CHAPTER 2

GUESTOLOGY
Introduction
Many establishments and organizations are doing everything to improve the
level of quality service through the performance of the employees. Others develop
their systems. Some also embed the concept of corporate culture and environment in
their setups. All of these are deemed effective, but sometimes, what we of forget is
that the center of the service concept is our guests.
This would be the focus of our study the concept of Guestology.
Learning Objectives
At the end of this chapter, the students should be able to:
 define what guestology is and what a guestologist is:
 determine the predictors of customer expectation;
 identify the different types of customers; and determine who defines
value and quality.

Reality Bites
Arlene and Rochelle dined at a restaurant in Iloilo which is very famous
because of its excellent local food and incomparable hospitality. Finding the
restaurant was an easy thing to do as it is very near a popular mall and is in proximity
to other areas like hotels, market, and other shopping centers. As they approach the
restaurant, they were immediately welcomed and greeted with warm smiles from the
stall. After asking how many they are in the group, Sheryl, the food attendant, pulled
out each chair and made sure that everyone was comfortably seated. Right after, she
gave the menu to each of the members of the group and gladly mentioned their
specialties of the day. As Arlene and Rochelle, together with the other members of the
group, are already hungry, they immediately ordered food. In no less than 15 minutes,
the food was delivered impeccably. Sheryl rushed over, making sure that the food was
served hot and was served respectively to the specific members of the group The
group was really amused with the sumptuous food that was served to them, from the
steamed rice to the very delectable pork and beans dish that was a specialty of the
region. As another set of food was delivered to the table, Sheryl became puzzled
There was no more space on the table where the dish will be placed and it seemed that
the party was really enjoying their dining experience; Sheryl was hesitant to disturb.
So, what she did was to grab the rice platter and offered it to the person in the group
whose appetite was very good. She emptied the platter to him/her and the person was
really elated as this is not a usual thing for a food attendant to do. but still she thought
of the idea so that she can now place the next dish on the table. The group ended up
very much delighted of the food and the service that Sheryl and her colleagues
provided them. Arlene and Rochelle, now very much grateful. shared their experience
to their friends and relatives, reminding them to always make a stop in this restaurant
whenever they are in the region. Truly, Iloilo at its best hospitality!.
Content
For us to understand what it means to be a guest, we should now understand
what hospitality is as our guest is an outcome of the hospitality that we give. Service
executed immaculately is different from hospitality. Service providers today are
focusing on making things right rather than making people feel great. Services the
sequence of acts, tasks, and procedures which are done with consistency. It is the
mechanics, the logistics, and how-tos of any process. Service, as a commodity, is
expected to be built-in with any product. We expect our meals to be served in less
than 12 minutes and our reservations finished immediately. What makes the
difference is hospitality. Hospitality is the positive emotional response elicited from
our guests. Service is a skill, while hospitality is a spirit. Service is what we do for our
guests, while hospitality is what we do with them. Service is about delivering the
needs and wants of our guests, while hospitality is about anticipating the needs and
wants of our guests, expressed and unexpressed. Service can be given methodically
while hospitality is dynamic. We forget good service; we remember hospitality. This
is the reason that the end user of such process is called a guest, because we are
honored that they come to us, they come with us.
Guestology
Dickson (2010) defined guestology as the scientific study of the behaviors,
needs and expectations of people in a service environment, and how to use that
knowledge to optimally manage a service organization. The concept that Bruce Laval,
the father of guestology, introduced has now become a science that deals with
understanding the guest.
Guestology entails studying the totality of the guest experience, from their
expectations down to the results and feedback. Klein (2014) mentioned in her study
that guestology involves knowing the guests or clients and their needs and want
perceptions, and expectations. Her approach toward guestology entails involving
every person with whom the service provider has in the workplace. As tricky as it is,
identifying the actual needs and wants, perceptions, and expectations will really seal
the deal. Long ago, it seemed that establishments operated under assumptions that
they already had an idea of what these needs and wants were, but these assumptions
might have fallen anywhere from pairing the guests' beliefs or being completely
different. Any establishment would want to realize that what it actually needs is to
find a way to quantify the answer of answering the question, rather than to assume.
 The Guestology Concept
CUSTOMER EXPECTATIONS
For customer satisfaction and customer service to be achieved, a complete and
proper understanding of customer expectations is very important. Unless the
establishment already knows what the customers want, what they expect, and who
they are, it will be very difficult to match up to the expectations. A guest who will
dine in a restaurant for the first time will have a different expectation than a guest who
has been in the restaurant for a couple of times. The expectation of a frequent flier for
business purposes may also have a different expectation with that of a family on a trip
to another country. Companies should make it a practice to always inquire from their
customers whether they have met their expectations and put all of this data into their
internal research. It is important that we note of their likes, dislikes, needs, wants, and
profile as these would be the baseline of our entire operations The reality right now is
that customer expectations are continuously changing, and unless companies are
attuned to them, they will fall short of these expectations, leading to customer
dissatisfaction and attrition.

Restaurant Survey Form

Establishments geared toward delivery of services in tourism and hospitality
should always be careful not to over-deliver the said services. As our guest becomes
more exposed to what we offer, he/she becomes more complex and, as such, is
accustomed to rely on our decision-making skills to look what best to give to them. If
a guest were to enter a fast-food restaurant with tables lined with expensive linen,
he/she would be expecting the levels of a casual or fine dining restaurant. Some
would say that this is delighting the guest, but it is also important to think that a guest
may also think that this restaurant is too expensive to dine in. Guests would want that
their expectations to be met, no more, no less.
 Food attendants or waiters should literally "wait" for their guest when dining
in a restaurant. Anticipating guest needs is one of the primary responsibilities of a
waiter and that he/she should be good at it. It requires full attention so that whenever a
guest needs something, he/she could immediately handle the concern and attend to the
guest's request. But it does not mean that the waiter should be in close vicinity of the
guest that the guest could actually see and notice that the waiter is on "tiger look" at
him/her. A guest needs ample space so that he/she could get the privacy that he/she
wants. He/she needs a cozy environment that he/she could enjoy and spend it with
people he/she would want to be with. So, imagine if the waiter exaggeratingly
anticipated the needs to the highest level, the guest would be disappointed and it
would ruin the experience. The effort was too much. Thus, the management team
needs to constantly strategize and take into full account the expectations needed to run
this ever-changing and demanding industry.
Depending on the service desired, most of our guests have general similarities
when it comes to their expectations. Their usual expectations would be that the
establishment be clean and the staff be courteous, responsive, reliable, and friendly.
These expectations usually go up if the establishment's level of service also goes up,
Unfortunately, not all high-end or luxury establishments have maintained this kind of
service. Ekiz et al. (2012) noted in their article that even in luxury hotels, there are
still basic problems that are actually unresolved, and with social media around guests
have easy access to flaunt these problems which sets a springboard for other
problems. They enumerated a number of problems in their article which are the
following:
1. Rooms-with concerns extending from small sized rooms to rooms with no
modern technology
2. Arrogant and/or clueless staff-with comments ranging from staff being
rude and no answers to questions posed
3. Failure to respond - mainly covering staff's failure to respond to guest
complaints
4. Poor delivery- covering complaints such as late service or wrong room
service and long process for check-ins/outs
5. Cleanliness-with criticisms on soiled linen, carpet stains, and hair trapped
in bathtubs
6. Amenities and utilities-with problems associated to the lack or inadequacy
of toiletries and items in minibar.
7. Billing with guests grumbling about having them charged extra for parking,
Internet, gym, and the like
Issues like these are typically simple to resolve but management should allot
time and enforce policies in monitoring these problems and ensure that guest service
is really a top priority.
Customers/Guests/Clients
 Customers, otherwise known as guests and clients, in the hospitality and
tourism business play a significant role in the operations. To understand their
behavior and to strategize the efforts of the company, it is important to identify and
match each need to each type of customer.
The Corporate Finance Institute (2015) has identified five basic types of
customers that a hospitality and tourism enterprise should be aware of. They are our
loyal customers, impulse customers, discount customers, need-based customers. and
wandering customers.
The loyal customers are actually the most important segment to please and
should be one of the priorities in mind of a specific company. Usually, this type of
customers represents no more than twenty percent (20%) of the customer base but
actually drives majority of the sales revenues. Because of this, it is important to note
that a loyal customer values a product heavily. Furthermore, they are more likely to be
the bearers of positive word of mouth (WOM) and likely to recommend the
company's service products. Therefore, during the planning phase, even in the
decision-making process, these customers must be given heavy emphasis.
Impulse customers, meanwhile, are the best type to do suggestive selling.
They are also second to loyal customers when it comes to attractiveness in the market.
As the name implies, these customers do not have a shopping list in mind and do
shopping instinctively. Moreover, this kind of customers are receptive to
recommendations on products. Similar to loyal customers, it is also important to
involve these customers because what they say also matters in generating more
revenue.
Another type of customer which affects a company's inventory turnover is the
discount customer. They are contributory to a company's cash flow because the
products which are seldom purchased at full price are actually availed by these
customers as best markdowns.
The fourth type of customer is driven by a specific need. These customers are
called the need-based customers. They buy for a specific reason and occasion, and
because of this, it may be difficult to convince them to upsell. It is also important to
note that these customers are adept in avoiding any attempt for upselling and that they
will immediately leave after they are done getting what they need. These customers
are also easily drawn to other businesses, much more if the price is cheaper and the
alternative product can also serve its purpose. It is therefore important to carefully
initiate personal interaction with this segment in order to develop a lasting
relationship with them. It has also been observed that there is a possibility to convert
this segment to loyal customers. If a company can prove that the service that it
delivers could pose as a "need" for this segment, along with proper positive personal
interactions, it is expected that this segment will be loyal in the long run.
The last type of customer is the wandering customers. These customers
generate the largest amount of traffic as they have no specific need or desire in mind
but yield the smallest percentage in sales revenue. This type of customers enjoys
social interaction while shopping. Thus, spending a lot of time trying to please this
segment can draw away the other segments. Although, generating a small percentage
to revenue, it is important to note that this segment still provides insightful
information about the products and can therefore contribute to the feedback
mechanism of the company.
Identifying these segments is significant as they generate revenue for the
enterprise. Alongside these segments drag another type of customer that is usually
forgotten or left out. It is called the internal customers. As a hospitality entity, it is
important to note that aside from external customers, it also serves its internal
customers (people which depend and "serve" each other). As they are the ones who
are actually doing the service process, they understand the feeling of being served
together with the tail of hard work that goes with it. Thus, the service given to an
external customer should also be the same with an internal customer. The
expectations, which are to be satisfied, for an external customer should be the same
with that of an internal customer.
Quality and Value
In the previous chapter, quality was defined individually. Here, we will view
quality as tied together to the concept of value and how it affects the guest-service
staff relationship. The measure of quality for the guests is actually based on the
difference between their expectation and their experience (or as netizens quote it in
present memes, "reality"). By reality, it means what the guests have experienced in
actual sense. For example, the quality that the guest experienced matches what he/ she
expected, then we can say that he/she has experienced typical or normal quality-
positive as he/she was satisfied with the service provided. This is experienced when a
person is craving for a chicken meal, for example, in a fast-food outlet, and he/she
feels that what he/she paid is fit for the service that he/she received, But if a person is
not satisfied with either the service provided or the product given, then we can say
that he/she experienced a negative quality. When evaluating quality, one needs to
realize that quality can be high or low regardless of how it costs the company. A
porridge house in Manila that serves unlimited porridge to its customers, which are
students, delivers high quality service as perceived by the students who do not more
than $50.00. While there are also first class restaurants that buy fresh expensive
ingredients just to ensure the high quality of service they consistently give.
Value, in relation to quality, would entail the study of costs. To measure the
value derived from a guest experience, we need to match if the costs incurred total or
equal to the quality of the experience. For example, a guest would be reserving for spa
session and would be allotting time and paying for the service. This reservation of
time, effort, and money should equal the quality of the service provided so as to say
that the transaction has high value. Therefore, the time, effort, and money should be
studied very closely by the planners of the service experience so as to have a
meaningful guest experience.
The Customer and the Definition of Value
Since the tourism and hospitality industry is a guest-centered or customer
centered industry, ultimately, it is the customer who defines value. For example, s
sanitation inspector can say if a resort establishment violates or adheres to certain
laws, but this will only be an add-on toward achieving value. Why? It is because the
guest does not see it. For the guest, the quote, "To see is to believe," works so much.
The output will be the ultimate measure whether a service design has been crafted
excellently. If the guests are dissatisfied or not happy with the outcome, it does not
matter if they have followed correctly the process. This is evident if, for example, a
guest would want to have a manicure or pedicure, and if a smudge occurred while
applying nail polish, the ultimate measure of the guest is your final output, and he she
would be dissatisfied; or in a flight, for example, the airline company promised a
seamless transaction, but there existed long queues, expect a lot of complaints from
the guests.