1. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Front Office and the Guests:
Planning for Quality Service

2. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Lodging Is a Guest Service
Business
• Service (Hotel): The process of helping
guests by addressing their wants and needs
with respect and dignity in a timely manner.

3. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Developing a Quality Culture
• Quality: The consistent delivery of
products/services according to expected
standards.
• Empowerment: The act of granting
authority to employees to make key
decisions within the employees’ areas of
responsibility.

4. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Developing a Quality Culture
• Role of hotel senior managers in quality:
– They must consistently “walk and talk” the
philosophy of guest service
– They must empower staff members
– They must establish systems that allow defects
to be measured

5. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Developing a Quality Culture
• Continuous Quality Improvement (CQI):
Ongoing efforts within the hotel to better
meet (or exceed) guests’ expectations and to
find ways to perform work with better, less
costly, and/or faster methods.

6. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Developing a Quality Culture
• Planning tools:
– Vision
– Mission statement
– Long-range plan
– Business plan
– Marketing plan
– Operating budget

7. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Developing a Quality Culture
• Repeat Business: Revenues generated from
guests returning to the hotel as a result of
positive experiences on previous visits.
• Word-of-Mouth Advertising: Informal
conversations between persons as they
discuss their positive or negative
experiences at a hotel.

8. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Planning Guest Service Processes
• Service is not the same as servility.
• Helping guests requires addressing their
wants and needs:
– What do guests want?
– What do they need?

9. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Planning Guest Service Processes
• Benchmarking: The search for best
practices and an understanding about how
they are achieved in efforts to determine
how well a hospitality organization is
doing.
• Zero Defects: A goal of no guest-related
complaints that is established when guest
service processes are implemented.

10. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Planning Guest Service Processes
• Moments of Truth: Any (and every) time a
guest has an opportunity to form an
impression about the hospitality
organization. Moments of truth can be
positive or negative and may (but do not
have to) involve the property’s staff
members.

11. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Guest Service Is Delivered by
Employees
• Accountability: An obligation created
when a staff member is delegated duties/
responsibilities from higher levels of
management.

12. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Guest Service Is Delivered by
Employees
• Front office employees can be empowered
to help guests after they:
– Learn about their service mission
– Receive the training and obtain the resources
required to meet the needs of guests
– Show ongoing interest in providing exceptional
guest service

13. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Guest Service Is Delivered by
Employees
• Strategies for empowerment:
– Accepting the philosophy that supports
empowerment
– Pointing staff in the right direction
– Recognizing the role of the guest
– Removing the barriers that inhibit pride in work
– Monitoring work to assure that standards are
consistently attained

14. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Guest Service Is Delivered by
Employees
• For empowering to be effective, FOMs must:
– Treat employees like adults
– Respect employees as individuals
– Recognize that employees can make significant
contributions to the department and the hotel
– Ask for and utilize their employees’ suggestions
– Trust their staff members
– Allow employees to find pride and joy in the workplace

15. Woods et al., Professional Front Office
Management
© 2007 Pearson Education, Upper Saddle River,
NJ 07458. All Rights Reserved.
Guest Service Is Delivered by
Employees
Today’s FOMs do not wait until problems
become significant before they are
addressed!