make.  Where possible you should show awareness of the practical limitations of the models selected.

5.Transferable Skills for Life and Professional Practice

Your work must provide evidence of the qualities and transferable skills necessary for employment requiring the exercise of some personal responsibility.  This includes demonstrating: that you can communicate the results of your study/work accurately and reliably, and with structured and coherent arguments; that you can initiate and complete tasks and procedures, whether individually and/or collaboratively; fluency of expression; clarity and effectiveness in presentation and organisation. Work should be coherent and well-structured in presentation and organisation.