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In spite of lots of controversies, in august 2006 Air Transport World Magazine announced that Ryanair was the most profitable airline in the world on the basis of its operating and net profit margins (case study). The purpose of this report is to undertake an environmental analysis of European airline industry with implications to Rynair. On the bases of environmental analysis Ryanair’s success and its sustainability in European budget airline industry is critically assessed.

An environmental analysis is undertaken on the European airline industry with implication to Ryanair using tools such as PESTEL analysis, Porter five forces, SWOT analysis and Strategic group analysis.

Pestel analysis is one of the important tools to analyse environmental factors influencing organisation’s strategy. PESTEL stands for political, economic, social, technology, environmental and legal. It is important for organisation to analyse how these factors are changing and how they are likely to change in the future (Johnson et. al, 2009). PESTEL analysis is used to analysis macro-environment in which Ryanair operates and to identify key-drivers of change.

Government policies can influence to a large extend on airline industry. After the terrorist attract in 2001 UK authorities imposed serve security measures at all airports. As a result of this Ryanair suffered a loss of 1.9 million Euros on reduced bookings. Airport and handling charges was increased by 21% in 2006, which could put more pressure on budget airline like Ryanair. In 2005 EU regulations came into effect, which forced the airline to refund fares to passengers in case of delays, cancellations or denied boarding.

Economic climate plays a vital role in influencing airline industry. During time of recession people refer to reduce their expenses which could reflect on number of people travelling in a flight, they may use any other alternative transport.

The main economic factors that concerns airline industry is increase in fuel price, which forced some of the airlines to include fuel surcharges into airfares. Ryanair guaranteed its customers that it will not add fuel surcharges into their tickets. Current fluctuation in exchange rate is another issue in airline industry. The fuel price was always quoted in US dollars therefore there is always a risk in converting, as Ryanair deals with Euros. Ryanair had not hedged early, so it was paying $70 per barrel of oil up to October 2009 while other airlines were paying $50 to $60 per barrel of oil.

Social:

Social factors include social life style, demographic, perceptions which could also influence airline industry. It is expected that by 2012 there will be more old people in European countries; this will be the key to all airlines to come up with something special for them. Ryanair charged up to ?18 for using wheelchair and check in baggage and advertising standards rebuked the airline for misleading advertisement complaint, all these could create a negative impact on customers.

Technological:

With new technological improvement flying has became a new experience for passengers. New flights, online boarding, in flight entertainment system are some of the technological advancement in airline industry. In 2001 Ryanair launched its website which facilitates car & hotel rentals, rail services and travel insurance, all at low prices. The airline website was largest travel website in Europe and fifth most recognised brand on Google, offering huge potential in E-commerce and advertising revenues. Ryanair brought new Boeing 737-800 aircraft which is more environmentally-friendly, reducing fuel consumption by 2%.

Environmental:

The airline industry is been accused by various social groups for emissions of carbon. Aviation represents 2.6% of carbon emissions in the EU, Oxford university study predicted that carbon from aviation would accelerate. Therefore airline industry was asked to play environmental taxes which could put more pressure on all airlines. Ryanair protested against this taxation arguing aviation contributes only small proportion of carbon emissions.

Legal:

Ryanair filed two cases against UK government: one for claim to compensate the carrier for lost flights and bookings; another was for increase in insurance costs for all commercial airlines. The carrier was sued by Sweden’s prime minister and a former foreign minister for placing their photos in one of company’s advertising campaign without getting their permission.

Porter’s Five Forces

The five forces model was introduced by Porter, which helps to identify the sources of competition in an industry or sector. Although initially used with business in mind, it is of value to most organisations (Johnson and Scholes, 2002). Porter’s five forces model is used to analyse the level of competition existing in airline industry.

Competitive Rivalry:

The low-cost airline market is very competitive compared to other markets. The concept of low cost can be easily copied by rivals, which leads to high competition in the industry. Two major low-cost airlines (EasyJet and Ryanair) have always avoided direct competition by serving different routes. There is high level of competition for Ryanair and other established airlines in getting landing permissions and departure slots.

Bargaining Power of Customers:

Customers who prefer low-cost airline are often price sensitive and tend to switch over to another airline. Now days all airlines are online which has made customers relatively easier and cheaper for them to more to another airline. Moreover they try to maintain some sort of loyalty towards the airline in which they frequently fly.

Bargaining Power of Suppliers:

The major cost for all airline industry is fuel prices, which is constantly increasing. There is no alternative to aviation fuel therefore oil companies has high bargaining power. Boeing supplies plans to Ryanair, if they have to switch to another supplier it will cost them high since they have to retrain its pilots. Bigger airports like Heathrow has a high bargaining power than smaller airports, thus it will be difficult for Ryanair to operate from these airports.

Threat of New Entrants:

The low-cost model can be easily adopted by others and can enter into the market. There are also some barriers for the new entrants like requires huge capital investment, availability of slots and price war existing in routes where other low-cost airlines operates. The new entrants have to get prior authorisations which are not easily these days and need to setup strong base in order to survive in the competition.

Substitutes:

Not all people prefer to travel by flights. Especially during time of recession most people avoid flights and travel by other cheap alternatives like travel by sea or by trains or by ferries or by cars. There are some people who may be aerophobia (Fear of flying), these people try to avoid flying and choose other alternative.

SWOT Analysis

SWOT analysis summarises the key issues from the business environment and the strategic capability of an organisation that are most likely to impact on strategy development. It aims at identifying the extent to which the current strengths and weakness are relevant in dealing with threats in the environment (Johnson and Scholes, 2002). It is very useful tool in environmental analysis, which helps to find out strengths, weakness and opportunities & threats of Ryanair. Strengths and weakness are concerned in detail to analyse current position of the company, complete SWOT analysis can be found in Appendix 3.

Strengths:

Ryanair’s CEO Michael O’Leary is one of the main strength to the airline as he often comes up with new ideas and was credited with single-handedly transforming European air transport. Ryanair always operates from small airports thus reducing their costs on airport charges and gaining suitable departure SLOTS. In 2000, Ryanair launched its website www.Ryanair.com, which facilitated car and hotel rentals, rail services and travel insurance and all at low prices (Box and Byus, 2007). The airline uses Boeing 737-800 which is more environmental friendly and also reduces fuel consumption by 2%.

Weakness:

Ryanair is always criticised for charging for wheelchair and check-in luggage which could leaves a negative image on the customers. The staffs and crew members are not well trained therefore not customer friendly. Ryanair always avoided bigger airports and concentred on small regional airports, which could be a drawback for the company for future expansion. Other important concern for Ryanair is its relationship with authorities, the airline often involved in some kind of crash with them.

Strategic Group Analysis

Strategic groups are organisations within an industry with similar strategic characteristics, following similar strategies or competing on similar bases. There are many different characteristics that distinguish between strategic groups but these are classified into two major categories: scope of organisation’s activities and resource commitment (Johnson et. al., 2008). The main competitors to Ryanair are EasyJet and Aer Lingus. Strategic group analysis (Appendix 5) is used to understand the competition, strategic opportunities and mobility barriers of Ryanair in low cost airline industry.

Strategic Groups in Low-cost industry

In Europe there are three main airlines providing low-cost flights to destinations namely Ryanair, EasyJet, Aer Lingus. Ryanair is dominant low-cost producer and has a gross cash of more than 1.8bn Euros. EasyJet’s majority of passengers are UK based, but becoming pan-European player.

Aer Lingus is another low-cost airline operating from Dublin serving more than 70 destinations across Europe and US. Figure 1 in appendix 5 shows the positioning of these airlines on bases of passengers capacity and their market share in industry. Ryanair and EasyJet have 56% of market share in low-cost industry.

Strategic Space in Industry

Strategic group maps help us to identify the most attractive “strategic spaces” within an industry. A strategic group map is only the first stage of the analysis; strategic spaces need to be tested carefully (Johnson et. al., 2008). In low-cost airline industry, for instance the airlines can serve long haul routes which could help them in expansion. They can also consider moving into other low-cost segments like trains and offer its passengers new attractive products and services (figure 2 in appendix 5).

Mobility Barriers

Moving across the map to gain competitive advantage is costless but it often involves difficult decisions and rare resources. Mobility barriers are the obstacles to movement from one strategic group to another (Johnson et. al., 2008). Similarly in the low-cost airline industry (figure 3 in appendix 5) it will be difficult for airlines to move to another strategic group. The lack of experience in long haul routes, increasing fuel prices, high competition from big airlines like British airways and other regional airlines are some of the barriers which could put more pressure on airlines to move to another strategic group.

RYANAIR’S SUCCESS

When Ryanair was started in 1990, everyone where anxious to see its performance in an industry where there was a monopoly created by giants like British Airways and Lufthansa. In response to this, the airline became one of the successful low-cost airlines operating from 127 destinations around the world (Case study). There have been many ups and downs for Ryanair since its launch but it continues to be successful in its operation.

The success of an airline depends on how and what it offers to its customers. In case on Ryanair, it always tried to offer its passengers low-cost airfares at all times. The airline often comes up with new ideas which make them to reduce its airfares. These new ideas differentiate it from other traditional airlines. One of the main differentiate is its website, the company’s site is largest travel website which was recording 50000 bookings per week (Box and Byus, 2007).

The website also provides additional facilities to its customers like car, hotel rental, rail services and travel insurance, all at low prices. The airline offers customers online check-in which enables them to save its costs on printing tickets and other additional costs. The use of internet also makes it easy and quicker for customers to check-in.

LIMITATIONS OF MODELS USED

PESTEL Analysis

The environment is constantly changing therefore PESTEL analysis should be done on regular basis and information needs to be accurate (Campbell et. al, 2002).

PESTEL analysis is very expensive in terms of cost and time

The effectiveness of this model depends on the level of prediction made on future. No one can predict the future.

The speed of changes makes it difficult for managers to anticipate developments that may affect the organisation in future.

Porter’s Five Forces

Porter’s five force model assumes that all companies try to achieve competitive advantage over others in the industry

This model assumes that goal of competitive advantage is to dominate suppliers and buyers (Campbell et. al, 2002).

Internal environment is not taken into account

It is difficult to use this model in complex industries with multiple interrelations.

SWOT Analysis

It is not critically analysed

The data used in the analysis may be based on assumptions.

Lacks detailed structure.

It usage rarely amounts to much more than a poorly structured, very general list of factors regarded by the proposing individual as important components of the organisation’s strategic situation (David, 1997).

Value Chain

The concept of value chain disaggregates a company into “activity” or the discrete functions or processes that represent the elemental building blocks of competitive advantage (Porter, 1998).

There is risk of losing control of proprietary knowledge, skills, capability, or competence as these are disseminated to supply chain members (Morden, 2007).

It can be applied only to manufacturing companies not to service industries.

Strategic Group Analysis

Difficult to group companies based on their strategy.

Strategic groups are relatively unstable.

Research carried by the author has pointed out the differences in the choice of entry mode of Accor in Thailand and China. According to interviews carried before the analysis, managers in Thailand assumed the foreign direct investment as the major choice for local market, which can intensify the network of hotel chains and avoiding financial constrains.

According to Sass (2003), FDI is an entry mode which bounds the international business with the domestic ones. Thus, this choice is appreciated by the local government in Thailand, which may be too busy in political reconstruction to get into the rebooting of tourism and hospitality industry.

Meanwhile, acquisition is applied by Accor Thailand in order to get acceleration in network expansion. This is mostly realized by management contract, which according to Esperanca (1992), can separating the ownership from the management. However, the long-term contract is related to the motivation systems for the owners, which also admitted by Thailand managers that credibility, trust mechanism are still needed to be constructed for the local owners.

Different from this, the strategy in China, especially in the brand Ibis owns the unique characteristic. Although franchising is assumed to be the ideal choice for franchisor and franchisee by the assistance in operation system and the quicker mode to establish network (Pine &. Zhang, 2000). It is the fact that many countries are lack of the stable environment which facilitates the process of franchising. As a consequence of this, the overall and diversify market in China is become the ideal choice for this attempt. After all, franchising is putting the reputation of the brand into danger. Once the operation in one point is facing crisis, the whole brand reputation will be called into question.

2.0 Reasons contributed to the different strategy

2.1 Relationship with local strength in host countries

This element is viewed as an influential factor in the extension strategy for international hotel chains. While in consideration of the circumstances in those two countries, it is easy to find out the differences into this factor.

The first fact is the leading position of Accor in Thailand, which make it more convenient to expand within that country without real competition. Meanwhile, Accor in Thailand is trying to develop better relationship with travel agencies, which can help the process of promotion in current downturns. Even though this efforts is turning unsatisfying results, which can be reflected by the merely 3% guests who claimed to be introduced into the hotel by travel agencies, this efforts in this area are still worthy. Since from long-term perspective, the markets in host countries, especially in new booming ones like Thailand, are more essential for the development of international hotel chains (Gammeltoft& Pradhan, 2010). Cooperation with local strength may change the disappointing situation on the overall brand promotion for Accor in Thailand.

However, in Chinese marketing, the most worthy way to cultivate is not the one of travel agency. Since many travel agencies in China are limited in moderate scales and not be trusted by travelers, especially native people. Due to the situation in China, that reflects as the relatively close relationship shared by Chinese among friends and family. The results of 23% interviewees who claimed their recognization of the brand is from friends and relatives have provided evidence to this aspect. As a consequence of this, it is understandable why Accor promotes Ibis, which is a economy hotel, widely in Chinese market. Since more local tourists will be attracted by the recommendation from friends. Besides the target group, the local brands and government can also be viewed as important strengths in China for Accor Group.

Most MNCs, especially those indulged in service industry like Accor are attracted by China for the low cost of labor, since most of these industries are known as labor-consuming. However, the Chinese government is claiming the efforts they will put in the transformation in this area. Policies will be put more highlights on high-tech area. Thus, for Accor Group in China, it is not advisable to perceive the low cost of labor as an advantage. This is just be self-evident by the efforts Accor have put into the promotion of brands belongs to high class like Novotel as a sign of quality-provided chain.

2.2 Culture aspects

Lake of cross-cultural awareness is the major reason which contributes to the frustration of MNCs in host countries. For Accor Group, which pursuit for the position in service industry, this awareness seems to be more essential.

The analysis of visiting purpose of the guests can give the most obvious distance from Chinese and Thailand culture. Compared with 27% of guests who claimed to visit hotels on the purpose of relaxing in Thailand, the correspondence rate in China is revealed as merely 9 in 93 persons. This difference, if finding explanation from the culture side, can be understood as Chinese always value family concept more important than other cultures. That is, they will be less likely to choose relaxing places besides home. That’s can also be viewed as reason that contribute to the over 50% satisfaction with the facilities of the hotel in China, since most of them are travel on purpose of business or sightseeing, there needs in additional facilities are relatively lower than others.

That’s the reason why Accor promotes brands like Novotel in China. As the business image of the Group, Novotel is just attractive for those international business people who pursue excellent quality service. And the expansion of lower brand Ibis is just suitable for the economical pursuit for sightseeing guests

Different from this, Accor is trying to establish more brands in Thailand market. This strategy is also related with the recovery of the political situation. However, it is designed to satisfy the needs of multiple cultures in Thailand.

2.3 Geographical difference

This element influence the control relationship between headquarter and subsidiaries abroad. Rodrigues (1995) has lighted the two choices for the headquarters-foreign subsidiary control relationship, included centralization or decentralization.

However, the geographical circumstances in China have put a challenge on the centralization process. That’s also the major reason that Accor apply franchising mode in this country. Due to the large area and diversity in many elements, the centralization process will cause too much efforts of the headquarter company.

Different from this, Accor Thailand is trying to introduce more brands designed for different groups of people. The higher class hotel like Novotel can not be promoted in methods expect from direct investment, that’s partly due to the danger of quality maintain in mode like franchising. Meanwhile, in area like Thailand, whose economical centers are concentrated in the certain region of the country, decentralization will more easy to be realized

3.0 Recommendations in strategy improvement in Thailand and China

A. Focusing on the promotion of overall brand.

Even though the overall satisfying situation in the subject hotels of research carried by the author is highly evaluated over 50% countries, the recognization of the Accor Group is disappointing. As Punjaisri and Wilson (2007) defined the recognization of the brand for existing guests can give influence to other costumers. As a consequence of this, the disappointing current results will cause barriers when Accor introduce new brands into these two markets.

B. Trying to attract different guest groups

Business guests and sightseeing ones are two unique highlight in Thailand and China, which covered the largest part of the interviewees in those two markets separately. However, as a hot destination, Thailand owns the distinctive potential in tourism. Even though the Accor Thailand is witnessing 25% guests who claim to settle for sightseeing. It still has a great distance when compared with the booming of tourism industry in this country. Thus, it is advisable for Accor in Thailand to promote image as tourists’ choice.

Different from Thailand, China has been long recognized as sightseeing attraction. As a consequence of this, most international hotel chains would be more likely to position themselves as types for tourists in this market, which also in turn make competition in this area. The 43% sightseeing group also verify this strategy of Accor in China. However, as a developing country who is in the acceleration development, the business guests in China will be increasing gradually in near future. Meanwhile, the location of China also makes it taking the role of economical hinterland for countries in Asia or the world. Thus, the business potential will worthy the efforts to promoting business hotels in Chinese market.

C. Combination of entry modes

Franchising owns the fastest expansion speed while direct invest witnesses highly control relationship. However, both of these methods own their cons and pros.

Current situation is the separation of both modes in China and Thailand as major strategy for those markets. However, franchising can also be applied in Thailand, while franchising may facilitate the development of certain brands in China,

Taking the All Seasons in Thailand as example, they are operated by the method of FDI, and only establish a network from Bangkok to Pattaya. The relatively slower speed just testifies the disadvantages of direct investment. Thus, in order to operate economy hotel more successfully in Thailand and set up the wildly net which can attract more tourism. Franchising, which is unique in Chinese market can also be used in All Seasons in Thailand. Higher class brand like Novotel can maintain in the way of direct investment which can ensure the quality of service.

While in China, Accor is trying to expend as fast as possible in order to get more share of this booming market. Franchising as the most effective way in this aim is widely applied to expand the economy brand. However, when Accor moving forward in China, there must be attention paid on the choice of the city. The subjects which are chose in the research of author reflect the subtle difference Accor in brand operation among different cities in China. Dalian, as a city bordering on the sea, is always perceived as sightseeing destination in China, thus, Ibis here will position itself as economical choice for tourists. Different from this, Beijing, the capital of China, which is also the centre of economy, is the ideal choice for Novotel to settle. However, due to the larger area in China, the serves radius of a city here is limited. When putting into strategy consideration, it will be necessary to value how many cities exactly Novotel Beijing can provide service to. As a consequence of this, one city in China may shoulder two responsibilities, which can serve as tourism destination and economy centre in center region. That’s where the combination of entry modes should be applied. Meanwhile, the direct investment may be not suitable due to these characteristics, management service contracts can be applied as a replacement, since it’s a method which can be more decentralize than direct investment, meanwhile, owns more control than franchising.

D. More emphasis on the Internet and media promotion

This suggestion is merely based on the disappointing situation of Internet channel in both countries. According to the research, this is only 9% and 13% in Thailand and China of the guests who claim acknowledges of information of the hotels is from the Internet. Since Accor is trying to establish the network in both of these two markets, no channel can be more effective than Internet promotion. While at the same time, according to the development situation in both countries, the Internet has already become the major source of information for people It is advisable for Accor to fulfill the existing blanket area in this category.

Besides the Internet, the media approach is also neglected in both countries. Even though the media can not be an effective way to promote service of the hotel or provide information details. It can be an efficient approach to the overall brand promotion, which is thought to be a failure for Accor in both markets. As a consequence of this, media can be used to promote the image of Accor and improve the recognization situation of this company among local people, while the Internet can convey the detail information to the target groups.

Conclusion

To sum up, despite the fact of expansion strategy in both markets, differences are also witnessed according to the various elements like culture, economy and relationship with strength in host countries. Meanwhile, in order to get more share in these two new booming markets, Accor has also to adjust details in its strategy in order to make it more appropriate to those two countries.

With the increasing sophistication of hotel guests and patrons, the continual improvement of hospitality services towards the attainment of unparalleled excellence in the business remains the only edge the hotel has to sustain its position if not attain the leadership in the industry. By adopting the ISO 9001:2008 framework, the acculturation of a learning organization into the consciousness of each employee of the hotel shall provide the impetus to strive and be better in providing service to hotel guests and patrons. A Quality Management System or QMS will govern the conduct of each of the hotel’s front liners. The QMS shall also provide the parameters for quality service while performance monitoring of each of the processes shall be through the process’ key performance indicators. Any flaw or parameter that fails to satisfy the accepted threshold of the performance indicator shall be subject to a root cause analysis to determine a corrective or preventive solution. The QMS requires regular review to ensure that the organization remains focus and faithful to its objective. The hotel employee’s performance shall be subject to evaluation by using the key performance indicator’s root cause analysis. For QMS, the hotel guest’s or patron’s feedback, comment or opinion is accorded greater weight as it will not only change how the hotel will conduct its business but it will equally show how the hotel value their guest’s and patron’s point of view with regard to the hotel’s operation.

Contents

Executive Summary 2

Contents 3

Introduction 4

METHODOLOGY 5

THE HOTEL 5

Design 6

Supply 7

Planning 7

Shop-floor control 8

The environment 8

Technology 8

The Hotel’s CUSTOMER SERVICE 9

CUSTOMER SERVICE Challenges 11

Summary 12

Bibliography 13

Introduction

Revenue in a Hotel business shall anchor on two factors, namely: (1.) level of occupancy or guest traffic that includes patrons to its facilities, and (2.) Efficiency and Quality of its services (Cornell University, 2010). Thus, among other industries in the world, the Hospitality industry remains dependent on the market pulse and good business sense. Good business sense refers to the operation strategy and business strategy that would result to operation efficiency and quality service.

The marriage of technology and human ingenuity are very much apparent in the hotel industry by deploying an Enterprise Resource Planning system. As applied to the hotel industry, it would ensure excellent customer experience from their reservation up to their next visit. The deployment of a Customer Relationship Management System would ensure that all issues are addressed and monitored and shall similarly ensure that the business is properly guided on how to become customer centric. However, technology will not work on its own as its success will be dependent on the employees who use the system and those who will execute the work instructions recommended by the system.

A framework that will capitalize on the strength of the employee enabled by technology shall be the onus of this paper. The sole purpose of which is to ensure the customer focused operation of the hotel while practicing processes that feed on continual improvements to manage the bottom line. Using these strategies, Leadership in the industry and profitability should not be far behind.

METHODOLOGY

The valuable discussions in Operation Management have been the inspiration by this writer to seek out more knowledge in pursuit of excellence. Thus, it led to the discovery that the concepts presented herein have been in existence for some time, and various authors not only wrote extensively on the subjects but they have exhaustively been part of its continual improvement so to speak. Capitalizing from the experiences of these management gurus and the erudite deliberation in Operations Management this author therefore recommend a more comprehensive examination of the Hotel’s Customer Service.

Using the ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System framework, this author shall discuss the merits and wisdom of its implementation in this paper in support of the Hotel’s operation and primordial goal. It is ideal to implement the quality management system in all the processes of the Hotel to ensure that there will be no gap that can dissuade if not prevent the Hotel from being the center for customer service excellence. The ISO 9000 Quality Management System have previously been regarded as applicable only to the manufacturing industry since it normally refers to the quality in the creation of a product. However, in ISO 9001:2008 Quality Management System the word “product” can alternately refer to as “service” [1] . The hospitality industry has long been recognized a service-oriented industry (Ramaswamy). Its main product is unlike any other industry since its product is the service provided by the hotel employees. The quality metrics of hospitality service is equal to the amount of satisfaction of each customer multiplied by the number of customer over a period of time.

THE HOTEL

The hotel is a five star hotel that is highly profitable and popular privately owned located in the center of an international city with a high level of tourist traffic, particularly international tourists. It boasts of a two hundred fifty suites, two dining rooms, one of which offers a standard menu and seats three hundred people while the other seats only a hundred but it offers discriminating a la carte choices for an upscale market. The hotel also has two cocktail bars; one that is publicly accessible from the streets while the other is for hotel guests only however both are open to guests and non-guests alike.

The hotel is home to three kitchens, with the two serving the two dining rooms while the third serves the three function rooms rented for parties, weddings, conferences and other similar events. The function rooms seat fifty, two hundred and one thousand, respectively while each function room can have their own bars if required. The hotel similarly provides other facilities that would include a swimming pool, gym, sauna and a car park with one hundred and fifty private bays.

The hotel employs both permanent full-time and part-time contract workers. Each area has its own supervisor, with qualified and experienced managers overseeing the supervisors for the respective departments. As indicated, not only does the hotel enjoy a modest profit from its operation, it boasts of a decent amount of guest and patron traffic from its hotel and facilities operation.

Design

Designing a particular type of service impacts the hotel’s customers to enrich their stay or their hospitality experience is a practical application of this concept as described by Slacks and Johnston in 2004. To illustrate: the design process in the formulation of a process that will provide returning guests with discounted rates if they return during the off-peak or lean days will ensure occupancy during the lean months and expand marketing exposure.

Supply

Raw materials used as ingredients to hotel food are sensitive to spoilage and contamination thus it is important to manage its handling from delivery, storage and inventory. The release of the goods from storage should be strictly enforced and implemented through proper tagging and warehousing strategy. To illustrate; Meat products can last for a certain period through refrigeration but must also consider volatility and seasonality to its supply. The system predicting the usage of the hotel base on its routine consumption and the scheduled events shall either place an order or forego an order automatically and later implement First-in-first-out in the warehouse with the use of the inventory tag.

Planning

Planning within the context of the hospitality industry often relates to Business Planning. Case in point, the hospitality business is sensitive to the time of the year particularly its occupancy. From July to August is normally the time when air travel is at its busiest due to the summer vacation in the United States and some countries. Hotels outside the United States that are vacation destinations of Americans are at its busiest. However, during the lean months, when occupancy is at its lowest, hotel managers and administrators’ creativity are normally put to test.

To illustrate a viable business strategy during the lean months is to pre-sell the room through discount cards. The concept is to sell discount cards at a price of one or two nights’ stay that will be availed only during the lean months. Modest discounts may be availed by cardholders including the facilities or services offered by the Hotel. The card shall expire within one year from its issuance to give the hotel the opportunity to sell continuously the unoccupied hotel rooms during the lean months.

Shop-floor control

Shop floor strategies include Job and shift Scheduling, housekeeping, Process improvement and increasing process efficiency in the context of providing quality service. ISO 9001:2008 has closed the gap between a tangible product and service that both demand quality. According to the system, the best way to ensure quality service is to identify focus areas, then to provide measurable targets that are congruent with the focus areas’ goals.

The environment

Some hotels realize their impact to the environment of the local community and as part of their strict adherence to their corporate conscience social responsibility often adopts a sound environmental management system. Not only would this comply with the international initiatives regarding environmental concerns but in practice, this will also respond well to its corporate social responsibility initiatives.

Technology

The use of technology to lower the cost of operation through the automation of processes and increase the security at the hotel is a strategy that does not normally provide a tangible and visible result overnight. To illustrate: Supply Chain Management as envisioned is a technology driven strategy that will ensure that raw materials used as ingredients for food do not spoil or do not get contaminated.

The strategy requires inventory immediate tagging in each delivery. By providing secure keys to every guest, a hotel management system would be able to adjust the room temperature and the Air Handling Unit load depending on the rooms that have activated keys. Using the secure keys inserted in its slot will enable the system to determine the additional load needed for the air conditioning requirement instead of the Air Handling Unit continuously operating even without any guest inside is a waste of energy.

The Hotel’s CUSTOMER SERVICE

The hotel’s customer does not start becoming a customer when he finally pays the initial down payment for a room or service, he does not start becoming a customer at the instant he shows up at the hotel’s premises or orders his first drink from the bar. A guest or patron starts becoming a customer as soon as he says the first word to any of the hotel’s staff, telemarketer or even parking attendant or valet (Borsenik & Stutts, 1997). Ergo, all aspects of the hotel’s operation almost concern itself with customer service. Customer service is not merely providing the hotel’s service to the guests or patron, it is making sure that the customer is satisfied and fulfilled in the usage of the facilities including their encounter with the hotel’s staff (Michelli, 2008). Therefore, all processes that will affect the customer directly or indirectly are customer service providing processes.

To illustrate the reservation clerk represents the hotel as its first liner when the customer called in to reserve a room or book the one of the services of the hotel. A pleasant conversation would result to immediate booking and a not so pleasant conversation is the loss of a potential client. The interaction with the valets or the parking attendants may be the second encounter of the hotel with its customer. The next would be the door person, the front desk, the concierge, the room boy, the hotel cleaners and then floor security for hotel guests. While for those partaking and enjoying the services of the Hotel would be entertained from the door person by the receptionist and then the floor manager or the facilities attendant. The guests would then be interfacing next with the waiters if they were at the bar or restaurant, the lifeguard for the swimming pool and fitness instructor for the gym and sauna.

To illustrate the indirect service providers in the Hotel that ensures not only the satisfaction of the guests or patron they themselves are responsible for the behind the scene hospitality experience. These would include the kitchen staff that would include the chef and those responsible for preparing the food. The engineer that ensures the temperature of the pool and the gym is optimal or the safety engineer monitoring the safety levels at the sauna, the hallway and lobby temperature. The indirect service providers also include the cashiers that provide the correct change and charges, the security guards that ensures the safety of the guests and the surrounding. This also includes the janitorial staff that ensures the health of the guests by making the immediate surrounding garbage or dirt free.

The processes that govern the operation and performance of the customer interaction of the services provided as described shall be the focus of the Quality Management System framework of ISO 9001:2008 (International Organization for Standardization, 2008). Aligning with the Vision, Mission, Values and Strategy of the Hotel the Quality Management System framework will allow the Hotel to define its own Quality Mission Statement that states the personality of the hotel. Each of the processes followed or implemented by the process owners as described above that interacts with the Hotel’s guests, patrons or customers, in general, shall be covered by the Quality Mission Statement.

Juxtapose with the Quality Missions Statement aligned processes, Key Result Areas will be developed will remain the targets of the processes. The Key Result Areas should be customer centric and should work towards the attainment of the best hospitality experience of the guests or patrons as provisioned by the Hotel. In order to measure the success of the process owners in achieving their key result areas, metrics in the form of key performance indicators for each process are to be developed.

To illustrate: The valet service is often neglected by most Hotels but its importance and the opportunity it presents to save the Hotel’s image from the customer’s bad experience from the services of the hotel is precious being the last process the customer has to go through before leaving the hotel. The possible key result area for the valet services could be the immediate return of the guest’s vehicle to him. The key performance indicators could be the amount of time it will take the valet to retrieve the car and return it to the owner. The idea would be the shorter the amount of time it takes to retrieve the car the more satisfied the customer would be.

CUSTOMER SERVICE Challenges

Cultural Sensitivities

The primary challenge in any customer service is the differences in the personality or origins of the guests. Cultural sensitivities often create friction between the service provider and the customer. To illustrate: in the west shaking the head from side to side often means no, however in some culture particularly the Indian culture it means yes.

Gender and Other Sensitivities

At times, being chivalrous is being sexist while being helpful to people with disabilities is being offensive. A balance and clear criteria are should be studied depending on the area where the Hotel is located so as not to compromise quality service with sensitivities.

Summary

The hospitality industry has evolved from an industry that only provided board and lodging to transient travelers in the previous century to an actual destination that offers a myriad of services to weary travelers and to vacation and relaxation seekers. The Quality Management System as enabled by technology should provide the edge to the hotel in terms of managing its bottom line from the business perspective while also providing the framework in determining the best way to service its guests and patrons. The Quality Management System therefore will equally define the customer centric culture of the hotel geared towards providing the best, if not one of the best hotel experience to its guests.

The continual improvement concept of the Quality Management System will engender excellence in the very fiber of the hotel’s staff. The key performance indicators shall provide the metrics to gauge the efficacy of the process including the performance of its employees. The root cause analysis as well as the development of the corrective and preventive solution is essential to the concept.

One of the virtues of ISO 9001-2008 Quality Management System is that it would let the hotel develop its own Quality Management framework as derived from the hotel’s unique culture. The hotel shall not only reflect its personality but it shall be the driving force towards excellence in customer service. The commitment to customer service as driven by the Quality Management System shall therefore be personal not only for the organization, but also for the individual employees.

Abstract

For the purpose of enhancing the value of green hotel, the hotel comes out with the new business management concept, which brings the green concept into the hotel operations and management. In order to establish a green marketing concept, it is a need to collect green information, green technology, development of green product, development of green price to carry out green marketing, take deepen green management philosophy to provide green service of the hotel and the construction of green hotel and green culture management, to achieve the sustainable development of the green hotel. Nowadays, the concept of green marketing has generally become the international community to implement in the modern enterprise marketing. Therefore, the green marketing model in hospitality industry become the need in this era, also, the pressure of the external economic environment will force the hospitality industry to do so. There is a low carbon green marketing mode had undergone a great change in the marketing concept and content in some hotels. In this research will attempt to make some personal views on this topic in helping the hotel to have better management. Green marketing will achieve the balance between development of the hotel and the social environment; advocate the green consumption, saving energy, reducing consumption and protect the environment, providing green service will become an important marketing strategy in the hotel industry of China. Lastly, as one of the core ‘green management’, the trend of green marketing in protecting environment and developing in green consumer will achieve a big success in the future.

Introduction

Green concept has become the most important topic in the past few years and it gradually continue to growing up. Action is the one most important in this green concept, without the right action we will not be able to adjust the damage that has been done. Nowadays, the entire world is focused the same problems to protecting environment.

In this part will give an analysis about the entire research, it begins with background of information about the concepts and overview about the base of this study. It then continues to introduce the research problem and explains the objectives and goals of the research.

Background

90 years, the world entered the “era of environmental protection”, “green age.” American Hotel & Lodging Association president pointed out that the most important trends of today’s hotel industry is the hotel’s “green” (environmentally friendly) (Joe McInerney, 2008).Green era of great impact on the world economy, hotel industry is no exception. Today’s society, people only pursue economic development and improved quality of life and people not realized that people’s living space has been severely damaged. People in the production and consumption process start increasingly concerned about resource and environmental protection. People had to choose one that meets the development needs approach to development while protecting the environment, called by sustainable development. While the tourist hotels like energy consumption and serious pollution of heavy industry to the serious ecological and biological damage to the environment but also varying degrees of implicit or explicit pollution and waste of resources. Country’s sustainable development strategy to establish, from the policy, legal acts of the hotel business made specifications, requirements, hotels must implement green marketing; international trend of environmental protection also have a significant impact on the hotel, hotels with international environmental standards required engaged to go green. In the international environmental pressure, a few hotels began to establish awareness of green marketing. However, most hotels are still far away from the green marketing, green concept do not even have color. Hotel implementation of green marketing has long way to go.

Going green is a concept for people how to make the environment become better. This “green” means is multifaceted, it can refer to products, trade or industry, it can be a philosophy or concept of an act, “green” the central meaning refers to protecting the global environment and promote human and nature, socio-economic and ecological harmony, to ensure the sustainable development of human society and the economy. The green movement can make people aware of their daily life affect this living space. Nowadays we are running out of water and other natural resources and this problem can cause the world become worse place for live. Green marketing appears for making a people have responsible daily that benefit for environment and help to reduce the waste. Going green in hospitality industry is defined by being eco-friendly industry with the environment. It contains small changes in daily life and this small change can add up to the bigger changes by our action for protecting the environment.

An important concept behind efforts to reduce damage to the environment is ‘sustainability’, an idea which gained importance because of the publication of ‘Our Common Future’ (Filho, 2000; Daub & Ergenzinger, 2005). Sustainable development is defined as “development that meets the needs of the present without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their own needs” (Hobson & Essex, 2001) Sustainability has been further described by Brady (2005) as comprised of three dimensions: economy, society, and environmental stability. “Environmental sustainability is the process of making sure current processes of interaction with the environment are pursued with the idea of keeping the environment as pristine as naturally possible based on ideal-seeking behavior.”

Commitment about green marketing needs to be the important part in the hotel to protecting the environment, its need to be important for guide the hospitality industry and foster such a culture. It can make the hotel have an environmental culture that will ultimately affect the peoples to have a consequent in the natural environment. However, if people have responsibilities with this kind of environment and concept, and able to apply it in their daily life and work can be consciously adjust their own behavior.

That definition of going green and sustainability development explains why it is so important for both individuals and businesses to make change for their lives and environment. The beginning of the 21st century; smokeless industry, a sunrise industry and green business in China has been continued to growth fast, which the hotel industry in the green on the most prominent. Hotel has been considered a high consumption places to have so many resources, need to have an attention with the environmental protection. In this, the hotel needs to change the concept; the hotel should meet the needs of customers to reduce resources. This perspective should spread through all aspects of hotel operations in the all levels and functions of employees, fundamentally, sustainable development of the hotel.

Sense of social responsibility, many hotels began to take shape. With the gradual promotion of the marketing concept in China, hotels increasingly recognized as part of the community and the hotel should take social responsibility. For example, April 28, 1999, Zhejiang response to dozens of tourist hotels “create green” activities half of them said that we do not begrudge investment, but want to reduce waste, so that the limited resources to achieve maximum effectiveness; hotel intended to limit the guests behavior, just want to work together with customers to improve the ring, and get a good clean “green” feeling.

Statement of the Problem

China is one of the fastest developing countries in the world. Especially development of hotel industry in the China is growing so fast. At the beginning, the hospitality industry in China is not growing compared to other countries. Over time, China had to develop in the hospitality industry very well. With this development, China became one of the top ten international destinations in 2010.

Therefore, the hospitality industry in the world is very wide. They are trying to develop new innovations to the hospitality industry continues to develop stable. Recent years, the environment on the planet where we live is damaged. Everyone in the world started to pay attention on the environment and how to maintain it. They began to appear with the latest innovative green marketing. Hotels in the world began to develop the green concept in this hospitality industry. But the hospitality industry in China is huge and it takes a long time to change each hotel to follow the green concept. They begin to develop from five star hotels to budget hotels. Along with those changes, a lot of problems start to appear when develop the concept of green marketing in the hospitality industry.

One of the obstacles in applying the concept of green marketing is costly. In this green marketing we have to change little by little until it became a big change. But to change the concept of green is the hospitality industry requires cost very much. This change we must begin to change from the base. Hotel’s room is the main product of the hotel. It can start to change from the material of the room’s furniture and continue to how the employee works with the friendly environment. Its means they need to use on recycling of reusable materials for recycling. On the beginning to apply green marketing, hotels need a lot of cost and they need to consider about the quality.

Green hotels focus on the ecological environment, with a focus on the pursuit of economic and environmental benefits of the new management is optimal. Not only every manager, but also every employee mind set of ideas and concepts of green management, it will be possible to allow them to take the initiative to take the behavior of a variety of green management. At first, hotel that you would like the concept of sustainable development as the guiding ideology of management, hotel management must fully understand and analyze the future direction of the hotel is good that tomorrow is a green hotel, why become a green hotel, and how to combine its own hotel management to implement the concept and application of green is the foundation of the hotel staff, implementation of policies to achieve the employee with the hotel management and staff to implement, so let employees understand the company’s development direction and determination. If employees understand what the concept of a green hotel, it also impact for the company, themselves and the community that can bring what is the impact of some complicated process, not easy to reach the company. Management style is also a hotel on the challenges of sustainable development.

Green product in China has not yet become the first choice of hotel. In other countries, green products have become the best-selling products, the first choice for consumers. However, some hotels even get a small gain and the pursuit of contaminated products.

Research Problem

To enable it easier understand and to explore for more details information point of view, the questions will be able to reply to additional verification and give clear successfully obtained results.

What are the problems between green product and environment sustainability?

What are the problems between green price and environment sustainability?

What are the problems between green promotion and environment sustainability?

What are the problems between green place and environment sustainability?

Conceptual Framework

More formally, the main purpose of this study is to identify that the independent variable can influence the environment sustainability development in hotel industry. According to Leedy and Ormrod (2005), independent variable is a variable that studied as a possible cause of something else. According to Hussey and Hussey (1997), dependent variable is a variable that the value are predicted by the independent variable and intervening variable

The intervening variable can be defined as a factor that will affect the observed, but cannot be seen or measured. This intervening variable is referring to relationship between hotel and the environmental sustainability. These relationships is very important, hence they can influence environmental and sustainability for the hotel.

The dependent variable is Environmental Sustainability Development and the independent variable of this study is green price, green product, green promotion, and green place. Thus, green marketing become intervening variable.

Hypotheses:

H1: Green price positively influence hotel to be environment sustainability development.

H2: Green product positively influence hotel to be environment sustainability development.

H3: Green promotion positively influence hotel to be environment sustainability development.

H4: Green place positively influence hotel to be environment sustainability development.

Research Objectives

The main objectives are to study for the following thing:

To identify what are the benefits of going green in green marketing concept for new environment development of hospitality industry.

To mention the problem of applying green marketing concept in the hotel.

To related the green marketing concepts with green marketing mix that consists of green product, green places, green price, and green promotion in the hospitality industry.

To understanding what are the concept of green marketing and the terms of green marketing that related to environmental sustainability development.

To discuss why nowadays green marketing very important in hospitality industry.

Significance of the Study

Combining with all the information and data for the hotel industry to grasp better the green marketing in green concept to the hotel itself to the significance of environmental sustainability is so important and far-reaching. The ends results of this dissertation will be not only play to understand the relationship between the independent variable and dependent variable and it also help more how to make sure the hotel industry is doing well on the environmental sustainability. Through the green marketing, a results on the actually of the relationship between green marketing and environmental sustainability will be more clearly. But this will either guide you to the agreement or disagreement to the improved green marketing concept model.

Literature Review

This part will be discussed about the concept of Green Marketing Mix which are Green Place, Green Product, Green price, and Green promotions. This Green marketing concept linked to the dependent variable of this study which is environment sustainability development that can be affected from the green marketing concepts in the hospitality industry that is hotel.

Green Marketing

The green awareness began in between of the 1960s and early 1970s with increasing concern about the negative impact of consumption pattern, impact of economic and population growth on the environment (Cohen, 2001).The first definition of ‘green marketing’ was according to Henion (1976); “the implementation of marketing programmes directed at the environmentally conscious market segment” (Banerjee, 1999, p.18). Green marketing practices generally promoted as the genuine concern for the nature of inputs as well as outputs waste reduction and the impact of these upon the environment and society as a whole both in present & future conditions (Walker and Hanson, 1998). In a sample way to say, green marketing is the strategy for hotel to turn themselves become green hotel and to achieve environmental sustainability development.

According to the American Marketing Association, green marketing is the marketing of products that are presumed to be environmentally safe. Thus green marketing incorporates a broad range of activities, including product modification, changes to the production process, packaging changes, as well as modifying advertising. Refers on that statement, green marketing is a new marketing method driven by environmental sustainability. The sustainable development of environment is that modern consumers understand the deterioration of the environment has to their way of life and quality as a certain effect, the requirements of the process of production and sales of all enterprises minimal impact on the environment. The so-called green marketing refers to the enterprises to adapt to the trend of green consumption, from the protection of the environment against pollution and full use of resources point of view, through the development of products, the use of natural, turning waste into wealth and other measures, to meet consumer demand for green, enterprise marketing goals.

The green marketing has evolved over a period of time. According to Peattie (2001), the evolution of green marketing has three chapters. First chapter was termed as “Ecological” green marketing, and during this period all marketing activities were concerned to help environment problems and provide remedies for environmental problems. Second chapter was “Environmental” green marketing and the focus shifted on clean technology that involved designing of innovative new products, which take care of pollution and waste issues. Third chapter was “Sustainable” green marketing. It came into prominence in the late 1990s and early 2000. As resources are limited and human wants are unlimited, it is important for the marketers to utilize the resources efficiently without waste as well as to achieve the organization’s objective. So green marketing cannot be avoided.

Main Elements of Green Marketing Mix

When hospitality industries start to do with eco-friendly, actually they try to access the new markets with the green marketing. Green marketing has 4 elements, the element called by green marketing mix. Marketing mix is adapted from conventional marketing, but nowadays hotel also adapts this marketing mix to hospitality industry. The concept of green marketing mix was introduced by Bradley (Bradley, 2007). Green marketing mix is about product or services that environmental friendly. These green marketing mixes are green product, green place, green price, and green promotion.

Element of Green Marketing Mix (Al-Bakry, 2007):

The green products: Green products are products that respond to environment needs and requirements. As the customer’s needs are necessary to improve and develop products, the customer needs in an environment more safe and healthy are also important and should be considered.

The green pricing: The green pricing refers to the price specified in the light of company’s policies with regard to environmental consideration imposed by rules and company instructions or its initiatives in this regard.

The green distribution: This is related to distribution gates use that deal with green products, which are appropriate for consumers, in terms of facilitating their delivery, and to secure cycling procedures conducting within environmental conditions and requirements.

The green promotion: This refers to providing real information about the products in a way that does not hurt the materialistic and moral consumer’s interests.

Green Products

The guest room is the main body of the hotel, is also the main products provided by the hotel to the guests. This requires the hotel from initial to final product design provide involved environmental behavior must accord with environmental protection requirement (Xiong, 2011) In addition, the hotel restaurant also provides and promoting the green food, the product must meet the physical quality and health standards green, product packaging, storage and transportation must according with standard of green food packaging storage.

Production of green products has become a part of the hotel’s purpose. Many hotel rooms putting in such a card, for example “If you do not need to replace the bed sheets, please put the card on the pillow,” most of foreign guest who living more than one days will do the information cards about changing bed sheet. For the local guest mostly they are not really know about. Two reasons why they didn’t do that are forget to place the card and as they know bed sheets should be change every day. These guests may think that I paid, no matter how many days I live, every item should be changed daily, many people asked that hotel implied green concept for save money. A hotel manager expressed, green marketing objective might be saving money, but this is not the main purpose. We just want to reduce waste, so the limited resources can play a greater role. Some replacement in the room is not necessary, such as towels and bed sheets, because if the guest use in one day only is not dirty.

Green Promotion

Hotel industries should focus on green cultural awareness training, to shape the cultural environment of green marketing. The promotions that related to green are the things when hotel promote about their hotel use the friendly materials and recycle materials. With the green promotion, hotel still need to stabilize the quality of product and service to attract the customer’s interest for continue the green promotion concept. “Green promotion strengthens company image.” (Chan, 2001), we included “I plan to switch to products and services that were advertised as being green.” Green promotions in hospitality industry also can take along about promotion to the guest, such as a voucher for laundry or food and beverages in the hotel. It means that customers no need to think about having a food outside the hotel. It can saves energy and reduce the gas pollution for the transportation.

Green promotion is to pass the green guidelines for media promotion of green consumption, inspiring guide to consumer demand for green, and finally with buying behavior (Anon, 2007). Three aspects of green promotion are green advertisement and green promotion itself.

Green advertising need to have green function positioning through the advertisement product to guide the consumers understand with the environmental friendly product. The green advertising should have a green atmosphere and appeals to stimulate the consumers desire to buy.

Green promoting have purpose to increase public awareness of green, green corporate image building, green marketing to build a broad social base, to promote the development of green marketing industry.

Green Price

In general, the input of green products on the market, production costs will be higher than similar conventional products, because the cost of green products in accrued expenses on environmentally friendly products. The use of new green materials can increase the cost of resources. Hence, green goods have higher initial out-of-pocket expenses but lower long-term costs (Rubik & Frankl, 2005). In other way, price increases will be temporary, with the development of science and technology and the increasing variety of environmental protection measures, the cost of production of green products will gradually decrease, and tend to be stable. At this time, the green product will be having a higher price, but it also benefits for the long term costs and productivity. In hotel industry, they will take the price higher than the normal products, but it will be make benefits for the customers in the every aspects.

The price is market sensitive pricing is an important marketing strategy; the implementation of green marketing cannot fail to study the formulation of the price of green products. In general, the input of green products in the market, production costs will be higher than similar conventional products, because the cost of green products in the accrued cost of the product environmentally friendly, including the following aspects:

In product development, because of increased or improve environmental protection function and pay for the development of the funds.

In the manufacturing, due to the development of the environment and human non-polluting, non-injury increased the cost of the process.

The use of new green materials and accessories may increase the cost of resources.

Management costs may increase due to the implementation of green marketing and selling expenses.

However, the price rise will be temporary, with the scientific and technological development and the improvement of various environmental protection measures, the manufacturing cost of green products will be gradually decreased, and tended to stabilize. To develop green products, prices, on the one hand, of course, should take into account the above factors, on the other hand should be noted that the income increase people’s awareness of environmental protection, consumer economic concept of an acceptable price consumer goods and consumption gradually The concept of phase coordination. Therefore, corporate marketing green products not only make the profitability of the business to better advantage in the peer competition

Green Place

Environmentally responsible or “green” marketing refers to the satisfaction of consumer needs, wants, and desires in conjunction with the preservation and conservation of the natural environment. Based on the location, green marketing can be applied. For this marketing mix, place or location is very affect the environment sustainable development. It depends how the hotel’s building with the environment because many hotel have not build the environmental awareness and damages the environment surrounding the area. The best place for the hotel for going green, they need to consider the environment. It is can damages the environment or disturbed their ecosystem of the place or not. Ecosystem in one area is very important for the whole place, because one of the ecosystem damages or broken it will affect or disturbing another ecosystem in surrounding area.

For building the hotel needs to be in the green design with the environment friendly products and have a proper placement for their product, so it can help the environment by giving a fresh air pollutant. Hotels also need the proper location, so it will not need many transports that can cause air pollutant. Hotel that will implement a green components in their hotel must be consider when choosing a place for develop their hotel. Hotel must be in the strategy place or area to reach from another place. It can decrease a using a transportation that is the number one that caused of air pollutant. Green place is about managing logistics to cut down on transportation emissions, thereby in effect aiming at reducing the carbon footprint. The choice of where and when is to make a product available will have significant impact on the customer.

Some other Elements

To build a green hotel culture and to establish the ecological values aˆ‹aˆ‹of the hotel independent positive premise of the implementation of green management. Hotel green culture is not only reflected in the various aspects of green management, but also to its inherent cultural force reacts to the various aspects of green management.

To achieve a green hotel culture, we must ensure that the interests of the hotel staff to reach a balance. It will make the interests of the hotel and customer satisfaction to reach an agreement. For the hotel to continue and promote green management concepts and ecological values for staff is to encourage the environmental behavior of employees, increase green investment in management, thus forming the green culture of the hotel. Walk the road of eco-development; cultivate a green culture to rely on sustained advocacy to instill education and other activities. Thus making the hotel a green culture to penetrate into all the activities of the hotel, and has become a powerful driving force to promote the sustainable development of the hotel.

Provide green services, hotels in green products while also vigorously promoting green services on the one hand actively promoting green products. Such as food service recommended green food and beverages to the guests, so when the guest ordering is affordable, reasonable nutrition, resources are not wasted. On the other hand, actively carry out a green consulting service activities, and vigorously promote conducive to conserving resources, protecting the environment, consumption pattern, a healthy and civilized lifestyle, motivate consumers to conscious energy-saving, water conservation, and to engage in waste separation and recovery that.

In 1993, China began to implement environment mark plan, but the environment mark plan have not yet received most of public and government attention. At that time, some developed countries already apply the environmental marking system for the background of economic globalization. Environment mark becomes open international market green keys. As consumers, green consumption concept of recognition and the tendency of national policy, green products will be occupy a lot of investment in market segment. Environmental labeling is not only a means to influence the company’s consumer buying behavior should also be used as a measure of marketing, but many hotels are often ignored by consumers of green consumer psychology and paying enough attention.

Hotel marketing tool is not the introduction of a green way of thinking. Because many of the hotels we have not build environmental awareness and thus the marketing tools are still limited. For example, some hotels are not interested in the welfare of society, but the pursuit of “star effect” that can spend billions of dollars. Some of the hotel attracts customers to use a vulgar things causing spiritual pollution in market competition, not in quality.

Benefits of Green Marketing (Going Green)

Having an effective green marketing makes a lot of benefits for the hospitality industry. With the green marketing, it will help a lot in the protecting and maintaining the environment that nowadays the damages are increasing and become one of the important problems to help the environment.

Nowadays, hotel starts to make a green concept in every part of their operation. As the hotel which is one of the big industries in the world, hotel needs to consider about green marketing and take the benefits from this. The benefits of going green in the green marketing not only effects for the environment itself, but it also affect the employee and customer. There are so many reasons why hotels want to apply this green marketing, and most of all it’s because the hotel industry wants to be viewed positively by the consumers. Green marketing also refers to the satisfaction of consumer wants, needs, and satisfaction with the conservation of natural environment.

The most important things to applying the green marketing are protecting this living space, because the damages are too big. In this, we need to save the environment with using less for water consumption, energy consumption and reduce the air pollutant. These are all the benefits for the environment and protect for the future generation for this living space.

The concept of green marketing can makes a new concept of consumers in hospitality industry, because of with the new concept of the friendly environment it will be make a differences. Consumers will feel the new thing about the new products that hotel gives. According to Patrick Hartmann and Vanessa Ibanez, if the brand considered green, then consumer willing to pay more for that product (2006).

The long term costs are one consideration why hotel need to do green marketing. Green goods have higher initial out-of-pocket expenses but lower long-term costs (Rubik & Frankl, 2005). For the new changes in green marketing concept need to have a lot of costs for the product, promotion, and images, but as the time goes by

Introduction

Since its inception hotels have provided travellers with a place to stay away from home and which offers them amenities that would ensure their comfort and security. The hotel industry core value is to deliver quality service to their guest, and with it also comes the obligation of being responsible for their security while under their care. The security of a hotel’s guest and how the hotel management and staff take the steps to ensure this spells the success or failure of any establishment. A lax security would mean exposing the guest to a different number of risks and would also reflect poorly on the hotel’s reputation. Therefore security is something the hotel industry should invest upon to ensure its success, because the bottom line is – the question of whether or not a guest will choose to return to a hotel depends solely on how safe and secure they feel while staying in a hotel.

However this basic premise is not that easy to put in practice. While different establishments have endeavoured to put in place security measures that would ensure the safety of its guests such as ensuring confidentiality of its guests personal data, using surveillance equipment and the like; the fact is technological advancements have also been used by some criminal elements to circumvent security measures for their own unscrupulous intentions. Cases of identity theft using information stored in a hotel guest’s key cards, and the recent threat of terrorist attacks are but some of the security issues that the hotel industry has to contend with. This paper seeks to study the security measures being put in place by the hotel industry and how it relates to their operational effectiveness. In particular this research study shall aim to achieve the following:

To identify the forms of breaches in hotel’s security system;

To identify the security system and other safety policies of three hotels;

To determine recommendations that will enhance and further develop the security system of the hotel industry.

The method that will be used in this research paper is a case study of the security measures of three hotels: the Hotel Marriott, the Intercontinental Hotels Group, and the Shangrila Hotel. The three hotels were selected in this study because they are known to be among the leaders in the hotel industry; they have faced or are in danger of facing serious concerns related to security (the Marriot Hotel was attacked by terrorist bombers in the past); and they are also leaders in the field of hotel security. The analysis that will be used in this case study will be based on the assessment paper by Alan Orlob the Vice-President of Corporate Security for the Marriott International, the talk delivered by David Bradley Bonnel who is the Director of Global Security for the Intercontinental Hotels Group, and the Security protocol issued by Shangrila Jakarta. This research paper shall also review related literature concerning the hotel industry its values and principles in relation to ensuring security, and related internet sources concerning hotel security procedures and measures.

Literature Review

According to Capparella J. (2002), the word hotel is derived from the 14th Latin word hoste meaning person or thing that provides something for a guest, usually lodging, and sometimes food. The concept of a hotel was to provide some sort of temporary lodging accommodations for transients. Hotels varied little in ancient times when they were first described as simply being a boarding house providing a place to rest and nothing more. Throughout the early centuries (1 AD forward) the evolution of the hotel was also minimal. In the middle ages the hotel began to transform.

European and English inns became the variations of the hotel during the middle ages. More specialized functions and amenities were included in the inn’s services. Among these amenities include the private rooms, public kitchens and public gathering rooms. Some inns have also constructed small taverns which were aimed to bring comfort and convenience of the traveller. During this period, the hotel variations were no longer treated and viewed as merely a place to spend the night. This development in the middle ages provided the transition of the hotel concept which will later on become part of the hospitality industry.

As the said development emerged during the middle ages, the latter part of the period provided another significant advancement in the inns. Laws, rules and regulations pertaining to the operations of the hotel as well as the corresponding responsibility of the owner were imposed. A French law during the 1300s dictates that any lost property of a client must be replaced by the landlord. A century passed when another French law mandates the registration of every hotel to the state. The English around this period has also formed another set of guidelines and regulations that discusses in detail the comfort and cleanliness provided by the hotel to their guests. The said guidelines eventually served as the European standard for hotels. However, in spite of these advancements, a number of hotels and inns remain lacking on measures involving the privacy and security of guests. Rooms that are considered private have no locks and the guests are exposed to an unsecured communal setting.

“In the 16th century, France established culinary requirements for hotels that offered dining services that were based on a rating system geared toward quality, promotion, and competition. In the next century, this system of rating a hotel was formally established throughout Europe. By the 1700’s, particularly in France, is when the hotel industry or hospitality business formally established itself. Lodging also transformed into a mixed-use business that now offered a variety of services and amenities. The standards for quality, comfort, value, and service were now synonymous with any place of lodging adding to its definition of being a temporary place to spend the night.” (Caparella, 2002)

In America the concept of the hotel as we know it was further developed with the appearance of larger hotels during the 1800’s. These hotels differentiated themselves from other lodging types by their size and by offering of luxurious amenities. Most of these hotels were in large cities and along the major travel routes of stagecoaches, and later the railways.” (Ibid, 2002)

With the passage of time the core aspects of the services provided by the hotel industry was already well established with good service and security as one of the key concerns.

Based on common law hotel patrons commonly assume that hotels have created a relatively safe environment, and that the, “common law concept of the innkeepers doctrine addresses the hotelier’s role in maintaining a safe and secure environment by requiring the hotelier to take all reasonable measures to provide a secure environment for guests and to safeguard guests’ property”. (Feickert, et.al. 2006)

The concept of “reasonable protection” was further advanced by the courts upon which the levels of liability of hotel owners were increased. The small and independent hotels were also similarly held liable to the standards imposed on large and popular hotels thus giving emphasis on the issue of security among the industry regardless of the size and popularity of the establishment. The said impression of the innkeepers doctrine’s common law aims to highlight the role of the hotelier in sustaining a safe environment through the adaption of all logical measures to ensure a secure environment to be enjoyed by the guests. The concept of “reasonable protection” was advanced by the court and has developed into increasing levels of liability of hotels.

To date, the issue of security within the hotel industry remains a primary concern among hoteliers. The said issue remains foremost in the minds of both the guests and hotel managers particularly in light of the turmoil of world events. Such concerns of managers often dwell on the most acceptable security measures to hotel guests which will directly be viewed as a measure that will ensure safety and security. With these concerns, hotels must also ensure that providing a welcoming environment remains their highest priority.

The hotel guests’ needs reflect their view on the hotel industry. While a traveller looks for adventure in his travels in each area and country, he still expects to rest and relax within the confines of his hotel room. While he expects to experience thrills out of exploring places, he would need to have access to recreational facilities of the hotel such as the use of the pool and the services in the hotel bar. The guest anticipates the best treatment from the employees and expects traits such as honesty and respect for privacy to be recognized. Being on a holiday, the guest does not expect neither hassles nor inconveniences to hamper his trip. Adapting this perspective of the hotel guest, hotels have formed several quick and effective measures to ensure the security of the guest without invading the privacy.

Hotels have also become the ideal target for terrorists since 2004, the post-9/11 period. Militants can assume the same type of strategies to give a statement against the Western imperialism. Hotels remain one of the best targets for such terroristic acts since Western businessmen, government officials, diplomats and intelligence officers frequent the hotels. Such place provides the ideal scene for inflicting terror through international media without penetrating the security ranks of Embassies.

The shift towards the targeting hotels was traced to the attacks against hotels in several parts of the globe i.e. Pakistan, Iraq, Jordan, India, Afghanistan, and Egypt. Attacks instigated in Amman, Mumbai, Jakarta and Sharm el-Sheikh were coordinated to hit more than one hotel.

Addressing this issue, hotels have adapted measures that will develop security within hotels. The hotel security was perceived to have improved since 2004. Such security mechanisms in several hotel have helped saved lives such as the Marriott Hotel in Islamabad. The hotel industry’s vulnerability to attacks is caused however by the strategic nature of hotels.

In addressing security issues, the typical notion of general manages and security manages is that the installation of obtrusive and indiscrete security mechanisms will only generate more concern from the guests instead of creating a safe and secured environment. Other hoteliers often see security measures as unnecessary and merely increase the hotel expenses. Nevertheless, the security department and its manager’s role increased throughout the years. A main concern of hotel owners is the merging of security measures in the operations of the hotel. Instead of isolating the security department from others, security must be integrated within the operating procedures of the hotel. Security measure served as part of the hotel security routine particularly different types of technology such as electronic card-locking system, camera and communication system, as well as a closed circuit television. Additional security features can include safe-deposit boxes, guest-door locks as well as the regular life-safety systems i.e. sprinkler systems, alarms and fire extinguishers.

Hotel security features have been increasingly developed in the past years. This can attributed to the increase in neighbourhood crime, technological advancements and a shift in the demographics of the hotel guests. Such is the case of the electronic door locks which generates a feeling of security expected from the safety measure. Hoteliers have also taken a closer look at the needs and wants of the female traveller being primarily concerned over safety and security measures.

As expected, hotel managers may face challenges as the media continuously work on bringing criminal actions to the limelight particularly since the news of the 9/11 attack have changed the perceptions on travelling and safety.

Body of the Study and Research Results
Case Study Number 1: The Marriot Hotel Experience

On July 17, 2003 the JW Marriot and the Ritz Carlton in the upscale area of Jakarta, Indonesia were attacked by two suicide bombers. The bomb blast killed nine people and injured about 52 individuals. Based on the investigation following the attacks it was found out that the suspects checked into the hotel as guests, and that the explosives they used were smuggled into the hotel in their luggage which was not checked because it was too big and had to be placed in a trolley. The hotel staff did not noticed anything because they assumed that hotel guests cannot be terrorists. On September 20, 2008 another Marriott hotel was attacked in Islamabad, Pakistan. A dump truck which was filled with explosives was detonated in front of the hotel killing 54 persons and injuring 266 individuals.

Based on the report that the Vice-President for Corporate Security Alan Orlob made before the United States Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Government Affairs in 2009, the Marriott security measures helped in preventing a much bigger casualty in both the Jakarta and Islamabad attacks. In Jakarta during the time of the attack the hotel security were on Threat Condition Red. Orlob claims that the checkpoint placed at the hotel gates prevented the suicide bomber from driving a vehicle laden with explosives straight into the lobby of the hotel. Orlob also states that because of the alert response of the Merriott’s three security personnel who were manning the checkpoints that day, helped in preventing the driver from entering the lobby of the Hotel.

In the Islamabad attacks a combination of a hydraulic barrier and a drop down barrier prevented the vehicle of the suicide bombers from approaching the main premises of the hotel. The vehicle filled with explosives was detonated at the barrier killing 56 people out of the 1,500 people who were billeted at the Marriott during that day. Orlob claims that the casualties would have been larger if there were no security measures that were put in place. During the attacks in Islamabad, Orlob states that the hotel had 196 security personnel, 60 of which were on duty during that day. They also had sixty two CCTV cameras placed on the inside and outside of the hotel and bomb sniffing dogs.

However a paper by security expert, John Solomon the Head of Terrorism Research, World Check (2009) states that in both the Jakarta and Islamabad Marriot’s security program has had shortcomings on two aspects. First is that the hotel did not have adequate measures for screening guest and staff for possible terrorism risk. Solomon pointed out that in both the Jakarta and Islamabad attacks the terrorists were able to study the area of the hotel and gather intelligence information by checking in as guests. The second shortcoming relates to the failure of the hotel security and risk manager to correctly analyze the possible security risks that the hotel faces. According to Solomon the problem is due to security and counterterrorism specialists’ penchant for analyzing a security threat exclusively on historical patterns.

The common practice of hotels is to hire these security specialists to make a risk assessment which the hotel faces. However by seeing terrorist attacks as recurring patterns – what happens in the future will be the same to what is occurring in the present and what transpired in the recent past – fails to grasp the fact that terrorist tactics are constantly evolving and developing. The result of this way of thinking is that security experts fails to adopt concrete measures that are applicable to the possible dangers the situation poses.

Ironically Orlob also had a similar observation when, as part of a team of hotel security specialist, he visited Mumbai, India after the terrorist attacks in 2009 to the Taj Mahal, Oberoi, and Trident hotels. Orlob included these findings in the same Senate Committee hearing that i have mentioned above. According to Orlob the Taj Mahal hotel failed to address the following security concerns:

Before the attacks the terrorists were staying in the hotel for several months posing as guests. They were seen taking photographs and have been studying the layout of the hotel;

The police who responded to the attacks were not familiar to the building layout and the plans that were outdated and did not indicate the renovations that has taken place;

The Taj Mahal hotel lowered their security measures due to a wrong intelligence report that was given to them;

The hotel did not have physical security measures such as barriers, sprinkler systems and the like which could have helped to slow down the terrorists if not deter them.

Orlob has noted during the Senate Committee report that after the attacks on the Marriott the security measures in placed have already been reviewed and developed to cope with the threat of terrorists groups.

Case Study Number 2: The Intercontinental Hotels Group

The Intercontinental Hotels Group (IHG) is one of the leading international hotel chains in the world today. Currently there are about 4,186 IHG hotels operating worldwide bearing the IHG brands of InterContinental Hotels, Crowne Plaza Hotels, Holiday Inn and many more which are franchised and are owned by private companies. The IHG main headquarters is based in the United Kingdom and there are regional offices for the Americas and Asia Pacific region.

During the 2009 Mumbai terrorist attacks the Intercontinental Hotels Group were able to send out instructions to two of its hotels in the area concerning security measures they should put in place. According to the Director for Global Security of IHG David Bonne, this quick response helped to shield the IHG properties from the attacks. Bonnel points out in a report dated March 11, 2009 that the IHG were able to address the threat posed by the Mumbai incident due to the timely and relevant information shared by individuals who are in charge of the security and counter terrorism program in their respective corporations. This association of professionals dealing with corporate security were instrumental in providing intelligence that helped to facilitate appropriate response to the crisis, effectively deploy resources, and ensured the flow of information between the corporate headquarters and the hotels that were affected by the attacks.

Bonnel states that after 9/11 attacks the IHG has developed a security plan that specifically addresses the threat posed by global terrorism. This security plan is based on the provision indicated in Title IX of the 9/11 Commission Act which has mapped out crisis management as the preparedness of the private and public sector on three aspects of operation which deals with rescue, restart, and recovery.

According to Bonnel the IHG crisis management system is an integral part of the whole structure of the corporation, organizational culture, and operations of the company, and provides an effective and flexible response to probable and expected threats to security. The IHG system works through different but interconnected aspects which focuses on the following: constant threat assessment; emergency action plans and business continuity plans that are specific to the site involved; a crisis response plan for senior executives; crisis response teams; a network for internal communications; and a training program for emergency response. The IHG crisis management systems main thrust is to ensure that in the event of a threat or crisis its investments and guests are protected and rescued if the need arises, and in the event of damage to the corporation’s asset, the system ensures continuity in operations and business functions.

One of the core aspects of this crisis management system is the development of a comprehensive counter terrorism program which is based on responding to threats and leads gathered from a reliable intelligence network connected with the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). This counter terrorism program works by evaluating and then categorizing all of IHG’s hotels against a profile on terrorist risk. Each hotel location will also be assessed in a regional strategic threat assessment. The entire IHG hotel’s capability to resist an attack will also be comprehensively assessed, and management will be provided with an action plan that would increase the hotel’s security capability. A strict monitoring of compliance to the plan will also be carried out to ensure its implementation and in order to have a constant evaluation of the whole implementation process. According to Bonnel the IHG’s counter terrorism program was designed with the view of implementing it within the framework of mandatory compliance with standards regarding operational and structural safety and security.

Case Study Number Three: The Shangri-la Hotel Jakarta

Hotel Shangri-la Jakarta is one of the hotels that are in operation in the Southeast Asia region. The information issued by Shangri-la Jakarta states that it has a superb reputation when it comes to ensuring the safety and security of its guests and personnel, and the hotel claims that many experts in security has considered it to be a preferred base in the city in case of emergencies. The security measures implemented by Shangri-la Hotel Jakarta are quite similar to the Marriot and IHG. It has a UVS or Under Vehicle Scanning system which is located at the main gate of the hotel; it has EVDs or Explosive Vapour Detectors; it employs bomb sniffing dogs that have been certified by the Australian Law Enforcement and Working Service Dog Handler Association; its X-ray machines for luggage scanning are state of the art; around 330 CCTV cameras are installed in the hotel; there are around 200 highly trained security staff; there are satellite telephones in case normal phone communications are cut off; and the hotel also has a helipad on its roof. The Shangri-la Jakarta also boasts of a comprehensive Civil Disturbance Plan designed to address different possible situations that might arise in its country of operation.

Like the Marriott and IHG the Shangri-la Hotel Jakarta hires security experts that acts as consultants to the hotel. Reliable intelligence is provided for by these security consultants. The Shangri-la hotel’s team of local and international experts in security helps in keeping the hotel abreast to the security situation in Jakarta which develops its readiness and capacity to respond to any potential threat to its guest’s safety and security. The chart below shows the comparative data of the three hotels based on the reference material used:

Hotel Marriot

IHG

Shangri-la Hotel, Jakarta

Secondary 1? deadbolt lock

Smoke detectors and fire sprinkler systems

CCTV cameras

Explosive Vapour Detectors

X-ray machines

CCTV Cameras

X-ray machines

Smoke detectors and fire sprinkler systems

Other security measures possibly use but not identified in reference material used by researcher.

UVS (Under Vehicle Scanning) system

EVDs (Explosive Vapour Detectors)

X-ray machines

CCTV cameras

Satellite telephones

Highly trained security personnel

Bomb sniffing dogs

Expert Consultant

Highly trained security personnel

Bomb sniffing dogs

Expert Consultant

Highly trained security personnel

Bomb sniffing dogs

Expert Consultant

Viewports in all guestroom doors

interior corridor access only

access control on all guest exterior access doors

Viewports in all guestroom doors

bollards and barriers

Same although not indicated expressly in the reference used by the researcher.

Same although not indicated expressly in the reference used by the researcher.

Roof helipad

Security Guidelines and Emergency Plans

Cooperation with International Security specialists groups and Government Agencies concerned

Security Guidelines and Emergency Plans

Cooperation with International Security specialists groups and Government Agencies concerned

Security Guidelines and Emergency Plans

Cooperation with International Security specialists groups and Government Agencies concerned

Conclusion

The case study of the security measures being implemented by the Marriott, IHG, and Shangri-la shows certain similarities in terms of the equipment used, personnel involved, physical structures built, and development of a comprehensive security and crisis management plan. All three has hired security experts to provide detailed intelligence reports and to conduct and develop a crisis and threat assessment in order to develop the hotel’s preparedness in the event that such threats will occur. It is also clear that security plans are directly related to the hotel’s image and reputation, and most security plans is actually part of the hotel’s commitment to its guests to ensure that their peace of mind and security are taken cared of while under their care.

The tourism industry in the last two decades developed significantly in Malaysia. Malaysia has received 24.6 million tourists from all over the world in the year 2010, (Datuk Seri Dr Ng Yen Yen, Tourism Minister of Malaysia) and in a report conducted by WTO, Kuala Lumpur( the capital city of Malaysia), was among the top 10 Most visited cities by number of international visitors in 2010.

All countries are looking for ways to attract more tourists. Because of this, tourist satisfaction has been a priority subject of research in recent years. Understanding what drives satisfaction for a tourist is one of the most relevant areas of research (Prebensen, 2006), as satisfied tourists tend to transmit their positive experiences to others and to repeat their visit (Alen, Rodriguez & Fraiz, 2007)

Although there are many definitions of satisfaction, Reichel (1978) defines tourist satisfaction as the result of comparison between “a tourist’s experience at the destination visited and the expectation about the destination”. According to Feng (2007) ), satisfaction is one of the most relevant variables when analyzing tourist behaviour, as it influences the choice of destination, the consumption of products and services, and the decision to return.

Many factors are involved in making of a country a tourist preferred destination. Both the government and the private sectors must work hand in hand. The people in the front line must be capable of making the visitors feel that they have chosen the right vacation destination. Thus the emphasis on language proficiency is understandable. Language not only is a means for establishing a communication but also is a tool for fostering relationships.

There are at least 1400 million people who live in countries that English has an official status, so it is not surprising that one out of five portion of the population of the world speak English at the level of competence and the rest are still in demand of learning this language ( David Graddol, 1997)

According to Malaysia’s Government official website, 54366 visitors arrived from Europe from January to September 2011, 14725 visitors from North America and 21445 visitors from Oceania (Australia- New Zealand). Most of these travellers’ mother tongue is English and there are Asian and African tourists, who recognize English as the Language of the world.

If these tourists can communicate in their mother language or any other language which has more usage, they can feel at home in those destination countries. It gives them confidence and makes them feel safe, resulting in increased levels of satisfaction.

1.1 Statement of the problem

As it mentioned, an important component in the tourism industry is tourist’s satisfaction. The level of tourist’s satisfaction plays an eminent role in promoting the image of the country as a top tourism spot.

Many researches reveals that the level of tourist satisfaction with a particular trip is the result of different factors (Peter & Olson, 1996) which are generally assessed as a comparison between the tourist’s perception of the products and services he receives and the expectations generated before and during his trip (Barsky & Labagh, 1992).

The Hotel Industry comprises a major part of the Tourism industry.The hospitality industry has a main goal which is: to provide necessarry or desired products and services to travelers.Tourists do not just come for the facilities and attractions. They want to be treated right and well. That’s why a good command of English language is always regarded as an asset for personnels working in the tourism industry specially in the hotel industry.

The importance of English is undeniable since for so many years English is considered as the most important medium of communication of the world generally.It is the language of power, prestige and success . This language as a global language can open doors throughout the world ( Philipsson, 1996)

Although Malaysia has two official languages, English and Malay, our focus is on English because most visitors do not speak Bahasa Melayu, the national language.Most Malaysian residents, who speak English, speak it as a second language but many tourism interactions occur in English.

Numerous studies have been carried out to measure the degree of tourist satisfaction, but very few papers have focused on analysing the possible relationships that this variable has with application of English language by tourism staff.

Consequently, the main aim of this paper is to question if English language proficiency of the staffs working in the hotel industry has any impact on the level of tourist’s satisfaction with hotels in Malaysia or not.

1.2 Research question

To what extend English language proficiency of the hotel staffs can raise the level of the tourist’s satisfaction in Malaysia.

1.3 Objective of the study

To examine whether the English language proficiency of the staffs working in the hotel industry can change the level of tourist’s satisfaction in Malaysia.

Chapter 2 : Literature Review
2.1 Importance of Tourism

Tourism is a driving force for economic growth in Malaysia. Tourism creates employment opportunities for Malaysian residents and brings money into the economy. Tourism industry in Malaysia creates high effects in the economy of this country as well as developing unity and national integration (Gom , 1991)

If tourism industry growth in Malaysia continues, it could push forward the country’s engine of growth which is manufacturing sector. International tourism can bring high amount of revenue. This earned revenue has a very important role in developing Malaysia’s economy (Sadi and Batels 1997)

Tourism Industry has helped Malaysia in developing its quality of life and its socio-economic status. An evidence of that is the upward trend of tourism and hotel industry in Malaysia until 1997 (Poon & Low 2005) . Today this industry is experiencing a year to year growth in foreign exchange earnings.

In the 70 decade government put lots of efforts to develop several objectives such as growing the earning from foreign exchange , increasing the number of employments and the level of their income, developing regional areas and increasing revenue made by the government (Khalifah and Tahir 1997).

From the tourism receipts (tourism revenue) contribution, there exists a steady growth. For example, tourism receipts increased from RM17.40 billion in 2000 to RM24.20 billion a year later and then increased further to RM25.80 billion (2002), RM29.7 billion (2004) and RM32.00 billion in 2005. In 2006 Malaysia received RM36.3 billion (USD10.4 billion) in tourism receipts. (The Financial Express 2007).

A total of 24.6 million tourists arrived in Malaysia and spent RM56.5 billion in 2010 compared with 23.6 million tourists spent RM53.4 billion in 2009. Tourism is the 2nd largest industry in the country after manufacturing and has been growing since 2000 with international arrivals increasing by 9% per year. (New Straits Times 2011)

The tourism industry in Malaysia is an important foreign exchange earner, contributing to economic growth, attracting investments and providing employment. The focus of the government is to enhance the country’s position as a leading foreign tourist destination, while promoting domestic tourism. (The Malaysia Government’s Official Portal 2012).

2.1.1 Importance of Hotels

The hotel industry in Malaysia is expanding rapidly due to the increase of foreign tourist. Tourism statistics of Malaysia has recorded MYR49.6 billion (about USD14.2 billion) earning from tourists in 2008, with 31.2% of the total tourist expenditures coming from travel accommodations (Euromonitor International, 2009).

Without a dubt one of the main components that will put tourists in a positive mood and also affect their satisfaction is Accommodation.(Ekiz, 2009) .Here, hospitality establishments in general and luxury hotels, is documented well to be very important.(Heung and Lam, 2003).

Malaysian hotels accommodated 68,886,154 guests in 2008 and had an average occupancy rate of 66%. The number of rooms supplied during 2008 increased by 3.4% (total of 165,739 rooms), while the number of hotels increased by 0.6% (total hotels 2,373) as compared to 2007 data.( Malaysia Statistics)

According to Malaysia Tourism Promotion Board (2010) a total of 61,363,396 hotel guests were hosted in 2009, corresponding 60.9% occupancy rate. Hotels and restaurants alone provided employment for 1.7 million people, equivalent to 16% of the total employment in 2009 (Economic Planning Unit, 2010).

Form the data mentioned above it is clear that the average occupancy rate in Malaysia hotel industry is significant even in the years 2008 and 2009 that the world was experiencing a recession period. As a result of the economy recovering , it is expected that this industry will face a strong growth in the number of tourists and occupancy rates .It should be mentioned that ,the growth of this industry has a significant impact on other related activities ,too. Food and beverage, entertainment and also shopping in Malaysia are some of those other activities.(Poon and Low 2005)

2.2 Tourists’ Satisfaction

Oliver (1981) claims that tourist satisfaction can be seen as a tourist’s post-purchase evaluation of the destination. In many studies, satisfaction is distinguished as an antecedent of loyalty ( Kozak, 2001; Jang & Feng,2006). Although Oppermann (2000) states that studies on tourist satisfaction and destination loyalty have not been thoroughly investigated, Chi and Qu (2008, p. 624) claim that “customer satisfaction has always been considered an essential business goal because it was assumed that satisfied customer would buy more.” Although measuring tourist satisfaction is not simple, several studies have been conducted to examine the influence of customer satisfaction on loyalty (Gummesson, 1993; Anderson and Fornell, 1994; Um et al., 2006; Hui et al., 2007). Gotlieb et al. (1994) assert that positive satisfaction has positive influence on tourists’ repurchase intention. Similarly, Baker & Crompton (2000); Petrick et al. (2001), and Jang & Feng (2006) have highlighted that satisfaction is the primary antecedent of revisit intention.

Importantly, there is an agreement among several scholars that satisfaction provide a ground for revisit and positive word of mouth recommendations which are the indicators of loyalty (e.g. Kozak & Rimmington, 2000; Yoon & Uysal 2005; Chi and Qu, 2008). In another view, Um et al. (2006, p. 1141) state that “revisit intention has been regarded as an extension of satisfaction rather than an initiator of revisit decision making process.” Kozak (2001) pointed that level of satisfaction as one of the most dominant variables in explaining revisit intention. Accordingly, in tourism destination’s researches, it has been widely underlined that tourist satisfaction, loyalty and revisit intention have strong relationship (eg. Yoon & Usal, 2005; Awadzi & Panda, 2007), while a few studies disapproved the positive relationship between tourist satisfaction and revisit intention ( e.g. Um et al., 2006).

2.2.1 Other Variables Affecting Tourists’ Satisfaction with Hotels

Tourists’ satisfaction with a hotel is a result of many aspects, such as their perception of product elements experienced as well as their expectations before- and during their stay. People go on holiday to satisfy one or several of their needs, whatever these needs are. To achieve satisfaction people try to behave in a rational way. (Nina K. Prebensen) Some variables which affect tourists’ satisfaction are :

2.2.1.1 Location

When traveling, you’ll find that the locations of your hotels will play a big role in your overall enjoyment of the trip. That’s because a well-located hotel will significantly cut down on the amount of time you waste in traffic or trying to navigate an unfamiliar place. For business travelers, centrally-located hotels will increase productivity by allowing them more time to work and meet with colleagues. “Location” is an important reason for selecting a hotel, especially for economy and mid-scale guests. ( Jonathan Barsky & Lenny Nash : 2003 )

2.2.1.2 Facilities

Comfortable hotels and accommodation facilities play a very important role in popularizing any tourist destination. If a person, who is quite far away from home, gets to enjoy the same facilities and comforts as he enjoys at his home, then he is bound to become attached to the place. On the other hand if the tourist ends up at a place where the hotels and accommodation facilities are not satisfactory, it is quite likely that he might never return to that place. (Suman Ahliya : 2008)

2.2.1.3 Price

In his article, Jerry Garner mentions that more often than not, price is the major factor influencing satisfaction with a hotel. The more money saved on the cost of the hotel, the more you have for other things, such as souvenirs, dining out and even extending your stay.

2.2.1.4 Brand

In hospitality industry, it takes time to get the trust of your target market unless your business is under the umbrella of a well-established name. As you gain trust from your target market, brand loyalty and customers’ satisfaction will follow. This will include loyal customers and sales promotion for your hotel. However, a good reputation is defeated if quality is not included in the purchase. (Joyce Ira : 2010)

2.2.1.5 Cleanliness and Hygiene

Knutson (1988) argued that tourists considered cleanliness as important in selecting a hotel for the first time and revisits. Lockyer (2002, 2005) noted that cleanliness was highly rated by hotel guests as the main hotel selection determinant. Callan (1998) stressed that cleanliness of hotel room has been identified as the most important factor. Dolnicar (2002) further argued that hygiene and cleanliness was one very critical factor influencing tourists’ satisfaction.

2.2.1.6 Guest Experience

The experiences of guests during their hotel stay directly impact repeat visits and recommendations (personal and online reviews, e.g., TripAdvisor). A positive/negative guest experience can impact a hotel’s reputation and may trigger recommendations or reviews about that experience. “Guest experience factors” which include past experience, reputation, recommendations, and online reviews, are critical to selecting a hotel by the majority of hotel guests. ( Jonathan Barsky & Lenny Nash : 2003 )

2.2.1.7 Safety and Security

Knutson (1988) mentioned that leisure travellers were mainly concerned with a hotel’s safety and security. This concern might stem from the idea that leisure trips often involve families, and these travellers have a high sensitivity to what may occur around them when their families are involved. Marshall (1993) and Clow et al. (1994) revealed that security was cited as one of the most important criteria in selecting a hotel. Tourists want to be safe and secure in their accommodation, and are willing to pay for this. The safety and security system may differentiate one property from its competition, hence becoming a competitive strategy that helps a hotel to gain tourists’ confidence and trust. Ananth et al. (1992) found that leisure travelers were likely to express concern with regard to a hotel’s reputation and name familiarity.

2.3 English Language
2.3.1 What is a Global Language?!

When a language develops in such a way that it can be recognised in every country we can say that it has achieved a global status. when a large number of people speak a language and that language is their mother tongue while that language has taken up by other countries across the glob we can say that language has gain a global status. In the case of English, united States of America, Britain, South Africa, Australia, Ireland , New Zealand, Canada, several Caribbean countries and etc. this language has been spoken as their mother tongue and in some countries like Ghana, Malaysia, Nigeria , India , Singapore , Vanuatu and etc. English has a special status.( Crystal, 1997)

According to Crystal there exist 2 ways which we can help a language to be globalised :

Firstly, we can make it the official language of a country and use it as the only medium of communication in every domain such as : courts, media, education , and politics.

Secondly, while a language has no official status we have it as the prior language in the educational system and use it as the language of teaching.

2.3.2 A language in common

In his book, English as a Global Language, Crystal says that :

“the idea of a single, common language emerged in the 20th century, particularly during the 1950s .Around this time, many international agencies and organizations were being formed. With the numerous languages of the member countries, interpreters were a critical element in the progress of these organizations. Crystal states that half the budget of international organizations can easily be consumed on translation and interpretation expenses.”

He also believe that when we have so many languages to translate, we will loose some information with each subsequent translation. He then argues that a global language is very necessary in preserving and conveying important information.

2.3.3 English as a global language

In his book, English as a Global Language, Crystal states that :

“By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Britain had become the world’s leading industrial and trading country .This position allowed the British to spread English around the globe. The power of English was further developed by the growth of the United States.During the twentieth century, this world presence was maintained and promoted almost single-handedly through the economic supremacy of the new American superpower. As English-speaking nations acquired power, so to did their language.English is now the most widely taught foreign language in the world. English currently holds some form of special status in over 70 countries and is spoken fluently or competently by about one quarter of the world’s population “( Crystal ,1997)

2.3.4 English language in Malaysia

Nowadays people in any countries use English, the cause was the United Kingdom Empire and United State of America as a dominance in economic was another cause later on.

This language became the international language because its user had the most political and economic power of the world( Crystal ,1997)

English then became more than just international , it changes to be the global language. International languages existed before speared as a result of settlement , inhabitation, migration and colonalization but some factors make English a different international language such as its prestige in the culture , science , technology and so many fields. This helped English to become globalized.(Leitner 1992)

In Malaysia English language is assumed a second language. A language as a result of British colonisation. During the colonisation , the English language was used by the British who had a long presence in this adopted land . Since then English has existed in Malaysia for more than 150 years in Malaysia. After Malaysia independency in 1957 , Malay Language replaced the English language( Crystal , 2005)

English language together with Putonghua have approximately 1.5 billions of speakers . So these two languages are the two most spoken languages round the world by the greatest number of people . Tourist from countries that English is the official language like United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand communicate through English. In Europe in 19 countries out of 29 countries, English language was the language which is the most common one( European commission 2006)

Chapter 3 : Methodology

In this chapter our first goal is to collect and record everyday English interactions within the tourism industry. Observation of interactions between tourism staff and tourists will be recorded in some hotels in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia. 10 hotels will be observed. All interactions will be observed through naturalistic observation and each interaction involves at least one tourism employee and at least one customer. In all the steps the researcher will make use of the advices of at least 3 official tour guides in Malaysia.

3.1 Participants

According to Gay ( 1987):

” Random sampling is the best singe way to obtain a representative sample, No technique, not even random sampling , guarantees a representative sample , but the probability is higher for this procedure than for any other.”

20 (males and females) hospitality staff at ten hotels is going to be observed. Within hotels, front desk staff, concierges, direction assistants, and food and beverage staff will be observed as the interaction between tourists and hotel staff is important for the researcher.

40 tourists (male and female) who stayed at each hotel will be asked to complete a questionnaire.

A linguist will accompany the researcher in every observation makes.

3 official tour guides from MTGC (Malaysia Tour Guide Association) will contribute the researcher for getting more information.

3.2 Setting

Ten hotels (3 to 5 stars) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, will be selected from the www.agoda.com travel and hotel guide website, this site is organized these hotels by rates, price and region of location. The researcher will choose those hotels which are suggested by the official tour guides.

3.3 Instrumentation

Suskie (1996)believes that reliability and validity are very important to design a questionnaire. However it is difficult to develop designing a questionnaire which approaches a consistence level of response.

According to Robson (1993) responses are reliable when they are obtained from the same sets of questions answered by the population

The survey instruments are:

– A paper questionnaire containing questions about the level of satisfaction of the tourist who stayed in the hotels will be administered to all tourists with the same sets of questions.

– A set of 6 open ended questions for the semi-structured interview, will be asked from the hotel staffs, by the researcher.

– A voice recorder device for the linguist, to help her analyze and rate the English Language proficiency of the hotel staffs is needed too.

In addition to the surveys and interviews, as supplements to the information, the author also tries to gather secondary data from tour guides. These include reports , comments, complaints and discussions by official tour guides.

3.4 Design

A mixed method design can be described as a kind of research in which a researcher combines quantitative and qualitative research techniques, methods, approaches, concepts, or language into a single study (Johnson 2004).A mixed method design combines the strength of both quantitative and qualitative research approaches.Connelly (2009, pp.31) believes that “the goal of mixed methods research is to draw on the strengths and minimize the weaknesses of both types of research”.

This research involves both qualitative and quantitative data analyses approaches because the investigation resulted in the gathering of a variety of types of information. To be more specific, quantitative data obtained through surveys ( questionnaire) among tourists and qualitative data obtained through interviews.

For the Research methodology which has been designed to collect data from a specific population or samples selected from that population we typically apply survey. Questionnaires or interviews are commonly used for the instrumentation.(Robinson ,1993).

To get data from individuals surveys are useful .sample surveys are important tools to collect and analyze data obtained from selected individuals .to conduct and apply basic social science, surveys are broadly accepted as a key tool for the research methodology. ( Rossi , 1983)

Questionnaires has some advantages over interviews and other methods of data collecting, they are not expensive and they are much more easier to conduct and to be administered.( Leary 1995)

3.5 Procedure

At each hotel, the researcher together with a linguist will enter the establishment acting as friends and observed the same interactions for 45-90 minutes. Researcher tries to be inconspicuous by either posing as a visitors waiting for someone in the lobby lounge, or by having a food or beverages at the lobby cafe or restaurant.

After the interactions ended, the researcher will introduce himself to the front desk staff with a semi-structured interview he will ask questions about the number of languages spoken at the hotel and the kinds of customers that regularly stay at the hotel. This data will collect so that possible correlations between price range, target audience, and number of languages spoken at the hotel can be analyzed.

Then the linguist will rate the staffs observed. Level of English ratings will be conducted by a speaking rubric which includes six aspects of effective speech: vocabulary, pronunciation, grammatical accuracy, flow, and ability to engage in meaningful conversation. Level of Formality will be determined based on four criteria: degree of honorifics (e.g., sir madam), use of slang and colloquial terms, jokes, and percent of talk related to business. Notes will be taken about the price range of the hotels and the position (e.g., sales associate, concierge, front desk employee) of the tourism staff involves in the interaction.

At the final step, the 3 official tour guides (from Malaysia Tour Guide Association) will check the result and will comment on the findings.

This chapter describes the methods of research and explains the methods used in the present study. This chapter is divided into five parts: objectives of the study and the research questions; description of the research types; data sampling and collection procedures; data analysis of the data collected; reliability, validity, and generalizability of the research methods and findings.

For the purposes of this study, I will classify the English language skills and functions for tour guides into four main categories. The language skills and elements are composed of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Translation, and vocabulary in tourism including grammar and some useful English expressions will be discussed and included into those four main categories.

Objectives of the Study and Research Questions

This study aims to investigate present English language needs and benefits of learning English for Vietnamese tour guides. This studies’ data also hopes to reveal some of the problems foreign tourists face when dealing with Vietnamese tour guides, and the language skills and functions that are useful for tour guides to help overcome them. This research tries to answer two of the four main research questions:

2.What are the English language needs required for Vietnamese tour guides?

3.What are the benefits for English speaking Vietnamese tour guides, when compared to those with only their native language?

The design of research methods for the present study was based on the most effective and efficient way to answer these two research questions.

Research Types

Overview of Research Types and Their Characteristics

There two main types of research: qualitative research and quantative research.

Qualitative research is a research type that is concerned with the study of what goes on in natural settings. The process of this research deals with an inquiry and understanding based on distinct methodologies within the tradition of inquiry that explores a social or human problem. The researcher is the main instrument of data collection to build a complex and holistic picture, to collect words and to analyze this information inductively, and to report detailed views of informants. In designing a study, one works with philosophical assumptions, possible frameworks, problems, and questions; and data collection through techniques such as interviews, observation, documents, and audio-visual materials (Cresswell, 1998). Some examples of qualitative research are: biography, which is a study on a single individual when material is available and accessible; phenomenology, which examines a phenomenon and the meaning it holds for individuals; a grounded theory, which is a study to generate or develop a theory; an ethnography, which studies the behavior of a culture-sharing group; and a case study, which examines a case bound in time and place and looks for contextual material about the setting of the case. To sum up, it can be seen that qualitative research and quantitative research differ in terms of their key concepts, goals, approaches to design, and the types of problems that researchers have. Therefore, the selection of which research approach is appropriate in a given study depends on the problem of interest, available resources, the skills and training of the researcher, and the audience for the research (ibid).

Quantitative research is a type of research that is concerned with an inquiry into an identified problem, based on testing a theory composed of variables, measuring with numbers, and analyzing data using statistical techniques. Reichardt and Cook 1979 cited in Nunan, 1992 suggest that quantitative research is “obtrusive, controlled, generalizable, outcome oriented, and assumes the existence of ‘facts’ which are somehow external to and independent of the observer or researcher”. The main characteristics of quantitative research are the following beliefs: reality is something that can be studied objectively; the researcher should remain distant and independent from what is being researched; research is value-free and is based primarily on deductive forms of logic and theories; hypotheses are tested in a cause-effect order; and the research goals are to develop generalizations that contribute to theory and to enable the researcher to predict, explain, and understand some phenomena Bogdan and Bilken (1982 cited in Maurice et al, 1987).

There are considered to be three general types of quantitative methods:

1. Experiments, which are characterized by random assignment of subjects to experimental conditions and the use of experimental controls;

2.Quasi-experiments, by which studies share almost all the features of experimental designs except that they involve non-randomized assignment of subjects to experimental conditions; and

3. Surveys, which include cross-sectional and longitudinal studies using questionnaires or interviews for data collection with the intent of estimating the characteristics of a large population based on a smaller sample from that population (Maurice et al, 1987).

Research may sometimes incorporate both quantitative and qualitative methodologies as will this study in order to get the reliability and trustworthiness of the research from results obtained from the questionnaire and the interviews carried out.

Type of research in this study

This study employed a qualitative approach utilizing some quantitative techniques in a needs analysis for the study of tour guides in Vietnam. The main method of the study was a survey conducted to explore the use of English of tour guides in Vietnam in order to analyze the present needs of using the target language in their workplace. The participants of the study were selected on a basis of convenience and availability.

A questionnaire, with of a rating scale, was used for data collection. The data was then analyzed based on simple statistics, looking for averages and simple groupings to identify the needs and problems in order to find answers to the research questions.

Sampling procedures in the present study

The participants in this study were tour guides who work in the areas of Central, North and South Vietnam including 50 from areas in and surrounding Hue, Da Nang and Hoi An, 25 from the HCM City and surrounding area and 25 from the Hanoi region. The details of the travel agencies were found from the internet websites and from local knowledge. The method to assess the English language needs and problems of Vietnamese tour guides was a questionnaire.

Several methods were used to make the questionnaire in order to maintain its reliability and validity. The benefits for the tour guides and the tourism industry were assessed from the interviews conducted. The interviews conducted were mostly limited to the local area with 20 participants from Hue, Da Nang and Hoi An although there were 5 interviews done in HCM City.

The Construction of the questionnaire

To create the questionnaire used in this study, I reviewed a number of research studies relating to the needs analysis and English for Specific Purposes (ESP discussed in the literature review Chapter 2), and then I reviewed some examples of questionnaires from similar research to find their outlines. Moreover, a wide range of textbooks about English for tourism were studied to find relevant information to use as content in the questionnaire. The first draft of the questionnaire was written in English and created with the objectives of the study and the research questions. The questionnaire was used in this study to obtain information from the tour guides in Vietnam. The questionnaire, given to the tour guides, had five main parts: General information; general opinions; needs of the English language for tour guides; Problems/difficulties faced with English language; and opinions about the benefits of learning English for Vietnamese tour guides.

1.General Information

The general information was made up of three sections. The first asked the participants some personal information about their age, gender, education, and the amount of time they had worked as a tour guide. The second section asked about the importance of English, the amount of English they needed to use when they guide international tourists and who they use English language with in their daily tasks. The last part was about their English proficiency. The participants were also asked to rank language skills and elements that they used regularly, and problems with English language they had most. The language skills and elements in this questionnaire were composed of listening, speaking, reading and writing. Translation, and vocabulary in tourism including grammar and some useful English expressions will be discussed and included into those four main categories.

2.General Opinions

The second part consisted of two items. Item 1 asked the participants to indicate their feelings about the necessity of English language elements. They were to rank the elements on a scale of 1 to 5 in their opinions:

5=Essential

4=Very necessary

3=Necessary

2=Fairly necessary

1=Unnecessary.

Item 2 was about the difficulty of English language elements. The participants were asked to rate their difficulties of English skills again using a rating of 1 to 5.

5=Very difficult

4=Difficult

3=Fairly difficult

2=Not very difficult

1=Not difficult

3.Needs of the English Language for Tour Guides

The third part was about the needs of tour guides for the use of English skills or elements in the job. The questions covered information with various English language functions for tour guides. The questions were divided into four main domains of language skills: listening, speaking, reading and writing. Questions about translation, pronunciation, vocabulary in tourism, grammar and expressions were also included. Within each skill, the questions were divided into sub items asking about various roles and the functions for the tour guides. The participants had to rate those answers on a 1 to 5 scale as follows:

5 = Most

4 = A lot

3 = Moderate

2 = A little

1 = Least

4.Problems and Difficulties Faced with English Language

For this part the questionnaire was again used, as it was in part three, to discover and confirm problems and difficulties encountered by the tour guides in the daily activities. These questions aimed to point out common issues resulting from miscommunication or lack of understanding when using the English language. Again the participants had to rate those answers on a 1 to 5 scale as follows:

5 = Most

4 = A lot

3 = Moderate

2 = A little

1 = Least

5. The benefits of learning English for Vietnamese tour guides

The questionnaire ended with an opened item, allowing the participants to fill in either their comments or suggestions. Some expected benefits were suggested and offered as choices to agree or disagree with. The participants were also asked to rank those benefits in order of importance to them personally and professionally. This was followed up, where possible, with interviews requesting further clarification of their suggested benefits and those that were suggested to them in the questionnaire.

Putting ticks in boxes and crossing numbers were ways of answering all the parts of the questionnaire. There were yes/no answers, multiple choice questions and ranked questions. The questionnaire used in the present study was written in English and then translated into Vietnamese to avoid any ambiguity, misinterpretation or problems for the participants.

Pilot Study

A pilot study was conducted to test the effectiveness of the questionnaire and to identify and eliminate ambiguity in the questions before it was used in the main study. Five people in different areas of the tourism and hospitality industry from the local area in Hue City were the participants in the pilot study, carried out at the beginning of March 2015. Just over one week was allocated for the collection and review of the pilot questionnaire, but due to conflicting schedules it took just over two weeks to get the results. The return rate and the completed questionnaires was 100%.

In the pilot questionnaire, an item of ‘others and please specify’ was included at the end of every section, where participants could propose any additional questions or English language expressions and functions they thought should have been asked (see Appendix 2). To administer the questionnaire, the researcher firstly handed out the covering letter to the manager of the chosen people where needed to ask for their permission. The cover letter consisted of an introduction of the research study and the university, the aim of the study, the importance of the study, general instructions and words of thanks to the participants and their management. Then, the questionnaires they could complete were given to the participants. This was then followed by arranging a time and date that the questionnaires could be collected and interviews with the participants could be given. The participants in the pilot study were 4 male participants and 1 female participant. The results of the survey showed that the participants were concerned about the importance of English in their tour guide occupations. They all suggested that speaking was the most important skill they needed in their jobs, followed closely by listening. Writing, reading, vocabulary in tourism, translation, grammar and expressions were the least important. However, concerning their difficulties of using English elements in their jobs, the majority of the participants found listening caused the most issues, followed by speaking (including pronunciation errors). Translation, writing, grammar, language expressions and reading were all considered to have fewer problems for them. Vocabulary for Vietnamese tour guides was generally found to be the least problematic and the easiest to overcome.

Main Study

After the questionnaire was revised and created based on suggestions and improvements to the pilot study, it was given to, or sent to, the participants selected for the main study: 100 tour guides from different companies and individuals during the first week of April 2015. They were then returned over the following weeks with the last of them received in late April 2015. Similar steps to the pilot study were taken for the collection of data. Firstly a covering letter was submitted, introducing the study, with reference to the Hue University College of Foreign Languages, to the managers and/or owners of the tour companies to get permission. The return rate within this time was 60% and any that were returned later then than April 2015 were left out of the study; only 50% of these were completed correctly and used for the data analysis.

Data Analysis

The analysis of data in the present study

The questionnaires were checked and analyzed using basic statistics. The procedures in the present study looked for specific repeated trends and used, percentages (%), averages (X), and standard deviation (S.D.). The data was analyzed using the following statistical procedures. First, the percentages were used in the analysis of answers, concerning the general background of participants (Part I). Second, a five-point scale was used to score the levels of necessity, difficulty, needs and problems of English language for tour guides in Vietnam (Part II, III, and IV). Third, the information about the central tendency of the scores and Standard Deviation (S.D.) showing a measurement of the dispersion, giving information on the extent to which a set of scores varies in relation to the average score. Averages were used to calculate the level of necessity, difficulty, needs and problems of English language skills for tour guides in Vietnam. Fourth, scores were weighted to rank the needs and problems of English language elements for tour guides in Vietnam. A specific weight, as illustrated below, was assigned for each specific rank:

RankWeighted Scores

18

27

36

45

54

63

72

81

Finally, the reliability of the responses for those items, which used a five-point scale was tested.

Reliability, Validity, and Generalizability.

Definitions of Reliability, Validity, and Generalizability

Reliability is the extent to which an independent researcher, on analyzing one’s data, would reach the same conclusions and, a replication of one’s study would yield similar results. There are two types of reliability: internal reliability, which refers to the consistency of the results obtained from a piece of research; and external reliability, which refers to the extent to which independent researchers can reproduce a study and obtain results similar to those obtained in the original study (Nunan, 1992).

Validity is the ability of an instrument to measure what it is designed to measure. Researchers and experts in the field are persons who decide that an instrument is observing what it is set out to observe. Two approaches of establishing the validity of a research instrument are logic and statistical evidence. There are three types of validity: face and content validity (the judgment based upon the logical link between the questions and the objectives of the study); concurrent and predictive validity (the judgment based on the degree to which an instrument can forecast an outcome and how well an instrument compares with a second assessment done concurrently); and construct validity (the judgment based upon statistical procedures) (Kumar, 1996).

Generalizability is the way of drawing logical conclusion, or making an inference from certain results which explains some important implications of the results or is related to the research questions.

Reliability, Validity, and Generalizability in the Present Study

Reliability

To check the reliability of the questionnaire, I used an internal reliability check for consistency of the results obtained from the study. The questionnaire used in the pilot study was considered to be more than satisfactory for the purpose of this study.

Validity

To ensure the validity of the questionnaire, the first draft of the questionnaire was constructed and revised based on recommendations from the participants and other people in the field. In the present study, the researcher used face to face interviews about the questionnaire to determine opinions on the validity. I then constructed the questions in the questionnaire based on the objectives of the study and the research question being asked. By checking the validity, each question or item on the scales and the questionnaire content must have a logical link with the objectives. The judgment that the questionnaire and interviews was measuring what it was supposed to, was based upon the relevant inferences the findings had to the study. Moreover, the validity of the questions was also checked by the participants in the pilot study.

Generalizability

This study used a mostly quantitative approach with three established needs including sampling, reliability and validity checking. Therefore, the results obtained could be generalized to the target population, the tour guides in Vietnam. This chapter has dealt with the research methodology and the design of the present study. The objectives of the study and research questions; research types; data sampling and collection procedures; data analysis of the data collected; reliability, validity, and generalizability of the research methods and findings were also discussed. The results of the present study will be presented in the following chapter.

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council (WTTC), the tourism and hospitality industry represents one of the most important sectors of the global economy, which contributes a US $6 trillion business that employs over 230 million people and a significant portion of the world’s workforce. In other word, human resource considered one of the most important resources of the contemporary tourism and hospitality industry. The labour supporting a wide range of jobs in many different service sectors, for instance hotels and restaurants line, theme park and entertainment attractions. Personal service is essential to delivering products and service to satisfy customers especially those served in front line, for example waiters, chiefs, receptionists, etc. Since the business scope is emphasis the customers contact all over the time, the lack of manpower may lead the industry in trouble.

2.2 The research problems

In fact, the contemporary tourism and hospitality industry is facing a HR crisis where the labor turnover rate is relatively higher than other industry. ‘The bulk of service jobs tend to be temporary, held by the people with no career aspirations in tourism and no commitment to the industry.’ () That is no doubt that the contemporary tourism and hospitality industry offers job opportunities for the youth, women and less advantaged groups in society. Other than recruitment problems, employee turnover may cause by employee retirement, death, illness or disability, resignation, organization downsizing or termination. The reasons why employees resign may be avoidable where they may experienced unfair treatment, poor leadership, or lack of challenge. Otherwise they leave from an organization with unavoidable reasons, for example immigrate to another state or country, return to university as well as serious illness. () Employees may also leave an organization because of dissatisfaction to the working conditions, pay and benefit, training and development, the workforce diversity issues, and other potential issue. Consequently, a detailed turnover analysis of why employees leave a hospitality organization is meaningful to arrive at benchmark practices on dealing with the operational and administrative challenges the high level of staff turnover. This research information would represent the factors that influence staffs’ retention or leave from their job in this industry. Moreover, it helps hospitality trade organizations generate strategies to minimize staff turnover rate yet increase staffs’ retention by the means of enhancing recruitment policy, job satisfaction, organizational commitment and finally quality of service.

3.0 RESEARCH QUESTIONS

What cause employees leave the organizations within tourism and hospitality industry?

What are the consequences of high staff turnover to the related service sector organizations?

What corrective action should be taken to tackle high employees’ turnover rate in specify sector?

RESEARCH AIMS

The aim of this study is to identify the reasons of high staffs’ turnover in tourism and hospitality industry. Further, this study seeks to examine the impacts of high employee turnover to the organizations in the industry and how organizations tackle this challenge.

4.1RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

To examine the reasons of high employee turnover rate in tourism and hospitality sector

To evaluate the consequences of high employee turnover in an tourism and hospitality organization

To evaluate how organizations satisfy the employees in order to solve the problem of high employee turnover in tourism and hospitality sector

5.0 RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

5.1 RESEARCH DESIGN

Each method, tool or technique has its unique strength and weakness. () To ensure the validity and reliable of this study, descriptive research design is used since the research problems is not a new issue and had been sought by previous researchers. () Descriptive research is designed to describe characteristics of a population or a phenomenon, where in this research, is to describe the characteristics of the labor turnover within the tourism and hospitality industry. Further, it may help to examine the ways that may reduce such phenomenon.

Therefore, this research will be based on quantitative methods. Quantitative method will be undertaken by distribute survey questionnaires to a large number of respondents in order to obtain accurate information and improving decision making.() Deductive research is the logical process of deriving a conclusion from a known general premise. () Deductive research has been used in this research to test hypothesizes whether certain factors may influence labors’ resignation and whether high turnover rate would lead tourism or hospitality organization into certain dilemmas. Cross sectional studies method also will be used to conduct this study because the duration to conduct the research is limited.

5.2 UNIVERSE OF POPULATION

The population selected to conduct this study will be the employees who engaged in the tourism and hospitality organizations that is high labor turnover rate, for example tourism attractions like Genting Highlands and certain hotels as well as restaurants in Malaysia.

5.3 SAMPLING DESIGN:

5.3.1 SAMPLE SIZE

To conduct this research, the selected sample size will be 200 employees within the tourism and hospitality in Malaysia.

5.3.2 SAMPLE APPROACHES

Since it is difficult to seek the people who experience high labor turnover rate even resignation in the tourism and hospitality organizations, the research are undertaken by snowball sample. Snowball sample is one of the non-probability samples that selects the initial respondents by probability sample and then obtained the additional respondents by referral from initial respondents. The advantages of using snowball sample are economical and make convenience to the researcher as well as respondents. With this approach, this study can conducted by makes initial interview with the small group and then use these to establish contacts with other relevant employees to answer the designed questionnaires.

5.4 RESEARCH METHOD

Secondary data such as journals, textbook, newspapers and website articles also will be utilized when carry through this research. In broad terms, the questionnaires for survey purpose are designed with closed and open-ended questions. The questions designed expect to deliver the reasons of high employee turnover rate together with its consequences to the organizations within tourism and hospitality industry.

6.0 DATA ANALYSIS

The data obtained from survey methods will be analyzed by using SPSS VS.18.0 per window. It is used to obtain the descriptive statistic like frequencies, mean and standard deviations that reveals the outcome of the research problem.

7.0 TIME SCALE

GANTT CHART

November 2010
December 2010
January 2011
February 2011
Chapter 1: Introduction

1.1 Research Questions

1.2 Research Objectives

Rationale of the research chosen

Chapter 2: Literature Review
Chapter 3: Research Methods

3.1 Secondary data

3.2 Focus group

3.3 Case studies

3.4 Survey questionnaires

Chapter 4: Data Analysis and Findings
Chapter 5: Conclusion and Discussion
Binding of Dissertation

People are one of the most significant resources for business, especially in the people-intensive and service- intensive hospitality industry (Kong and Baum, 2006). Additionally, front office plays a role of reception and marketing as well as the “brain” in the hotel, and it is an important factor that has impact on hotel’s image and reputation. An increasing number of research in China and in the world are keen on investigating human resources management about the turnover in hospitality industry (Liu,2002; Baum et al.,2006).

Gustafson (2002) indicated that high employee turnover had been widely accepted and documented in the hospitality industry. The study also showed the relationship between managers’ perceptions and staff turnover. Moreover, Poulston (2008) found the poor training was associated with workplace problems, and improving in the training part is likely to reduce the thorny problems such as under-staffing. The result proved via questionnaires indicated that in the hospitality industry, the employers were not generally looking for hard technical skills, especially in the front line positions, but rather soft skills (Nickson et al., 2005). Such soft skills encompass attitude and it was also the essential parts affect staff aspirations about changing work all the time. In brief, turnover in hospitality is affects not only including psychological factors but also physical factors.

It is clear that China has a bright future in the hospitality industry, and absolutely it is with potential to open the outside world and thus to obtain advanced international management skills as a result. China is still facing the problem of shortage of quality personnel and high staff turnover which might relate to culture of bias to the hotel jobs (Kong et al., 2006). Due to the importance of about turnover in the hospitality industry, some of the psychological and physical factors may similar be all around the world, yet in China, culture differentials also exist about the job nature in the hospitality industry.

2.2 Turnover

KPMG (1991) and Timo (1999) pointed out that high staff turnover rates in the hospitality industry are largely higher than manufacturing industries in Australian labor market. Timo (1999) indicated that hospitality sector employment is always described as a mode of instability and flexible form of employment. In addition, findings in Timo’s survey (2005), a unit of percentage can evidence this statement: only 23.2% of employee respondents had been employed by the hotel 3-5years. It is also worth mentioned that only a little more half or 56.5% of respondents had been employed for less than two years. Similarly, about half of the manager respondents have been employed by one hotel for more or less two years. A survey conducted by Kong and Baum (2006) found that 75% respondents in front office was their first experience of working in hotel sector. Only about 30% respondents indicated that they plan to stay on their job for one to three years. This percentage largely reflects the potential workforce turnover in hospitality environment.

Awareness about staff turnover cannot just stay on the surface, it must recognize that staff instability is not only the loss of talent, but that also would result in more costs in hotels. According to the survey by Mitchell (2001), he indicated that turnover is costly in any kind of operations. Cost here is a general concept. It concluded intangible and tangible factors. The former involved loss of experience, technical skills, relationships knowledge etc. The latter is concerned about adding money to recruitment, training, creating of candidates. Additionally, Hinkin and Tracey (2008) also published a report regarding the cost profiles associated with staff turnover in Cornell Hospitality Quarterly. They divided the turnover cost into hard costs, soft costs and opportunity costs. Meanwhile they listed five cost categories during the recruitment, selection, training and development, and performance. The authors found out that the results that the managers spent a great amount of time and money in recruitment and selection new staff because of the poor quality of the candidates’ pool and high turnover rates existing in the hotels.

The front office is the first place that customers have contact with a hotel, which employees provided the first impression to the customers about the hotel service. In other words, the front office represents the hotel’s image and as a consequence staff in front office must know all the answers concerned in hotel to make customers happy( Kaye, Thomas, 2000,pp24-P25). Meanwhile, the clerks in hotel front office face big challenge on daily work. Working stress is one of the reasons that caused staff turnover can be found (Lo and Lamm, 2005). Pressure caused by working challenge may give rise to staff’s leaving desire and foreshadowing the final turnover in the hospitality.

Moreover, several physical factors have an effect on staff satisfaction about the current job. In Hinkin and Tracey’s (2000) work, they analyzed major causes for turnover arose, poor working environment, low wages, unreasonable management and lacking guiding for employees and poor training is also mentioned in this work. From the literature it is evident that human resource challenges found that there are many regions all around the world are confronted with the same issue about staff turnover and specifically, the problem of seasonal employment in tourist regions trouble the hotel managers a lot. Martin et al. (2006) published a research paper and summarized that the bad image of tourism & hospitality industry, unfavorable working environment, few development and promotional opportunities, these are all the candidates’ perceptions and the most significant factors for managers to improve and in order to attract and retain the workforce.

Specifically, there is an outstanding issue in the hospitality industry that the staff working in hotels is younger and younger and it has closely relationship with turnover issue. According to a New Zealand survey, almost half or 40% of the employees in hospitality sector are less than 25-years-old, the biggest group of the staff being 15-19 year (Whiteford and Nolan 2007).Working in hotel, as well as in front office, the most significant requirement for the staff is not skill levels but service attitude. Selection methods for recruitment can discern such feature, it relied 79% on application forms, 74% on curriculum vitae or/and 89% on interviews and references (60%) (Nickson, Warhurst and Dutton, 2005). A pertinent study conducted by Norris (1995) found that there are low barriers for person to enter most of the hotels, to be front-line personnel. Therefore, low barriers interests young workforce to looking for job in hospitality industry. Meanwhile, the youth staff in front office is one of the reasons for its workforce instability. “Play and work”, this notion may attract those employees to choose jobs in hotel which has low skill barriers to enter as well as opportunities to travel and exciting. (Accirrt, 1996; Chalmers and Kalb,2001)

In other words, with the phenomenon of the seasonal turnover, human resource managers in the hotel cannot ignore the using of the students as a temporary labor pool (Farnsworth, 2003). There is no doubt that the close relationship among the local hospitalities and the hospitality manager schools and the tourism manager colleges, they can help provide potential workforce to the hotels. Also, the author advocates that hospitality operators should provide job related training to the students and improve their working competitive strength.

Organizational commitment, missions, goals and direction

Organization commitment is playing a significant role which as a factor reducing employee turnover in the hospitality industry (Kazlauskaite et al,.). According to Greenberg and Baron (2000, pp.181) definition, organization commitment is an “extent to which an individual identifies and is involved with his or her organization or is unwilling to leave it”. And there are three types of organizational commitment: affective commitment, continuance commitment and normative commitment (Meyer and Allen, 1991). Among these three types of commitment, affective commitment may be considered most desirable for an organization. In addition to the reduction of employee turnover, according to Schuler and Jackson’s research result (1999), they found out that employee organizational commitment was also seen to be important for quality improvement and maintain the importance of such human resource practices as teamwork, appropriate feedback system. Furthermore, employee empowerment as a factor can enhance organizational commitment. Empowerment is a rather complex process and it is hard to definite until now, but Lovelock and Wright (1999) define empowerment in service industry as the authorization of an employee without asking for a supervisor’s approval to help customers to find out service problem solutions and make appropriate decisions. And with regard to the relationship between psychological empowerment and organizational commitment, Sigler and Pearson (2000) found the positive relationship between them and Janssen (2004) indicated that psychological empowerment can be viewed as a way to stimulate an individual’s commitment to the organization.

Basically, empirical evidence suggests that the hotel’s organization mission, goals and direction influence employee retention and job productivity. And the organization development direction and support had a significant impact on employee job satisfaction and overall commitment (Kim, Leong, & Lee, 2005). Susskind et al.’s (2000) research also indicated that perceived organizational support strongly insfluences job satisfaction and employees’ commitment to their organizations. US Department of Labor (1993) on high performance work practices revealed that involving employees in decision-making, goals and the direction of an organization through participation in terms will help reduce turnover rate and produce job employee satisfaction. Furthermore, Cho et al. (2006) also reported that organizations which non-managerial employees are more likely to experience higher turnover rate comparting with which have high-performance work practice in the organization.

Hotel culture and communication

According to Becker and Huselid (1999), hotel culture creates competitiveness since it changes staff’s working behavior by making them act consistently with the hotel’s desired corporate culture, thus influencing employee retention. Most of other researches indicated that there were uncovered similar findings between hotel culture and staff turnover rate and retention. For instance, according to Milman and Ricci (2004), they revealed that among the most powerful indicators to predict hourly staff retention in the hospitality industry were positive experiences with the hotel’s policies and with the hotel’s humane approach to staff.

Work environment and job design

In terms of the working environment and job design, most of the studies found that employees who had positive experience with regards to working hours, sense of fulfillment with their jobs and higher level of job satisfaction are more likely to stay with current employer. Although employees care lots about the monetary rewards which can be a top motivator for employee retention, having a comfortable working environment and flexible working hours were also important motivators (Wildes, 2007).The research work performed by Martin (2004), he pointed out the working situation has a quite important influence on the staff’s perception and working attitudes. Accordingly, the working performance also impacted by the employees’ satisfaction of the working environment. Continuously improving the ethical problem in the hospitality, it will ultimately lead to the lower staff turnover and the successful retention of the talent workforce. What is more, the result that hourly employees’ retention was predicted by self-fulfillment and working conditions, even over monetary rewards was confirmed by empirical studies of lodging properties in Central Florida (Milman & Ricci, 2004).

Hires and promotions

According to the searching result, numerous of the studies examine the impact of hiring and promotion activities on retention and performance (Becker & Huselid, 1999; Cho, Woods, Jang, & Erdem, 2006; Huselid, 1995; Milman, Hourly employee retention in small and medium attractions: the central Florida example, 2003). Based on the Pfeffer (1999) research, hotels which wishing to succeed in today’s global competitive environment must make adequate HR investment and build staff who possess better skills and capabilities than their competitors. In addition, it is important that selective hiring procedures can ensure effective retention of the most qualified employees while lowering staff turnover in the long term (Huselid, 1995).

Customer relationship

The relationship between employees and customers is a connection that cannot be ignored. A theory about employees and customers satisfaction was tested by Heskett (1990), clients’ satisfaction is base on the employees’ satisfaction in the hotel. More precisely, employees in the hotel are the significant factor which is root for hospitality operation. Furthermore, the research study by Dienhart et al. (1992) found that there were positive relationship between customer centeredness and the staff’s constructive views of job involvement, job security and satisfaction. If staff can feel that the hotel takes good cares of them, in return, they will provide a better service to customers to meet and/or exceed their expectation. They are more likely lead a higher satisfaction both staff and customers, also to better staff performance, thus making them less likely to leave (Arnett, laverie, & McLane, 2002), positively influencing staff retention.

Training

High quality level training is one effective measure for staff retention. Several studies show that the close relationship between training activities and productivity and retention. In hotels where staff receives the proper training needed to assume greater responsibility, turnover rates are generally lower (Youndt, Snell, Dean, & Lepak, 1996). And meanwhile Youndt et al. (1996) theorize that human resource practices designed to develop talented and ream-oriented workers improve staff productivity and customer satisfaction. With the same working situation for choosing, to the candidates, they prefer to apply for work at the hotel properties which have done well with the career progression image (Martin et al, 2006). Alexander and Nuchols (1994) also support a positive relationship between high quality level training and employees turnover. Moreover, work by Poulston (2008) investigated that some turnover is redeemable, meanwhile some is inevitable. In such a case, if hotel provides proper training focus on individual development features, employees are likely to stay long, and try their best to enjoy a complex and stressed environment. Obviously, hotels with substantial training opportunities should experience lower turnover rates according to Shaw et al.’s (1998) research. However, an interesting finding also by Shaw et al. (1998) included a positive relationship between training and the discharge rate. They indicated that hotels provide more training opportunities are concerned about staff skills and performance, and therefore experience a high percentage of staff terminations. Conversely, hospitalities that experience a high discharge rate initiate training activities because of lower workforce skill levels.

Employee recognition, rewards and compensation

The most notable among hotels’ retention initiatives is compensation and benefits. Numerous studies have addressed the impact of employee compensation, rewards and recognition on turnover and retention (Walsh & Taylor, 2007). In terms of wages, a survey by Norris(1995) indicated that workforce in hotel are usually low paid, compared with government average wage, staff in hotel earns just about 73% of the whole industry average. Another survey conducted by Choy (1995) pointed out that hospitality employees’ average annual salaried have been found to be about 16.5% to 31.6 % below than the hotel industry average and government average wage. Additionally, highly competitive wage system promotes employee commitment and thus results in the attraction and retention of a superior workforce (Guthrie, 2001). And other further survey noted that staff will remain with an organization as long as it serves their self-interest to do so better than the alternatives available to them elsewhere (Shaw, Jenkins, & Gupta, 1998). Although several study investigated the compensation can strongly influenced the staff turnover rate, also several other research have indicated that compensation in the form of base or variable pay may not be sufficient to attract or retain staff. The most important retention predictors included intrinsic fulfillment and working conditions rather than monetary rewards were confirmed by Milman (2003). Moreover, the absence of opportunity for professional growth and development affects hotels’ turnover rate and retention instead of compensation and work-life balance (Walsh & Taylor, 2007).

Leadership and human resource management partnership

Furthermore, another survey (Gustafson, 2002) found that the frequency of managers in hotel sector filling in for workers has a negative relationship with turnover. If front office’s managers working side-by-side with front-line clerks, teamwork sense developed from staff so that they will recognize that they are needed. At the same time, the managers’ action will lead to a sense of belonging and heightened communication, and therefore they would be less likely to leave. Contrarily, poor management, conflict between manager and front-line employees are all negative for daily operation in front office. It is not only negative for customer satisfactory, but also passive for staff to set career perspective it will lead employees more likely to turnover. A survey by Tutuncu and Kozak (2007) noted that supervision within the hospitality industry can bring job dissatisfaction, and otherwise staff turnover. What is more, Chew et al. (2005) reveals that hotel with a value profile of either elite or leadership, complemented with strategic HRM effectiveness will enhance financial performance. Instead of just focusing on single practice like staffing, the simultaneous use of multiple sophisticated human resource practices was assessed, which was identified as a link between organization-level outcomes and groups of high performance work practices (Huselid, 1995). All the prior work has consistently found that the effective of human resource management initiatives increased staff productivity and retentions. Specially, recruitment and training process, working environment, labor-management and performance appraisal, promotion and incentive compensation system that all been linked with valued firm-level outcomes (Huselid, 1995). Although the effects of human resource management practices on employee turnover and retention of organization-level is significant, many of the research in the hotel industry paid more attention to the individual-level predictors of turnover (Shaw, Jenkins, & Gupta, 1998).

2.3 Turnover in China

According to the statistics from China National Tourism Administration Office(2008), it is shown that China’s current tourism related staff were around 6million, while the actual the need of that are about 8 million or more. Therefore, the talent gap between the practical situation and the expectation is about 2 million. On the other hand, the loss of existing tourism practitioners was very serious. The ordinary turnover rate is 5% to 10% in the general industry, while the turnover rate is as high as 20% or more in the tourism industry, especially the higher qualification, the higher rate of brain drain. (The Yearbook of China Tourism, 2008)

The increased mobility of human resources in the hotel industry was becoming increasingly prominent, the brain drain had become a primary problem troubled hotel mangers. The turnover rate in other industries was about 5% to 10%, while the appropriate turnover rate in hospitality industry was about 8%. However, China Tourism Association, Human Resource Development and Training Center did an investigation in twenty three domestic cities in thirty three of two to five stars hotels’ human resource department, and found that the average turnover rate was 23.95% (Wang, 2009). According to statistics, it can be seen that the hotel staff turnover rate was 3 times more than the appropriate turnover rate, and it showed a gradual upward trend. Zhang and Wu (2004) also indicated that one of the key issues of human resource challenges of China’s hotel was the high staff turnover rates.

A paper published by Zhao et al. (2006) introduced that the high turnover rate in Hospitality industry is a universal existence question which puzzles the managers a lot. The literature concluded some reasons of employees’ turnover: instable work, little chance for promotion, pursuit higher returns and display their values, want to obtain the respect of personality, etc. Additionally, the author Fei (2009) did an investigation on the negative influence of hotel turnover, including cost allowance, undermine the team morale, and reduce the credibility of brand, loss business information, and decline the service quality. After analyzing the reasons that leading to the staff instability in China hospitality industry, Zhao brought forward some countermeasures: improve the staff training, make plans for staff career development, and focus on communication to strengthen the emotional management, improve the hotel and cultural construction to foster people-oriented management concept. Meanwhile Fei analyzed the potential development direction from different angles of social factors, corporate factors and individual factors to elaborate the importance of staff loyalty.

Many hotel staff graduated from hotel management and have quite potential to be outstanding employees in hospitality industry, but all these outstanding staff’s instability was also troubled their corporate managers a lot. Research from Zhang (2006) was focus on investigating the reasons of hotels’ outstanding employee turnover and introduced the ERG theory, after that he tried to solve the core issue in the hospitality industry: how to maintain the outstanding staff and pursue the hotel’s long-term stability and development. In this report, Zhang indicated that the outstanding employees’ outflow from their desire of leaving and the ERG theory used here to analyze the employees’ core requirement to prove that staff advantages should be discovered. Additionally, the author enumerates some positive examples to expound some recommendations for hotel and employees to establish loyalty mutually.

It terms of the human resource management, dynamic management, relative to the static management, is also a research issue in China. Chen (2006) found out that in order to control the mobility of the employees and reduce the turnover and loss, the hotel should carry out the comprehensive, systematic and long-term dynamic management. Additionally, Chen advocated that investigate the hotels’ turnover situation, the searchers would not only investigate the external & internal environment changing but also do some researches about the human resource inflow& outflow and human resource flowing in the corporate at the same time. After that, Chen indicated the most important countermeasure was to establish the warning mechanism.

Zhang and Wu’s (2004) did research about the human resources issues the hotel facing in China. It must mention that the authors analyze challenges the Chinese hotels were facing via hospitality perspectives, travel perspectives and university perspectives, and indicated the hospitality industry’s expectation of education. They found that human resource challenges were playing a negative role in the development of China’s hotel and tourism industry, the critical issue was the staff retention and human resource shortages, at the same time, the education level and the industry’s expectation gap also became a thorny topic. All the organizations and the government would establish communication to enhance the graduates’ skills level and experiences, decrease the gap of expectation and practical operation, in order to enhance the retention rate in hotel and improve the problem of human resource shortage.

According to China’s culture, with the “one-child policy”, there are not enough citizens are born to supply workforce demands. In addition, the country’s relatively outdated educational system cannot lead the colleges and universities to provided outstanding human resources with types of skills in an increasingly globalized economy. One of the most important factors contributing to the high level turnover rate in hospitality industry in China is work-life balance, long hours working shift and heavy workloads instead of the technological working, especially in the front line post (Michael, 2008). The same evidence could be finding out in much of the related western hospitality and tourism industry work. Deery and Iverson (1996), Deery and Shaw (1999) and Ghiselli et al. (2001), all these research investigated the constructs like organization commitment and job satisfaction are significant elements contribute to staff’s intentions to leave an organization. Additionally, work stress and personal attribute plays a decision role on leaving an organization (Deery M, 2008). As mentioned above, work-life balance (WLB) also is one of the influence factors that impact on the staff turnover rate in hotel (Wang and Walumbwa, 2007), while Dagger and Sweeney (2006) focus on life quality and staff turnover relationship research.

2.4 Turnover in Guangdong Province

Based on the related HRM theories, such as learning organization, situational leadership, quality of working life and employee satisfaction, Chen (2007) deeply investigated the human resource management situation in one hotel in Dongguan which is a industrialized city with rapid economic growth, he got the result that no matter an international brand hotel or a local hotel, the issues of staff turnover and management brought out a series of problems in Guangdong Province. On one hand, due to the labor-intensive industry, the hospitalities have to operate with a large number of employees; On the other hand, the staffs that hard recruited were unable to retain. According to the identification of the basic turnover environment, the author analyzed the high turnover rate and the investigating the countermeasures based on the three parts: external environment, staffing department and human resource department.

In Guangdong Province, many of the researchers found that training quality was a significant element on the issue of turnover in the tourism industry, especially in the hospitality industry. Dai (2005) made a hard working on doing the research about the different training approaches and quality between western countries and China, and set the Guangdong’s Hotels as examples, pointed out the differences in terms of the importance of training, investment in training, training contents, training approaches and methods, and the training effectiveness and evaluation. According to Shen (2008), she also focused on investigating the important role of the training in the hospitality industry. She kept her mind on searching the hotel training effect assessment with an instance of Intercontinental Hotel in Guangdong. The author pointed out that the personnel quality would be the big issue during the management. Its meaningful influence not only present on the Human-Resource department, the whole hotel, but also on the employees themselves. One positive effect of training for the hotel, it could have a direct economic benefits, and training as an investment process on the staff. The assessment of the training can provide employees with consciousness of the hotel’s benefit changing based on their capacities and enhance of their senses of achievement, improved employees’ job satisfaction and loyalty to the hotel.

According to the geographical situation in Guangdong province, it’s a developed area with lots of small medium enterprises as well as the hospitality industry provides a great amount of job opportunities to attract workforce from all the other provinces. It must mention that most of the workforces who live in other places go back to their hometown for the Spring Festival and it’s the peak period of labor-turnover (Wang, 2009).

2.5 Conclusion and research question

After searching the literature with the issue of turnover in hospitality industry, and according to comparing among those researches, several similar points about the situation and reasons on the turnover can be found between China’s hospitality industry and other countries’. Although China’s hospitality is developing with many thorny problems including staff turnover accompanied by Chinese culture. In this paper, the author aim to find out the following questions, and analyze the relationship among all the influenced factors.

Accordingly, the author proposes a mode of managerial turnover cognitions set up by Carbery R. et al (Figure 1) with the purpose of helping identify the four sets of variables and define the hypotheses.

The figure showed above, which identified the variables as possible of the hospitality turnover, involve Career Issues, Job Issues, Organizational Commitment and Covariates and so on. Based on the variables listed above, they can be classified into Demographic variables, Human capital variables, and Psychological variables according to this paper specific investigation of the staff turnover in the front office in hospitality.

Demographic variables

Age, gender and marital status are all demographic variables that influence the hospitality industry front office’s staff turnover. There was a phenomenon that the a great amount of staff in front office were youth employees, almost accounts for 40% of the staff were less than 25 years old (Whiteford and Nolan 2007). And in China, in particular the loss of tourism management students of the phenomenon was particularly serious (Dou, 2009). In the research conducted by Hellman (1997), indicated that older staff was more likely represent a lower degree of mobility due to the concerned about the formal and informal benefits associated with age in the work place. On the contrary, it is important to think about what’s the main reason for the highest turnover rate of the youth staff. As a result, it is hypothesized that:

H1: Younger employees represent higher turnover.

Human capital variables

Specifically, in hotel front office, education level, working experience and salary level are related human capital variables that impact the employees’ turnover. Finding from human capital theory would suggest that staff with relatively higher education levels could more cognitive about their career development road relatively and could not change their current job straight away. Wong et al. (1999) found that individuals with relatively higher education levels are better informed of the external labor market and they are relatively good at comparing cons and pros with the current positions. As a result, it is hypothesized that:

H2: Employees with higher levels of education attainment represent lower turnover.

Psychological variables

Thomas (2000) and Lamme(2005) indicated respectively working as a front line employee especially working in the front office, was a stressful job and full of challenge. Hinkin (2000) stressed the influenced factors about turnover were various, concludi

Motivation of employees is not a new phenomenon, however very little attention paid to him. The major and most successful companies are svjestne importance of human factors in their organization, but, unfortunately, is much more smaller and not so successful that profit only the vision, mission and sole objective. Many people are not thinking and not thinking about ways to enable them to profit, and abuse of the man and his knowledge and skills has never been respected, nor will it. Loss of employee loyalty is the result of failure to comply with the individuality of employees, their desires and needs.

How important is the motivation of employees, particularly in the hotel industry, will be explained in the following presentation.

For the poptpunije treatment given topic, will be given an adequate theoretical basis in the first part, where he will talk about motivation as a concept, the process of motivation, original and contemporary theories of motivation, usually applied motivatorima, link between employee motivation and human resource management, and related between the employees’ motivation and leadership.

The second part will be arguments about the specifics of the hotel product and the motivation of employees as a factor of success in the hotel industry.

The third part will respond specifically to the given topic and show how a successful company, Hit Montegro, motivate employees in your hotel, Maestral, which gives an advantage, as the concept develops and determines the business and what this hotel stands out from all others, not only in Montenegro, but also beyond.

Part I – theoretical foundation

1. MOTIVATION – definition, division, the process of motivation

Motivation is a complex area of human behavior. The term motivation comes from the Latin word moves, which means movere; move.

Under the motivation we podrazumijevati sum of factors that influence people to behave in a certain way, and especially to invest a certain efforts to achieve or accomplish something.

The economic system of business motivation is hidden inside the driving force behind overall economic pattern that connects and arranges the target all economic efforts and integrate them into one whole. In the process, motivation is manifested as the main driving force of creation.

Work motivation is a system of methods, procedures and actions which encourages, directs, and reinforces the behavior of certain employees, in order to realize a larger and more favorable results.

Basic assumptions about the motivation:

aˆ? Motivation is a positive – people feel good only if they are motivated.

aˆ? Motivation is one of the factors that influence the behavior of individuals. Other factors: capacity, resources, working conditions …

aˆ? Motivation is always less than sufficient and should be periodically renewed. Time can be lost.

aˆ? Motivation is the means by which managers can relate to offices in the organization.

Motivation can be: subjective and objective.

aˆ? Subject motivation is defined in two forms: moral motivation of workers (conscience, responsibility, pride, ambition, knowledge, etc.). Materjalna and motivation (interest in the job, salary, stimulation, etc.)..

aˆ? Objective motivation occurs at the level of the firm, on its reputation, strengthen, and similar recognition. ie. If you contribute to the reduction of the higher entropy of the system (firm).

Speaking of motivation, we can not to speak about human needs. The need is expressed through a lack of something and is associated with goals. Therefore, the need is internal, external and objective aspects of motivation

The process of motivation – the process of meeting the individual needs of employees, consists of several stages:

aˆ? Employees identify their needs – which is what it lacks and what he wants to achieve?

aˆ? Looking for ways to meet the needs – deficiency creates a kind of anxiety, and he seeks a way to eliminate

aˆ? strives to achieve the goals which reduces the need

aˆ? act appropriately

aˆ? To get the reward or punishment

aˆ? Re-evaluates its needs

Satisfaction is often in the literature and in empirical research identifies with the concept of motivation. These two terms are certainly related in large measure are mutually conditional, but undoubtedly is to be different.

Under the satisfaction of employees involves the subjective evaluation of the degree of satisfaction that derives from the personal assessment of their satisfaction with various aspects of belonging to the organization. And so happy employees pijre primarily related to the perception of employees and the extent to which they met their motives and above all the motives that are perceived as important for their involvement. Best illustrates the differences following chart:

(motivation,result,satisfaction)

Chart 1st The difference between motivation and satisfaction

Source: Developed author

If you are motivated enough for the job you do, it will certainly affect your final performance. After a job well done following the feeling of satisfaction.

2. THEORIES OF MOTIVATION

A large number of theories of motivation which, in fact, complementary to one another. The following table provides a list of major theories.

Table 1 Theories of motivation

Name Type theory theories theorist and /

Theories instrumentalnosti Tejlorizam Teylor (1911)

Theories content theory hijararhije needs Maslow (1954)

ERG Theory Alderfer (1972)

Managerial theories need McClelland (1973)

Two-factor model of Herzberg (1957)

Theory X and Y McGregor (1960)

Theories of goal setting process theory Latham and Locke (1979)

The theory of equality Adams (1965)

Theory expectations Vroom, Porter and Lawer (1964, 1968)

Learning theory Bandura (1977)

Source: Michael Armstrong, Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management, 11th ed., Kogan Page, London, 2009, p.319

As you notice, there are three kinds of theories of motivation in which:

aˆ? Theories instrumentalnosti belong to the original theory of motivation

aˆ? Theories of content are also in the original theory of motivation

aˆ? Theories are in the process of modern theories of motivation

Theories instrumentalnosti bazraju the attitude that people are motivated to work through reward and punishment. One of the major theories instrumentalnosti is called. Tejlorizam, which is named after its founder, Taylor, who wrote:

“It is impossible for any extended period of time, to encourage their employees to work more than others, the ordinary that surround them, if you are not sure to check a large and permanent wage increases.”

This theory is still widespread and can be successful under certain circumstances. However, its use is ignored other human needs and disturb the relations among the employees.

Theories of content based on the attitude that people do to meet their needs. As an important aside the following:

Hierarchy of needs theory (Maslow) – in every human being there are five primary needs that meet the hierarchical order:

aˆ? physiological – food, water, shelter and all. bodily needs

aˆ? security – physical and emotional safety and protection

aˆ? Social – belonging, love, friendship, acceptance by others

aˆ? respect – self-esteem, status in society, recognition of environmental

aˆ? samoaktuelizacija – development and progress, potential exploitation of personal fulfillment and inner satisfaction with them.

The first two groups are the needs of lower-order and meet the external mechanisms (salary), and the other three were of a higher order and satisfy the internal mechanisms (attitudes, values, expectations). The role has motivatora Unmet needs, which, when it takes satisfy the needs. This theory has not been verified numerous empirical studies and criticized because of too much generalization. Namely, different people have different priorities and it is difficult to accept Maslovljevu hijararhiju needs.

ERG Theory (Alderfer) predicts three types of basic needs:

aˆ? existential needs – the basic material necessary Poreba every man for life.

aˆ? the need connection – the desire of people for the realization of interpersonal relations

aˆ? development needs – the desire for personal development, training and advancing

Alderfer abolished the hierarchy of needs and claims that it can simultaneously satisfy multiple needs. When it comes to frustration due to inability to meet the needs on one level, increases the desire to satisfy the needs of another and, often, lower level.

McClelandova theory of needs, the needs of managerial theory – focuses on three types of needs:

aˆ? need for achievement – striving for success and greater achievements in relation to existing standards.

aˆ? the need for power – the desire for influence and control over others.

aˆ? the need for merging – the desire to be loved and accepted by others.

This theory assumes that successful managers who have a high need for power and personal success without the desire for merging.

Two-factor model – Motivation-hygiene theory (Herzberg) – based on the assumption that the individual attitude of employees towards work determines success or failure of work.

Factors that influence job satisfaction and dissatisfaction are the following:

aˆ? Motivatori – related to the work itself (job, recognition, promotion) and meet the needs of the individual to prove their own. These are the factors that cause lack of satisfaction to those that cause pleasure.

aˆ? Kontestualni factors – factors of working environment, environment, hygiene factors, which act as prevention to prevent dissatisfaction. This is a set of factors than those that cause frustration to those who do not cause dissatisfaction.

On the positive motivation may affect only the first group, while another can only reduce dissatisfaction, but not increase satisfaction.

The opposite of satisfaction is not dissatisfaction, but the lack of satisfaction, and vice versa.So, just motivatorni factors contribute to job satisfaction, and only factors contest discontent.

Theory X and Y (McGregor) – starts from two different assumptions about human nature: the negative X-and Y-positive.

Theory X – assumes that the behavior of employees Guided needs of lower order.

aˆ? Employees do not like to work and izbjegavaA‡e work whenever possible

aˆ? must be force to work under the threat of punishment

aˆ? avoid responsibility and seek precise directives from their bosses

aˆ? They have little ambition and their safety comes first

Theory Y – assumes that the behavior of employees Guided needs a higher order:

aˆ? Employees understand the business as a natural need for such leave

aˆ? Dedicated to the tasks and training

aˆ? They are ready to accept responsibility

aˆ? are able to make decisions and they need povjeravati responsible and challenging jobs.

Theories of the process (the modern theory) focus on the psychological processes that affect motivation. Process theories are certainly more useful to managers of the theories of motivation because it gives concrete instructions for the application of motivational methods.

The theory of goal setting (Latham and Locke) – motivate employees three mechanisms:

aˆ? Specific and clearly set goal – difficult but achievable attainable, because it is in human nature and the need to prove self.

aˆ? Feedback on achieving set targets – people want to be informed of how well that worked and the results achieved.

aˆ? Participation of employees in setting goals – increases their motivation, efficiency and confidence.

Equity theory (Adams) – one in the organization expects that efforts to win the same prize as well as his colleagues who performed the same job.

When employees believe that they made wrong comes to the creation of tension (not so much effort into the entrance of their work as before, consider that spend too much time, give notice).

Expectations theory (Vroom, Porter and Lawer) – developed a situational model of motivation that explains why one and the same person makes various efforts in different situations. Vroom argued that there are two factors that determine the effort that employees invest in their work, the first – the value of individual awards that would enable them to meet their needs related to security, autonomy, samoaktuelizaciju, and another – the likelihood that the amount of awards depend, in fact, of individual effort.

Porter and Lawer complement this theory and created a new model where the motivation will, in addition to the effort, the final performance of the employees affected and: knowledge and skills and the expected role (what employees want to work and what is expected of them to work).

Chart 1st Motivation Model – Porter and Lower

Source: Michael Armstrong, Armstrong’s handbook of human resource management, 11th ed, Kogan Page, London, 2009, p.326

Learning theory (Bandura) – emphasis is on learning to adapt behavior. Behavior which withdraws the award will be repetitive, and it pulls you avoid penalty. The consequences of past behavior influence the future actions of employees. Model behavior of employees is reflected in the following: a stimulus – response – a result – future reactions.

Managers can influence employees to change behavior: support, avoidance, lack of support, or punishing, with respect to some rules:

aˆ? Do not reward all equally, but the performance

aˆ? Clearly tell people what to do to be rewarded

aˆ? Be sure to tell what sins

aˆ? Do not punish the others

aˆ? Be fair.

3. Employees’ motivation and human resource management

Link between employee motivation and human resource management best illustrated in the following diagram.

Chart 3rd The influence of individual effectiveness in human resource management

Source: Robert Mathis and John Jacson, Human Resource Management, 11th ed, Thomson South-Western, USA, 2008, p.81

From the individual, negovih knowledge and skills, motivation and support they receive from the company you work for, and the nature of the business depends on the job satisfaction, employee loyalty to the company, productivity, quality and service.

The above variables are used for measuring the effectiveness of human resource management.

Namely, if the employee is not motivated enough, it will first be reflected in his performance, then all other variables, so therefore the effectiveness of human resource management be in the lower level, and vice versa.

4. MOTIVATORI

Motivatori are things that come to pojedninca activities or methods which can reconcile the conflicting needs or to emphasize a need in the way that it is assigned priority over other needs.

They are the kind of instruments that would strengthen the desire for some achievement, and beyond that to achieve satisfaction, and the means through which to influence the behavior of people. Motivatori most commonly used are:

aˆ? Money

aˆ? Security of employment

aˆ? allocation of interesting tasks

aˆ? The public attribution of merit

aˆ? The possibility of training

aˆ? The possibility of progress

aˆ? Participation in decision-making

aˆ? The quality of working environment

aˆ? self etc..

5. Employees’ motivation and leadership

Using different motivatora to successful motivation of employees in the first row is determined motivacijiskim abilities or samomotivacijom manager. Namely, the concept of motivation is closely linked to the notion of leaders, team leaders, organizations, companies. A leader in 21.v. primarily motivator. Howard Gardner, professor at Harvard in his work, “Leading Minds: An Anatomy of Leadership” defines leaders:

“The leader is rarely more individuals, or individuals who significantly influence the thoughts, feelings and / or behavior of a large number of individuals.”

On the other hand, the great leaders of today were not in their positions that they did not have strong enough motivation to constantly improve and successfully build your career.

One of the greatest leaders of all time, Napoleon Bonaparte was said:

“Leadership is the art of motivating a group of people to act towards achieving a common goal”

Leadership = MOTIVATION

LEADER = motivator

PART II – employees’ motivation as a factor of success in a hotel INDUSTRY

“Advance one that gives a little more and a little better.”

Ellsworth Statler (1863 – 1928)

One of the founders of hotel industry, Ellsworth Statler, the success achieved by the introduction of standards in their hotels, which could provide better quality services at a reasonable price. He was a great innovator and racionalizator. The first is to realize the importance of hotel staff: their looks (introduced uniforms), behavior (introduced a Code of Conduct) and knowledge (he founded the Foundation for Education of catering professionals and scientists, and financial help today in the world famous university education hotel administration and hotel management “Cornell Hotel School, Itaca, New York). Stimulate the workers, allowing the purchase of shares of any hotel in a certain amount, with the allowance of the salary.

In addition to the above sentence, which with strong reasons, the author opens his presentation, he often spoke to employees: “The guest is always right! He pays you and me! ”

It is clear that the hotel industry has developed precisely for reasons to satisfy the needs and desires of the guest and can not in any case to ignore its importance. However the question of whether the guest is still a key link in the hotel in 21.vijeku?

Let us start from the well-known marketing concepts:

Needs, requirements, desires and satisfaction of guests in the first place!

Prove that the set theory valid.

Hotel is primarily obliging activity and as such has its own specifics that arise from the specific characteristics of services in relation to the products. And they are:

aˆ? intangibility,

aˆ? indivisibility – an integral part of its consumer services, ie. consumer – a guest of the hotel.

aˆ? Kvarljivost – services can not be stored, empty hotel facilities can not be compensated by good or excellent popunjenoA?A‡u in the following time period.

aˆ? Variability – conditioned by the fact that the subjective factor or a factor crucial for the quality of the man of realization. The service is Neponovljiva, such as the role of actor in theater boards, it can be on the high level of quality that satisfies customers, but never all the elements in the process of delivery and consumption can no longer repeat. Simultaneity consumption and provision of services through the interaction of both sides creates a unique “atmosphere.”

Psycho-physical characteristics of the service providers can significantly cause satisfaction or dissatisfaction with the consumer, regardless of technical, organizational and technological quality of the service segments. Because of this, the focus quality is transferred to vrA?itelje services, catering and hotel management staff. It is important to determine the quality of standards (rules which determine the elements of quality staff in the hotel: the knowledge, skills, experience, appearance, behavior …). But not enough to meet the standards to achieve competitive advantage in a very turbulent market, what is a tourist. Guest looking for something more! Guest search experience! And this is one of the leading trends that says UNWTO – Change from Service to expirience! Interior, exterior, luxury, luxury, artificial smile … are no longer of crucial importance. The main trump card of successful hotel in 21.v. man.

Employees are in the hotel, you love your job and you are satisfied with the performance that you provide? Masters the necessary skills and knowledge? As guests, we will see, feel, that to enjoy and of course, be back again, but this time with “hrpom” friends!

We conclude:

The guest is satisfied if the providers of content services.

These reject the thesis that the home needs, requirements, desires and satisfaction RATING in the first place! Already perform a new conclusion:

Needs, requirements, desires and satisfaction of employees are in the first place.

And from the above results:

Satisfied employees = employees motivated?

And just the motivation of employees is a key factor for success in all spheres of social life and work, especially in idnustriji hotel where guest satisfaction largely depends on the satisfaction of employees in the hotel. Sometimes it is possible and the big technical flaws nadomjestiti beautiful gestures of employees, but the latest and most expensive technology, luxury and grandeur can not nadomjestiti unkindness and “coldness” of the staff will (not) was available during your stay.

A hotel company to motivate its employees, we will see the following example.

PART III – practical EXAMPLE

6.MOTIVACIJA EMPLOYEES AS A FACTOR success HOTEL MAESTRAL

Is the set theoretical foundation found application in the local hotel industry?

The answer we seek in the hotel Mistral and also reveal why years ago Hit Montenegro, which owns the hotel, the leading company in the tourist market in Montenegro and beyond.

Hotel Mistral (hereinafter only the mistral or a hotel) do not have much to present. Just the name tells us a lot.

Mistral is the son of a very good, very good, the luxury, prestige. Accordingly, you will always be able, during your stay at the hotel, meet many people who have reached their professions so. Top of the pyramid.

Question: Why?

aˆ? Why, when only the hotel building, its exterior, interior and not “drawn” luxury?

aˆ? Why, when the accommodation units (rooms) in general are not so large that guests can enjoy?

aˆ? Why, when the rooms still no plasma TVs?

aˆ? Why, when all the rooms still have Internet access?

aˆ? Why, when a cup of coffee “exude” more humility than the refinement?

But the most important issue only follows:

Why, despite the above, all hotel guests coming back again, even for the same amount of money can get a spacious room, more beautiful towels …?

Answer:

Because they are satisfied with experience and “treatment” given to them in the hotel!

Because unlike other hotels, the hotel Mistral has a “soul.”

“Soul” Maestral make its employees, whereby it is important to emphasize – all employees of higijeniA?arke to Executive Director.

We arrive to a new thesis:

Guests of the hotel Mistral are satisfied.

Return to the thesis of the previous section:

The guest is satisfied if the providers of content services.

Satisfied employee = motivated employee!

With certainty we can conclude:

Staff at the hotel Mistral motivated.

The aforementioned conclusion shall be taken as a starting point the thesis that the next exposure to be adequately argued.

7. BUSINESS STRATEGY

As evidence that the employees, their motivation, but considerations when creating a strategy, defining the vision, mission and strategic goals, the next presentation will be separated only fragments of importance for this work.

Business idea of the company as follows:

“With knowledge, marketiA?kim thinking and professional approach we offer a high level of service and make good business results in the hotel complex, which allows our guests accommodation, dice, entertainment, recreation, enogastronomske pleasures and good conditions for business activities.”

Objectives and plans of the hotel were based, and today is based, among others the following setting:

aˆ? attractiveness, innovation, expertise, kindness, and create nadstandarnom offer the advantage ahead of the competition and achieve the return of guests

One of the very high goals and requirements that the company has set before him as follows:

aˆ? the company offers full-time staff employment, adequate wages, the possibility of development, education, training and career

High standard and the company has set a vision and high expectations of the management company and some of them are:

aˆ? Hotel Mistral house will be satisfied, creative, motivated and professionally competent staff, which will continually increase revenues, value additions and visit hotels.

aˆ? Hotel Mistral will represent one of the pearls of the tourist offer of Montenegro and as such would represent an example of successful investments in tourism to the satisfaction of owners, employees, narrower and wider community.

In accordance with the above specified, the company is set by among others the following strategic objectives:

aˆ? permanent investment in staff development (knowledge, motivation, affiliation)

8. COMPANY ETHICS

Nowadays the competitiveness of the organization, its reputation, and thus its business success are inseparable from ethics. It can be said that ethics is the foundation of successful companies and management that relies on trust. Companies in which the rule of justice and fairness are often companies that respect ethical principles. A way that employees see a significant impact on the fairness of the organization. Sense of fairness is associated with greater commitment to employees, the higher degree of satisfaction, which is based on the organization, business, leaders, and conduct that reflects a sense of belonging to the company.

This company is exactly Hit Montenegro. Mistral its reputation gained primarily fostering the right values and good application of the Code of Ethics.

It may sound contradictory, if we note that the largest part of the profits from the casino collected mistral. But I do not need much pojaA?njavati. Ask one why casino players will soon decide to invest their money in Maestralov casino, and not in another, perhaps better equipped.

The answer lies in business ethics, codes of ethics and employees who implement.

Working in such an environment, where you know you will not mislead anyone, where all will be “as clear as day,” is really a big driver of your energy, you surely will not spare to spend in the job at hand.

9. Strict LABOR LAW

Professionalism in the hotel Mistral is reflected, inter alia, in strict compliance with the law on paper. It can happen that you start work, and that you are not previously signed a contract with the employer.

FasciniraA‡e you the following story from practice: Seasonal worker came fully prepared, just in time to his position for the first time. That day was supposed to sign the contract. Through the half-hour lawyer appeared with the words: “Excuse me please, now I saw that the director did not sign a contract, and is absent. Can you come tomorrow he comes today and the contract will be ready in the morning? Sorry again, but I think it’s wrong to do, and do not have a signed contract, you agree? Of course. ”

The said employee is satisfied on the first day that really work for professionals, as his nagovjeA?tavali earlier.

Further.

aˆ? Iplata monthly benefits to all employees every fifteenth of the month. Deviations were not, and there’s not likely that delayed payments to employees or not that month, expressed with one decimal digit, is 0.1%.

aˆ? UraA?unaA‡e you and overtime work, night work, work during the holidays, work on Sundays.You and paid travel expenses and meals at the hotel.

aˆ? If you are a seasonal worker, you will be provided accommodation in nearby hotels.

aˆ? Paid you life and health insurance.

aˆ? Business book you filled and safe.

aˆ? You have two free days a week and the right to annual leave and the right to paid sick leave.

aˆ? All your rights foreseen by the law on work, safety and employment contract have been met at every opportunity.

SloA?iA‡ete is that rare company in Montenegro, especially in the hotel, which apply this system work, which, logically, employees fully responsible. And this is one more reason to stay in Maestral and not iznevjere trust.

10. Fee and gratuity

Results of the survey, which was conducted a few years ago one of the employees in the hotel Mistral, showed that approximately 70% zaposelnih declared that their main motive for work is not salary.

However, should podcijenjivati importance of monetary compensation. Bearing in mind that the hotel has a high occupancy rate throughout the year, and that primarily comes to the casino hotel, the hotel employees are well paid, which gives a good basis for the investment of additional effort and better results.

Wages are not only monetary income of employees in the hotel. From two to three times a year all employees have a raise, as a form of additional stimulus.

If your job requires direct contact with guests, it is quite certain that you will leave a tip, which can sometimes be higher than your monthly salary. It is understood that you will not get a tip if you have left a negative impression on the guests, whether your neljubaznoA?A‡u or non-professionalism. But, as you care to maintain good relations with colleagues, you share tips.This is one of nepisanih rules and actually proved successful in practice. At the end of the day you and your associates happy.

11. OTHER BENEFITS

Public represents an important part of almost every employee compensation and they are determined as indirect monetary or non-pecuniary compensation that employees receive because they continue to work for the company. The financial compensation was the word in the previous chapter, and that all the Mistral provides more benefits to their employees we will see from the next exposure.

The last two years for the new year, all employees had the opportunity to do a certain period of use by one Thai massage. All employees have certain discounts at partner hotels, Montenegro Airlines. Fee in the union, two times a year to receive “packages” with food. Union also provides benefits in some hotels during the winter / summer months.

12. STAND MANAGER TO EMPLOYEES

Peter Drucker says, “They are not workers, they are people.” A manager should be treats people with dignity is respect.

Already during the introduction to your superiors conclude that the word of professionals who know their job well and who is ready to help and to teach. Through a friendly conversation, in his office, in the conference room or an aperitif in the bar, we introduce the vision, m