Service Quality in Tourism

This October, 2015, Travel Massive Slovenia held a get-together which focused on one of the key components of success in the tourism and hospitality industry – service quality.

The attendees were all Slovenian and came from a variety of tourism backgrounds, however, most of them were incoming /outgoing tourist guides. The workshop was prepared and presented in the Slovenian language.

Workshop Part 1:

In the first part of the  workshop, the presenter highlighted  3 types of  service quality:

Technical quality: (what the guest experiences in a materialistic way – e.g. hotel room, type of transportation, etc.) = the “what” concept

Functional quality: (how the tourism service is perceived by the guest; e.g. friendliness, responsiveness of receptionist, tour guide, travel agent etc.) = the “how” concept

Ethical quality: (the ability to trust a tour guide, image of hotel manager, etc.)

Workshop Part 2:

A discussion followed in the second part of the workshop, which included the following points:

1)     The service quality of the tourism and hospitality sector in Slovenia is generally improving.  One could say that the service is satisfactory, however, due to lacking the “how” concept,  it is perceived as far away from very good or excellent.

2)     In regards the situation in Slovenia, there is plenty of room for improvement to reach an appropriate level of functionality and also ethical quality which would, in turn, would ensure guest satisfaction  (e.g. how to apply guest relation management techniques which actually work). In today’s globalized world, technical quality is simply not enough. It is important, however, it does not  guarantee service quality if not combined with functional quality and ethical quality. Nothing is worse than bad service in a luxurious hotel.

3)     There is no such a thing as perfect service quality.  However, as tourism and hospitality professionals we must strive towards excellency in terms of doing   the best we can for our guests in any given situation.

“You don’t have to know everything. You just need to know where to find it.” – Einstein

4)     The way we treat ourselves, we treat our guests. In other words,  the more self-respect one has for his/herself, the more possibility to treat others in the same way.

“ We are ladies and gentlemen, serving ladies and gentlemen.” – Ritz Carlton

Suzana Pozenel is the founder and director of Anglotur.  Suzana uses Travel Massive to expand her business contacts worldwide and to find new customers. She enjoys meeting like-minded professionals in the field of teaching English for Tourism.