Services Marketing in Hilton Hotels: Front Stage and Back Stage Operations

This article discusses the front stage and back stage operations of Hilton Hotels, one of the largest hotel chains in the world. It explains the importance of coordination between the two for a successful service experience. The front stage includes employees who directly interact with customers, while the back stage involves planning and strategy-making. The article also includes flowcharts and references.

Running head: SERVICES MARKETING
SERVICES MARKETING
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author note:

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Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................2
Front Stage.......................................................................................................................................2
Back Stage.......................................................................................................................................5
Flow Charts......................................................................................................................................7
Conclusion.......................................................................................................................................9
Reference:......................................................................................................................................10

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Introduction
The service industry booming lately and more and more entrepreneurs are taking up the
business of providing service to the clients. Hotel is one of the most fertile businesses in the
service industry and it is the largest growing business as well. In Australia the hospitality
industry is the most booming. In a report it is suggested that “the country's hotel scene would
likely see a construction boom lasting for at least another two years as tourism spending,
predicted to reach $167 billion by 2025, plays an ever-larger role in Australia's economy.”
Hotel Hilton is one of the largest groups of hotel resort and holiday home chain all over
the world. In the present days it is stated that the group of hotels is having presently more than
580 hotels resorts and restaurants under the brand of Hilton hotel in more than 85 countries
(Hilton.com 2018).
The Hilton hotel has changed and transformed the way globally this business is operating.
It has expanded its base to not only the tourists and the business executives but also the leisure
seekers and the people looking for entertainment and relaxation in their daily life.
The company has an efficient system of front office and back office activities and these
are internationally maintained. The front office system of a large hotel constitutes of the
employees and interfaces that directly interact with the employees. The back office is the system
and the employees who do not directly interact with the employees but take care of the
management of the whole organization.
Front Stage
The front stage of a particular organization constitutes of all the constituents that interacts
with the customers directly. The Front stage of an organization is where the service is directly in

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touch with the customers (Amin et al. 2013). These are the touch points where the business is
directly in contact with the customers. In a particular service industry like the Hotel Hilton the
service. The various encounters or touch points are the areas where the various non-management
and non-technical like the process of communicating with the customers and giving more
empowerment to the employees (Defibaugh 2018).
The various constituents of the front office are the front office managers, the
receptionists, the guest service personnel, the bell staff and the guest staff (Leite and Vieira
2015). These employees are engaged in the service of the guests who are aiming to stay in the
hotel and looking for accommodation. These customers are important for the hotels as the
primary business of the hotel depends on these customers. Hotel Hilton aims at ensuring that
these customers return to their hotel when they make return visits. Therefore it is very important
for the hotel to maintain the perfect quality of service in the front stage. These are the people
who interact with the customers in the first place therefore they are the face of the organization.
When a person first enters the doors of any of the hotels from Hilton group in Australia,
the guest service personnel guides the guest to the reception while the Bell attendants carry the
luggage of the customers. The receptionists are directly responsible for receiving the guests and
then guiding them through the rest of the process. There are presently many other processes that
are in place which makes the process of check in for the customers and guests who are arriving
much easier and convenient. However there is also the system of manual employee supported
check in in place for the customers who are unable to accommodate with the digital self check in
process in the hotels.
There are various process of digitization in the check in process recently adopted in the
front stage of the Hilton hotels. One of the main changes that is in process is the newly

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developed self check in process. The customers who have their rooms pre booked via the internet
can now use the check in machines in the reception area for checking in and they do not have to
wait in the queue. The front office receptionists are directly under the front office manager. The
front office manager is connected to the back office by various means, one of which is the office
of the floor manager or the general manager.
Another front stage area of the hotel is the various restaurants operating within the hotels.
The waiters and the people providing service to the clients who have come for eating at the
restaurants are part of the front stage of the Hotel.
Hilton Hotel takes special care that the employees in the front stage of the hotel are
properly conversant about the various etiquettes to be used by the employees to deal with the
customers. The employees are taken from the hotel management courses where they are already
trained in the art of dealing with the consumers. There are further training programs in the work
place which improve the skills of the employees.
The communication between the front stage and back stage of any service industry must
be very strong (Mueller 2018). So that the service may go unhampered. For example often it
happens that when a guest arrives in a hotel even after online registration, there is no room
booking for that guest. This is a scenario which arises when the coordination between the front
stage and the back stage is not strong and even after the online booking which should have been
approved by the back stage operations and then forwarded to the front stage employees, the same
did not happen. Often in such cases the guest is given accommodation in a substitute hotel of the
same group or a free stay for a day in the future.

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Back Stage
The whole planning of a particular business happens in the backstage of an organization.
The strategy making of the whole organization takes place in the back stage of the organization
(Mair and Hehenberger 2014). The various operations like the allotment of various resources of
the business like people, process and props happens at the back stage level of an organization
(Gilmore 2014). These allocations happen from the operations department of the organizations
who take care of the process from the back end. As it is said that the front stage is the face of the
organization the back stage is the brain of the organization. The back stage of the organization is
the place where the needs of the organization are raised and these are projected in the front stage
of the organization (Lu et al. 2017). It is said that the motivations are born and these are then
converted into the promises of the front office.
In the restaurants the back office, pantries, kitchens, freezers and all other areas which are
hidden from the view of the customers form the back stage and people and employees working in
these regions are known as the back stage employees. Two areas of the back stage of a service
firm includes the one area from where the demands of the customers are fulfilled and another
from where the ability of the company to fulfill the desires of the clients are projected in various
medium of public communication (Li, Ye and Law 2013). This is also known as the marketing
department of the particular company.
Hilton Hotels have their well-developed back stage team with the general manager of the
hotel at the top of the team. He is responsible for all the administrative decisions taken by the
company at various levels.
The service blue print can be drawn as a diagram which shows the relationship among the
various components of the organization. According to Akkermans and Voss (2013) “In service

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supply chains, disturbances amplify from one stage to another. When workloads in the front
office become stressed, quality in back office processes suffers even more. Front office staff will
make more errors under stress. Those extra errors lead to more back office rework, which further
increases workloads. This then gets amplified in other stages, as quality issues and workloads
cascade down the service supply chain. Workloads become especially stressed during the volume
ramp-up phase for new services. We therefore look at some examples of unsuccessful new
service introductions.” Therefore it can be understood that there is an integral relationship
between the front office and the back office of the organization. The two has to remain in close
contact with one another so that there is a smooth flow of service and the reputation of the
organization remains.
Hotel Hilton is one of the most famous international chain of hotels and it is well
managed by an expert team both in back office and the front office. The management is well
experienced and the top management constitutes of leaders and pioneers from the industry. The
employees constitute of the most talented fresher’s and also experienced personnel who have
detailed knowledge about the hospitality industry. The various managers such as the food and
beverage manager, the infrastructure manager, the floor manager, the communication manager
are all under the general managers and they are under the guidance of the general manager. Each
of the managers have their own department and team of people working under them. The various
team purposefully work together to achieve one single goal of increasing the revenues and
goodwill of the hotel.
The Hilton group has various hotels, resorts and vacation homes that are working under
the same umbrella. Therefore the company has various types of management in these various
organizations as the genre of the organizations are different. The resorts have different kind of

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Manager of Front Office
Reception Accounts dept
Auditor
Bell staff
Cashier
Operator of telephones
Concierge
Assistants
Guest Staff
Reception
staff
Reservation
staff
Guest Services Communication
dept
organizational structure therefore the administration of the back office and the front office is also
different. The administration is designed according to the structure of the organization and the
purpose it wishes to fulfill.
Flow Charts
Flowchart 1: Front Stage of Hilton
Source: Created by Author

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Executive
housekeeper
Assistant
Housekeeper
Room attendants
Asst Florist
Head house
person
Uniform
Supervisor Floor Supervisor
Night Room
attendants
Desk Control
gardener
maid
valet
Upholsters
Public Area
Supervsior
Florist
housekeeper
Night Supervisor
Horti
Culturist
Head gardener
Tailors
storekeeper
Cloak room
attendant
House person
Flowchart 2: Backstage of Hilton Hotel

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Conclusion
The backstage and the front stage of an organization must work in tandem to give rise to
a successful service experience to the visitors or the consumers. The Hilton hotel group is one of
the largest hotels chains in the whole world. Therefore it can be safely said that the back stage
and the front stage of the organization are very expertly designed and well organized. The
success of the back stage and the front stage of Hotel Hilton depends on each other and whether
or not a guest having a pleasant experience of staying in the hotel comes from a perfect
synchronization of both the departments.

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Reference:
Akkermans, H. and Voss, C., 2013. The service bullwhip effect. International Journal of
Operations & Production Management, 33(6), pp.765-788.
Amin, M., Yahya, Z., Ismayatim, W.F.A., Nasharuddin, S.Z. and Kassim, E., 2013. Service
quality dimension and customer satisfaction: An empirical study in the Malaysian hotel
industry. Services Marketing Quarterly, 34(2), pp.115-125.
Defibaugh, S., 2018. Frontstage/Backstage: Attending to Organizational Responsibilities.
In Nurse Practitioners and the Performance of Professional Competency (pp. 27-52). Palgrave
Macmillan, Cham.
Gilmore, D.M., 2014. Goffman’s front stage and backstage behaviors in online
education. Journal of Learning Analytics, 1(3), pp.187-190.
Hilton.com., 2018. Hilton Hotels and Resorts. [online] Available at:
https://www3.hilton.com/en_US/hi/search/findhotels/results.htm?view=LIST [Accessed 15 Sep.
2018].
Leite, H.D.R. and Vieira, G.E., 2015. Lean philosophy and its applications in the service
industry: a review of the current knowledge. Production, 25(3), pp.529-541.
Li, H., Ye, Q. and Law, R., 2013. Determinants of customer satisfaction in the hotel industry: An
application of online review analysis. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, 18(7), pp.784-
802.

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Lu, R., Chatman, J.A., Goldberg, A. and Srivastava, S.B., 2017. Lifting the Curtain: Backstage
Cognition, Frontstage Behavior, and the Interpersonal Transmission of Culture (No. repec: ecl:
stabus: 3603).
Mair, J. and Hehenberger, L., 2014. Front-stage and backstage convening: The transition from
opposition to mutualistic coexistence in organizational philanthropy. Academy of Management
Journal, 57(4), pp.1174-1200.
Mueller, F., 2018. Taking Goffman seriously: Developing strategy-as-practice. Critical
Perspectives on Accounting, 53, pp.16-30.