Challenging Aspects of a Hotel Receptionists Job - Assignment Example

Assignment 2 – Case Study 1. Describe five challenging aspects of a hotel receptionist’s job as illustrated in this case study. To meet this challenging role what kinds of personality traits are desired and why? As seen from the case study one of the key challenges of a hotel receptionist is dealing with a wide range of customers with diverse behaviours. It is clear from the cases study that Mr. Patel was one of the guests or customers with different behaviours from those of other customers. Thus dealing with customers drawn from different backgrounds and with different behaviours is one of the main challenges of a hotel receptionist (Wijesinghe, 2007). The second challenge of a hotel receptionist is maintaining a balance between pleasing the customer and achieving the objectives of maximising sales. It is evident from the cases study that customers are fond of requesting for discounts and waiver of charges from their bills once they consume foods and drink their most preferred juices and wines in the hotels. This poses great challenges to the hotel receptionist who struggles between pleasing the customer by waiving charges and giving some discounts on the bills and pleasing the employer by ensuring that customers pay their bills in full (Wijesinghe, 2007). This is particularly difficult when customers such as Mr. Patel come into the picture The third challenge faced by hotel receptionist as evident in the cases study is maintaining emotions down in order to reduce conversations with rude and abusive customers. This is particularly true when abusive customers such as Mr. Patel attack the receptionist because of a little issue that can be solved through dialogue such as problems existing in the bill. The fourth challenge is maintaining a professional profile in an environment where people perceive a receptionist as a low profile person. The fifth challenge is diplomatically solving issues with abusive customers and minimising disruptions brought by such customers while maintaining respect towards the customers. Receptionist must have strong personality traits in order to deal with the above challenges. One of the personality traits is maintaining honesty with the hotel superiors and seeking honest support from the hotel managers in difficult situations especially those situations initiated by the customers (Larry, 2008). 2. Describe three precautions that the hotel took to prevent the conflict from escalating. One of the precautions taken by the hotel to prevent the situation from escalating was dealing with Mr. Patel from his room instead of having him come to the receptionist desk. This minimised the amount of abuses and confrontations that would have ensued between Mr. Patel and the hotel receptionists. It was also important to take this precaution because the time lag between delivery of the bill to Mr. Patel and getting the response from Mr. Patel gave the receptionist an ample time to prepare for any eventuality or distress response from Mr. Patel. It is obvious that dealing with unreasonable customers calls for an adequate time to prepare for any unreasonable responses that might come from the customer as was evident with Mr. Patel. Hence, dealing with Mr. Patel from his hotel room was an important precaution because it provided the receptionist with adequate time to prepare for unreasonable responses from Mr. Patel. The second precaution was choosing to give in to the customers’ demands and requests such as waiving charges and offering discounts in order to have the customer out of the hotel within the shortest time possible (York, 2006). Unreasonable customers are hard to deal with. Maintaining such customers in the hotel room due to unresolved issues contributes to loss of revenues and time. It is evident from the case study that Mr. Patel was not in a hurry to leave the room. Had the hotel failed to meet Mr. Patel’s demands and requests he would have continued to stay in the hotel thus wasting time for the receptionist to perform other roles and also wasting revenues in terms of the amount of waivers and discount offered on the foods and drinks consumed in the hotel. Hence, to prevent the conflict from escalating the hotel management decided to sing to the tune of the customer in order to have the customer leave the hotel as soon as possible. The third precaution taken by the hotel was alerting the hotel staff to speak in unison and avoid any form of conflicting messages that would made Mr. Patel to suspect that he was being denied some services in the hotel. This was a praiseworthy approach because sending conflicting messages to the customer would have given Mr.Patel a strong case to launch against the hotel staff by accusing the hotel staff of negligence and mistrusting him. Hence, in order to prevent the Mr.Patel from perceiving the hotel staff as being deceptive and manipulative the hotel used communication between departments as the tool to win over the customer. 3. Explain whether you believe that staff should put up with Mr Patel’s verbal abuse, because of the slogan “the guest is always right” The increasing competition in the hospitality industry has resulted into the industry players going to any length to please their guests without considering the plight of the receptionist. The hospitality industry players find it convenient to sacrifice their staff for the sake of satisfying and treating the customers according to the requirements of the customers. It is evident that in the contemporary competitive business environment industry players have gone to the length of encouraging female staff to give into the sexual demands of the guests in the five star hotels. However, it is evident from the case study that some guests do not respect the dignity of the people that serve them in the five star hotels. The use of abusive and uncouth language on hotel staff is uncalled and the hotel management should realize that no matter how best some guest (example, Mr. Patel) are served and treated in their hotels they will never appreciate and might result into immeasurable suffering on the part of the hotel. In this regard, the hotel staff should not put up with abusive customers such as Mr.Patel whose valuation is insignificant because he is not a regular customer in the hotel. The hotel management should understand that the slogan “the customer is always right” is interpreted by customers negatively especially those customers that have ample experience of treating hotel staff like rubbish in other hotels. In this regard, the hotel management should understand that not all customers are always right and some customers need and require guidance on how things should be done in the hotel. 4. Explain whether you believe that being servile is part and parcel of any hospitality server’s job Being servile means stooping down and obeying the customers/guests and the hotel management as well as serving the guest and the management from the bottom of the heart even when abuses are hauled on you (Houey, 2004). In the contemporary hospitality industry the concept of servitude has been emphasized so much that hotel staff are required to maintain a continuous positive encounter with the guests for the whole period the guests stay at the hotel. Any inconsistence in service delivery is interpreted by the customer negatively which provides the guest with a loophole to launch complains and demand for waiver of charges for the inconsistent services provided to the guest by the hotel staff. Servitude can be compared with “accuracy for an accounting or auditing firm” of even “smartness” in the fashion industry (Houey, 2004). In this regard, it is important for the hotel staff to be servile because this is the only magnet that attracts guests to a particular hotel and makes the hotel stands out in the competitive market. It is an important benefit for the guests to come to a particular hotel and not in other hotels. The term “hospitality experience” means that guests seek for hospitable treatment once they arrive at the hotels and the only way to deliver hospitable services to the guests is through servility in service delivery. Hence, servile is part and parcel of any hospital server which means that the hotel staff should embrace and accept it wholeheartedly. 5. Read article 7.1 section on a script and explain why the functional scripts currently used in service settings fail to capture the complexity of the experience inherent in the dramatic script. The concept of using “functional scripts” to enable the hotel staff to equip themselves with the much required skills on how to deal with troublesome, abusive and difficult guests may not yield the expected and anticipated benefits in the situation seen in the case study. The reason is that whenever a guest calls in a hotel he/she anticipates getting hospitable treatment which means extraordinary experience as a guest in the hotel. Functional performance that is scripted would obviously result into a serious compromise of the services offered to the customers. According to Harris et al (2003, pg. 186) the main objective of functional scripts is to ensure that there is adequate control over the performance of the hotel staff in serviced delivery. However, it is evident that many guests in five star hotels desire to have control over the services offered to them. This makes them free to demand for improvement or upgrading of services offered to them at any given time. Hence, it is obvious that functional scripts would be perceived by guests as a limitation to their desire to control over the services offered to them and thus it would not be welcomed by many guests (Lord and Kernam, 1987). Hence, functional scripts fail to capture the complexity of the experience inherent in the dramatic script because many guests do not approve of any form of limitation that the hotel management might expose to the guest’s desire to control the types and quality of services offered to them. It is imperative to note that dramatic script is developed on a holistic platform and it is multi layered making it more focussed on the experience in the hospitality industry. This is because dramatic script is based on developing tools for understanding the customers’ behaviours holistically such as customers’ emotions and customers’ motivation (Harris et al. 2003, pg. 187). References Harris, R. Harris, K & Baron, S (2003). ‘Theatrical service experiences: dramatic script development with employees’, International Journal of Service Industry Management, vol. 14, no. 2, pp 184-199. (Also referred to as Reading 7.1 in Managing the hospitality experience TOUR 2005 E-readings) Houey, M. (2004). Maintaining discipline in hospitality industry: A common approach. New York: Sage Publishers. Larry, M. (2008). Challenges in guest satisfaction in the hospitality industry, Journal of management, vol 12, No.6. Lord, RG and Kernam, MC (1987). “Scripts as determinants of purposeful behaviour in organisations”, Academy of Managemet Review, vol. 12, pp. 265-77. Wijesinghe, G (2007). “Episode 8: We don’t want any troublemakers in our hotel”, Managing the Hospitality Experience: case booklet. Adelaide, Document Services, University of South Australia. York, K. (2006). Insightful experiences in the hospitality industry, Academy of Management Review, vol 7, pp 45-56. Read More