ACO501 – Accommodation Sales & Marketing Topic 3: SERVICE CHARACTERISTICS OF HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM MARKETING

Objectives After completing this topic students should be able to: Describe the service culture Identify the four service characteristics that affect the marketing of a hospitality or travel product.

The marketing manager’s aim is: To find Attract Keep And grow target customers by creating, delivering and communicating superior customer value. To design a winning marketing strategy, the marketing manager must answer two important questions: What customers will we serve? [What’s our target market]? How can we serve these customers best [what’s our value proposition]?

The Service Culture One of the most important tasks of a hospitality business is to develop the service side of the business, specifically, a strong service culture. The service culture focuses on serving and satisfying the customer. Creation of a service culture has to start with top management and flow down.E.g.an organization wants to deliver a quality product, so the management must support and reward attention to customer needs. It also means an organization hires employees with a customer service attitude, and then it works with employees. To instill the concept of service. The outcome of these efforts is employees who provide service to the customers.E.g. a guest requesting towels from the front desk is not just transferred to housekeeping. The request is taken by the employee at the front desk. She will then call housekeeping. But that is not the end of the involvement. She will check back with housekeeping in ten minutes to make sure the towels were delivered. If they were, she will call the guest to make sure the guest got the towels and ask if anything else she can do for her. This culture lets the employees know they are expected to deliver service to the guest and provides them with the tools and support they need to deliver good service.

Characteristics of Service Marketing Service marketers must be concerned with four characteristics of services: Intangibility Inseparability Variability Perish ability

Intangibility Unlike physical products, services cannot be seen, tasted, felt, heard, or smelled before they are purchased. Prior to boarding an airplane, passengers have nothing but an airline ticket and the promise of safe delivery to their destination. Members of a sales force cannot take a hotel room with them on a sales call. In fact, they do not sell a room. Instead, they sell the right to use a room for a specific period of time. When hotel guest leave, they nothing to show for the purchase but a receipt. “Robert Lewis observed that someone who purchase a service may go away empty – handed, but they do not go away empty-headed.”

Cont’d In the hospitality and travel industry, many of the products sold are intangible experiences. If we are going to buy a car, we can take it for a test drive. If we are going to buy a meal at a restaurant, we do not know what we will receive until we have experienced the food and service. To reduce uncertainty caused by service intangibility, buyers look for tangible evidence that will provide information and confidence about the service. The exterior of a restaurant or reception area is the first thing that an arriving guest sees. The condition of the grounds and the overall cleanliness of the restaurant or reception provide clues as how well each department operates. Tangibles provide signals as to the quality of the tangible service.  

Inseparability In most hospitality services, both the service provider and the customer must be present for the transaction to occur. The food in the restaurant may be outstanding but if the service has a poor attitude or provide inattentive service, customers will not be satisfied with their experience. Service Inseparability also means that customers are part of the product. A couple may have chosen a restaurant because it is quite & romantic, but if a group of loud and boisterous conventioneers is seated in the same room, the couple will be disappointed. Managers must manage their customers so they do not create dissatisfaction for others. Inseparability is that customers and employees must understand the service delivery system because they are coproducing the service. Customers must understand the menu items in a restaurant so that they get the dish they expect.

Variability Services are highly variable. Their quality depends on who provides them and when and where they are provided. There are several causes of service variability: Services are produced and consumed simultaneously, which limits quality control. Fluctuating demand makes it difficult to deliver consistent product during periods of peak demand. The high degree of contact between the service provider and the guest means that product consistency depends on the service provider skills and performance at the time of the exchange.

Cont’d Variability or lack of consistency, in the product is a major cause of customer disappointment in the hospitality industry. When variability is absent we have consistency, which is one of the key factors in the success of the service business. Consistency means that customers receive the expected product without unwanted surprises.

Cont’d Here are three steps hospitality firms can take to reduce variability and create consistency. Invest in good hiring and training procedures – Recruiting the right employees and providing them with excellent training is crucial, regardless of whether employees are highly skilled professionals or low skilled workers. Better trained personnel exhibit six characteristics: Competence

Cont’d Courtesy Credibility Reliability Responsiveness Communication Standardize the service – performance process throughout the organization – Diagramming the service delivery system in a service blueprint can simultaneously map out the service process, the point of customer contact, and the evidence of service of service from the customers point of view.

Cont’d Monitor customer satisfaction – Use suggestion and complaint systems, customer’s surveys, and comparison shopping. Hospitality companies have the advantage of knowing their customers. Perish ability – Services cannot be stored. A 100 room hotel that sells only 60 rooms on a particular night cannot inventory the 40 unused rooms and then sell 140rooms the next night. Revenue lost from not selling those 40 rooms is gone forever. Because of service perish ability, airlines and some hotels charge guests holding guaranteed reservations when they fail to arrive. if the hospitality companies are to maximize revenue, they must manage capacity & demand.