Managing the Hospitality

Managing the Hospitality Experience – TOUR 2005

Assignment 1 – Case Study

“We don’t want any trouble makers in our hotel.”

1. Describe five challenging aspects of a hotel receptionist’s job as illustrated in this case study. To meet this challenging role what kinds of personality traits are desired and why?

o The ability to be flexible and work in different departments of the hotel is a required personality trait. Employees should come across as confident, experienced and friendly to the customer. These traits will help prevent consumers holding the belief that they can attack you for your inexperience, persuade freebies or discounts from you, or force you into giving benefits they are not entitled to.

o Good communication skills are a vital trait for a hotel receptionist, particularly regarding to the case in question (Wijesinghe 2007, ep.8). Hotels holding a four or five star rating tend to pride themselves on their exquisite service and high quality of staff. It is crucial to ensure the customer has an extremely comfortable stay. Maintaining these high standards require that any problems or realistic demands had by the customer are acted upon promptly to ensure the guest has the best possible stay in their chosen hotel. There are limits to this however, particularly if the customer stretches their right to utilise the hotel’s staff and facilities. For staff at the Ghandi hotel in question; due to the high expectations of service, reception staff must have extremely high communication skills with not only the customer directly but also other departments within the hotel to ensure the customer is receiving the quickest service at the highest calibre. Again looking at this case study (Wijesinghe 2007, ep.8); staff must have a sound communication base internally so that when customers, such as Mr Patel, try taking advantage of their service, staff can liaise between departments to ascertain specifically what has occurred and to feel...