H55C001M03

Tourist Services
Lesson 5,6
Competencies of Providers & Training Need Analysis
The five main sectors of the
travel and tourism
industry
Competencies of Providers
In the tourism and hospitality industry, the success or failure of our
businesses and destinations depends on service. Some, however,
deliver consistently higher levels of customer service. Why and how are
they able to do this?
Total Quality Management in Tourism
• Total quality management (TQM) in tourism and hospitality is a
process where service expectations are created by the entire team,
with a collaborative approach between management and employees
(Kapiki, 2012).
Customer Service and Competition: The Customer-Oriented
Organization

A one way to ensure quality service may be to encourage tourism and hospitality
professionals to acquire industry certifications. Businesses can also choose to implement
tools to determine customer satisfactions levels, such as the SERVQUAL technique that
compares customer perceptions of quality against customer expectations (Morrison,
2010). Under the SERVQUAL model, the five dimensions of service are:
1. Reliability: where the quality and level of service is consistent
2. Assurance: knowledge and courtesy of staff and their ability to convey trust and
confidence
3. Tangibles: the organization’s physical facilities, equipment, and appearance of staff
4. Empathy: the degree of caring, individualized attention that the organization’s staff
provide to its customers
5. Responsiveness: the willingness of staff to help customers and provide prompt
service
Customer Relationship Management
The customer relationship management (CRM) is a strategy that can use for tourism
and hospitality businesses. CRMs are tools used by businesses to select customers and
maintain relationships with them to increase their lifetime value to the business. There
are a number of points in time where this relationship is maintained. For example:

1. The first time potential guests visit a website and leave their email address to receive more
information
2. The moment a reservation is made and the company captures their personal details
3. The in-person service encounters from the front desk to the parking lot
4. Welcome notes, personalized menus, friendly hellos, and other touches throughout the
interaction
5. Background messages including clean facilities and equipment in good repair, pleasant decor
and ambiance (flowers, etc.)
6. Follow-up communications like a newsletter
7. Further interactions on social media
Customer Lifetime Value (CLV)
With competition between tourism destinations and businesses continuing to
grow, organizations are increasingly focusing on retaining existing customers,
which is often less expensive than attracting new ones..
Building positive relationships with loyal customers requires planning and
diligence for all customer touch points. This may include (Lovelock & Wirtz,
2007):

1. Managing service encounters: training staff to provide personal service to customers

2. Providing customer incentives: inducing customers to frequent the business
3. Providing special service options: offering enhanced services or extra offerings to
loyal customers
4. Developing pricing strategies to encourage long-term use: offering repeat customers
special prices or rates
Contd..
5. Maintaining a customer database: keeping an up-to-date set of
records on customer purchase history, preferences, demographics,
and so on.
6. Communicating with customers: reaching individual customers
through direct or specialized media, using non-mass media
approaches
7. Loyalty programs pull together several of these elements to help a
business identify, maintain contact with, and reward frequent
customers
Recovery from Service Failures
If a business fails to meet customer expectations, there’s a risk the
customer will tell others about it, often through social media networks.
An on-location problem that turns into an online complaint, going from
private to public, can become far more damaging to business than the
original issue. To avoid any problem from escalating, organizations and
staff must work hard to resolve issues before the customer walks out
the door — or pulls out a smartphone to make an online posting.
Service Recovery
• Service recovery occurs when a customer service professional takes
action that results in the customer being satisfied after a service
failure has occurred.
Disappointed customers often want:

1. An empathetic ear. Sometimes they simply want to vent. They want to

know that the employee or manager is listening and cares.
2. An apology. In some cases a sincere apology is enough.
3. A solution. Typically customers bring issues to the attention of staff because
they want them fixed.
4. Compensation. Upset customers are looking for compensation, but not
always.
5. Follow-up. For some people, it’s important to know that their concerns are
brought to the attention of management and are fixed for future customers.
6. Reassurance. Customers want to know they’re in good hands.
Tourism and Hospitality Human Resource
Support
• A number of organizations support the training, development, and
credentialing of tourism and hospitality professionals at both the
national and provincial level.
Key Competencies of Tourism Graduates
Several changes and developments (e.g., the changing labor market,
growing worldwide competition, technological advances, an changing
demand patterns in tourism) require new employability skills from
graduates that enable them to cope with the changing circumstances of
the tourism business world.

Universities are therefore encouraged to embed key skills in their

curricula, yet there is often a considerable gap between what
educational institutions offer and what is needed and required by the
industry
Competencies of a Tourism Graduate
1. Professional competencies comprise skills, abilities, and knowledge
necessary to meet the challenges and tasks of one’s profession.
2. Methodological competencies are universal problem-solving and
decision making competencies, which may be applied in one’s job
but also in one’s personal surroundings.
3. Social competencies are abilities to act in the social surroundings
and include cooperating with other people, interacting with them,
and building effective relationships.
4. Leadership competencies are the abilities to show inspiration for a
shared vision, to enable others to act, or to encourage them.
Contd..
1. Professional and methodological competencies
I. language competencies
II. fundamentals in management
III. fundamentals in economics and law
IV. fundamentals in finance
V. fundamentals in information and communication technologies
VI. tourism-related knowledge
VII. skills and competencies in written communication
VIII. applying and using information to specific contexts
IX. efficient text work
X. problem solving skills
XI. conceptual skills
2. Social and communicative competencies
I. skills for conflict resolution
II. social networking skills
III. social and team skills
IV. ability and willingness to change
V. adaptability skills
VI. proactive communication skills
VII. active listening
VIII. persuasion skills
IX. overall communication abilities
3. Personal competencies
I. intercultural skills
II. ability to work under pressure
III. emotional intelligence
IV. self reflection
V. empathy
VI. self management
VII. willingness and personal commitment
VIII. self motivation and willingness to learn
4. Activity and action-oriented competencies
I. determination and goal orientation
II. innovative spirit
III. decision-making abilities
IV. initiative and proactiveness
V. assertiveness
VI. creativity
Training Need Analysis
Today training and development in any organization or business has become an
integral part of skill development and it has come to be seen as a normal cost of
doing hotel business. To provide good tourist facilities or services, all the good
hotels arrange training programs for their employees time to time to provide a
satisfactory service to their customers by well training staff or personnel. For this
purpose, they have to identify some basic needs and requirement for their
profession.
Moreover, Human Resource Department emphasizes on training program to be
well planned and organized for all professional activities. Therefore, Tourism
Industry should develop training programs with its business objectives or goals.
They should keep in mind that it is the era of globalization where competitiveness
is urgently required and it is very essential for the success of tourism business.
Training Need Analysis
Most of the scholars argue that the procedure of the training and development
should be as under:
1. It should be linked with the programed year. All the training programs should be
classified in different categories.
2. The training need identification should be done at the end of the performance year.
3. The training needs should be identified through the business performance,
fundamental performance and individual performance.
4. Individual training needs should be identified through succession planning on the
target base.
5. Human Resource Executive should get the approval from the heads of the
organization for the training year according to the training budget.
Contd..
To conclude the training process may be classified as under into four
steps:
1. Accessing the training needs of any organization.
2. Planning of the training program.
3. Implementation of the training program
4. To evaluate the training program
Definitions
1. Customer lifetime value (CLV): a view of customer relationships that looks at the long-term cycle of customer
interactions, rather than at single transactions
2. Customer orientation: positioning a business or organization so that customer interests and value are the
highest priority
3. Customer relationship management (CRM): a strategy used by businesses to select customers and to maintain
relationships with them to increase their lifetime value to the business
4. Loyalty programs: programs that identify and build databases of frequent customers to promote directly to
them, and to reward and provide special services for those frequent customers
5. Moment of truth: when a customer’s interaction with a front-line employee makes a critical difference in his or
her perception of that company or destination
6. Service recovery: what happens when a customer service professional takes actions that result in the customer
being satisfied after a service failure has occurred
7. SERVQUAL: a technique developed to measure service quality
8. Total quality (TQ): integrating all employees, from management to front-level, in a process of continuous
learning, which leads toward increasing customer satisfaction
9. Total quality management (TQM): a process of setting service goals as a team
Thank you