Operational Issues in Tourism and Hospitality Management

This document discusses the operational issues faced in the tourism and hospitality industry, including challenges in the sales department and shortage of skills and labor. It also explores the impact of high employee turnover rates and the problem of theft. Additionally, it covers the financial challenges and product and market-related issues in this industry.

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Tourism and Hospitality Management
Name of the Student
Nam of the University
Author Note

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Operational Issues
Management is not only about planning, it is also about identifying the issues addressing
during the operations. In the tourism and hospitality industry, there are lots of challenges which
must be fulfilled for smooth development. One of the most common issues is the issue in the
sales department. It is not only the duty of the front office but also the marketing and sales
department to manage the sales (Baum et al. 2016). The issues in the sales department occur
mainly in the transfer of booking information from the reservation to the receptionist. It usually
happens due to overbooking, long waiting and others.
Another issue in the tourism and hospitality industry is the shortage of skill and labor. It
is primarily due to the part –time job base of the staffs who struggle with the long working hours,
unsocial working time, and excessive pressure (Brown, Thomasand Bosselman2015). Hence, it
becomes difficult to manage the schedule with the part –time working. Sometimes, it leads to the
turnover of the employees. With the shortage of skills and labor, there is gap in the services too
and customer dissatisfaction generates from here.
The Human Resource Issues
In the tourism and hospitality industry, high employee turnover rates often lead to poorly
trained staffs composition. When a hotel faces short-term solution to high turnover rates, there is
a tendency to hire new people and engage them into service instead of training them properly. It
might provide short-term solution to the organization and resolve the staff shortage issue, but
ultimately affects the business indirectly (Ling, Liuand Wu2017). An employee without proper
training distorts the business reputation unknowingly. It can also disturb the customer

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satisfaction and cause needless hazards and frustration in the workplace. Hence, it is a serious
issue in this industry which must be taken into considerations.
Another major issue in the human resource is the problem of theft in the tourism and
hospitality industry. The staffs in a hotel have open access to the products of the company. In a
restaurant, the items are such as alcohol, food, decorating objects and money too (Santhanam et
al. 2018). A dishonest employee can easily steal the items. Hence, it is important to check
regularly the inventory levels having monitored the behaviors of the employees ensuring that the
business is not suffering from the employee theft. The employee theft can leave greater impact
on the profits of the organization and the financial stability too.
The Financial Issues
In the hospitality and tourism industry, most of the hotels can access he STR reports, the
data sets, the guest satisfaction surveys and financial data from multiple properties. Since this
particular industry claims to have data, the major challenge is how that data can be best
deciphered to determine the story being told (Zaitseva, Goncharovaand Androsenko2016). A
centralized platform can make this easier to use the operational management. An overload of the
data can even dismiss the efficiencies of the analytical tools and business –intelligence
Another challenge comes with the Enterprise Resource Planning. Every hotel/restaurant
tries to build a separate enterprise back-office system in order to manage the accounting and
financial aspects. The challenge comes with the implementation of scalable solutions which are
affordable too and free from extra expenses.
The products and market related issues

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In the hospitality and tourism industry, product means the food and other luxury services
it offers to the potential customers. Since this is a vast industry, there are ample of competitors in
the market serving similar products to the customers. A tourism and hospitality firm tries hard to
stay preferred in the market by serving the best quality food/service. However, there are
instances of people wasting food and the restaurant is throwing out food. Customers are often
found to be ordering more food than they can consume and ultimately waste them. Since the
culinary habits of people and their attitudes ebb and flow, it might also cause the loss of revenues
(Shamim et al. 2017). The entire system can be disturbed if there is a single mistake in the
quality and standard of food. The hospitality firms can stop the loss and waste by the stock
management system.
Another major issue in the hospitality and tourism industry related to product and market
is the increased competition. The more the competition grows, the more the firm’s ability to
attract the customers is tested. The completion in the market makes the hospitality organizations
try hard to retain the potential customers (Jones, Hillier. and Comfort2016). Maximum
managers, owners and staff surveys suggest that they have faced such issues. Hence, the best
way to avoid this challenge is to introduce the promotional campaigns, the food delivery services
and others.

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References
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