Employment of Quality Techniques for the Improvement of Hotel Services

Research on QFD has steadily increased over the past several decades. Consequently, there is a wide array of research documentation the using cross-functional team approach to develop new products or services or to upgrade the existing ones. QFD has been used as a planning tool that carries the voice of the customer all the way through product development to the market place. QFD is a recent addition to the quality professional’s tool kit, with wide applicability across a range of industries. It has been applied to the design of educational Intranet, apartment construction, food and beverage sales, design of educational courses, electronic retailing and the design of virtual enterprise. Unfortunately, papers reflecting the use of QFD in hotel systems are rare. Yet, the hotel industry is one of the most important service sub-sectors in developing countries. Hotels employ thousands of people and generate billions of dollars annually in valueadded service. Any quality improvement in this industry will have a significant effect on costs and market competitiveness. Most hotels are interested in strategically improving their quality of service (QOS). Changing market trends in the industry call for high quality and efficient service processes that will promote cost reduction, customer satisfaction, and fulfillment of high quality standards. The lack of integration in quality improvement programmes in the industry often leads to poor service to customers, relationship problems, and loss of customer’s confidence. These are progress-retarding problems facing the hotel industry today. The current research applies QFD to a hotel in a developing country. It helps in identifying the variables that have important impacts on hotel systems and the final QOS within this industry. On the examination of the house of quality, the following are found: first, the customer requirement of laundry service and emergency car maintenance are two attributes that have not been fully perceived or previously appreciated. For the customer requirement food menu, the “importance value” was high (5), but the engineering characteristics did not affect it much, as evidenced from the correlation with information board. Third, the customer attribute low price was only affected by engineering characteristics Quality of food and meal sale price. This indicates that important engineering characteristics might be missing. First, we attempt to quantify the relationship between what the customer understands by low price. Next, the customer attributes – water availability, bathroom amenities, food menu and good atmosphere – were rated extremely important. The hotel management should concentrate on providing these attributes at the minimum acceptable quality level. This study adds to the empirical evidence supporting the feasibility of applying QFD in service systems by examining the case for hotel in a developing country. The future holds promising results for researchers and practitioners engaged in hotel QFD research. Future studies may save billions of dollars in organizational expenditure, through the development of scientific approaches in QFD-based research in hotel systems.

کلیدواژه ها:

Hotel Industry ، Quality Improvement ، QFD ، Quality of Service ، House of Quality ، Customer ، Service System