This chapter is planned and designed to enable readers to explore the concept of quality management in the hospitality sector, while improving efficiency and competitiveness in 21st century globalised business environment. In fact, quality is meeting or exceeding customer expectations consistently. To achieve this aim, companies should recognise all the service qualities that add to customer value and lead to satisfaction and loyalty. The readers of this chapter will be able to increase understanding of quality management systems and processes within the hospitality industry and how to improve and sustain organisational performance, to gain a competitive edge in this transition period to the green economy. Also, the chapter provides readers with the relevant knowledge needed for quality assessment schemes, national /international benchmarking standards, and regulatory agencies.
TopDefining Quality
Table 1.Activity 1:
What do you understand by ‘quality’? How would you define it? |
The word ‘quality’ derives from the Latin ‘quales’ which can be translated in ‘like’, referring to similarities between objects. Juran (1998) defined quality as ‘fitness for use’ which, he said can only be determined by the customer. This makes the concept difficult for manufacturers to use because the definition of fitness for use will vary from one customer to another. He set out five quality characteristics on which fitness for use was based:
- •
Technological
- •
Psychological
- •
Time-orientated
- •
Contractual
- •
Ethical
The quality of a manufactured product, such as a car, may be defined by reference to only two or three of these characteristics, e.g. strength (technological), beauty (psychological) or reliability (time-oriented). On the other hand, a service, such as the provision of accommodation, may involve all of those characteristics, e.g. staff customer relationship (ethical) and a guarantee of delivery (contractual).
Earlier (1974), Juran also pioneered the concept of internal customer/supplier relationships. In this idea, he envisaged that all the people who work in an organisation are providing products or services to one another. This can be applied to information flow in an office setting or to production on the shop floor. Where different workers are involved at different phases of a manufacturing process, they are dependent on one another to do a good job. Juran described this interdependence as an internal customer relationship.
The International Organisation for Standardisation (ISO) mention within the S.R. ISO 8402 – 1986 that the quality is made of a number of characteristics which make the product or the service able to satisfy the need of consumer.
Goetsch and Davis (2014, pp. 2) define the quality as “a dynamic state associated with product, services, people, processes and environments that meet customer needs and expectations and help produce superior value.”