Current Situation
- Client: hotel industry
- Number of service points: 6
- Territorial distribution: coastal area
- Issues: Decrease in the number of hotel guests and a decline in the percentage of those using gastronomic services.
Objectives
- Evaluate the staff's behavior concerning the adopted standards and procedures in the facilities.
Execution
- The study was conducted in six coastal accommodation facilities managed by Company X.
- Each accommodation facility underwent a one-time and multi-day participant observation by two independent auditors acting as hotel guests.
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Observation included:
- Reception, gastronomy, and entertainment service
- Interaction and communication with hotel staff
- Quality of service in the entertainment section
- Aesthetics and functionality of selected spaces and places in the facility, including the aesthetics and functionality of the living area.
- Auditors were appropriately selected using a recruitment questionnaire to assess knowledge in hotel service.
- After selecting auditors, training was conducted on service standards in individual facilities and on ways to assess staff behavior against established standards.
- Auditors assessed various aspects of service quality on a prepared questionnaire. Transcriptions of conversations with staff and recordings containing auditor observations were also prepared. Aesthetics and functionality were documented in the form of photographs.
- Partial reports were prepared for each surveyed facility, along with a summary report.
Results
The research revealed irregularities resulting from insufficiently profiled service standards for a specific type of customer. Although staff behavior generally complied with service standards, mystery guests identified difficulties in staff dealing with difficult customers, whose behavior proved troublesome for other hotel guests. This impacted the overall assessment of the offered standards in the facilities.
The research also allowed for more flexibility in serving specific meals in gastronomy, resulting in a 12% increase in the percentage of guests using catering services accordingly.
