SHA604 Project: Guest Loyalty in Food and Beverage Operations

This project, completed for SHA604 at Cornell University's Hotel School, focuses on building guest loyalty within the food and beverage industry. It examines performance standards, service recovery processes, and guest experience measurement. The project begins by defining performance standard...Read More

SHA604: Building Guest Loyalty
The Hotel School, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
Course Project
Instructions:
Complete this project and submit it to your instructor. See the assignment page for information
about the grading rubric. Do not hesitate to contact your instructor if you have any questions
about the project.
This course project consists of three parts and will give you an opportunity to define standards of
performance that support guest expectation outcomes, evaluate your service recovery process, and
develop a guest experience measurement tool for your operation. You will complete the project
using the food and beverage operation you currently work with. If you don’t currently work in a
food and beverage operation, you will be required to interview a current food and beverage
operator and observe and document his or her guest loyalty practices.
Note: Your project observations will be shared with the instructor only and will be kept strictly
confidential.
Complete each project part as you progress through the course. You may revisit and refine your
responses as you learn and apply additional information. Wait to submit the project until all three
parts are complete. Begin your course project by completing part one below.
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SHA604: Building Guest Loyalty
The Hotel School, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
Part One: Define Performance Standards
In this part of the course project, you will use the Standards of Performance Worksheet to
document the process steps, people involved, and specific performance standards to support one
outcome related to guest expectations.
Note: You will be required to submit your completed worksheet when you submit your project.
Considering the topic’s focus on the management of guest loyalty, I have visited the
food and beverage operations of the organization named Agrotissa in Greece. As a
consultant and expert in the food and beverage sector, I need to check for the
performance standards and also look at the entire business functions and processes
that are managed at the company to sustain in the competitive business environment
(Suh et al. 2015). As it is evident that guests or customers are regarded as the most
important stakeholders, so the success of business is dependent upon the positive
and negative experiences that are being acquired by them. Thus the standards of
performances are needed to be checked for ensuring that the demands and
expectations of the guests ate met properly as well.
To meet the expectations of guests is the actual road that can lead to better
management of trust and loyalty among the guests as well, due to which, providing
certification in food safety, health and also positive impact on the environment are
needed to be assessed (Han et al. 2018). The quality management standards are
needed to be checked as well for ensuring whether the company implemented the
best practices or not to sustain in the marketplace. The management of supply
chains and management of opportunity costs along with meeting the operational
requirements are also part of the performance standards to maintain good
collaboration between the manufacturers, retailers and also the supply chains and
Consumers Goods Forum. ISO22000, FSSC 22000 are few of the safety standards
that represent food safety management and quality based food items (Raab et al.
2016).
Not only all these, but also the guests’ experiences, starting from their visit to the
food and beverage company until their departure should be looked down upon for
checking whether there are satisfied or not and realize how the company could
make necessary changes for improving the business performance and standards
raised (Lo et al. 2017).
The Big Three must be looked at including the quality of products and services, the
environment, i.e., how the environment has been impacted and the attitudes and
behaviors of employees towards the guests, all of which, are integral components of
driving loyalty among the guests towards the organization. Therefore, these are the
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SHA604: Building Guest Loyalty
The Hotel School, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
performance standards that are needed to be checked while visiting the store
operations of a food and beverage company in Greece (Berezan et al. 2017).
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SHA604: Building Guest Loyalty
The Hotel School, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
Part Two: Evaluate a Service Failure and Recovery Incident
In this part of the project, you will evaluate a situation where things didn’t go as planned in your
operation and identify opportunities to improve the likelihood of encounter satisfaction,
minimizing the recurrence of problems and improving long-term customer relationships.
1. Describe the situation that occurred from the guest’s perspective:
From the guest’s perspective, after visiting the food and beverage restaurant or company, I found
that the waiting time for the food received is quite long, which is a major thing that can cause
problems and issues to the operations and processes managed at the food and beverage company
or restaurant. Though the food tasted quite excellent, but I found that being a food and beverage
company, it is always important to provide faster delivery as it might be one of major causes of
poor guest loyalty and negative reputation of the brand in the specified place and also with the
emergence of multiple competitors too (Larsson and Viitaoja 2017).
2. Describe the service recovery process that occurred. In your explanation, identify if the
service recovery process was transaction focused or relationship focused:
It is evident that the relationships between business and customers are based on the trust and
loyalty that the customers have for the organization. To ensure that the issues that were
experienced by me could be overcome properly, a service recovery process must be managed
that should be relationship focused. After experiencing the issue, I did not say anything to the
staffs, rather communicated with the manager of the company and told him about it on a friendly
note. The response of the manager was quite good as he stated that because of the focus on
quality and taste, the staffs make sure to use the finest quality ingredients and materials to
prepare the food item, which is q bit time consuming (Šerić, Gil-Saura and Mikulić 2017). I was not
concerned anymore as the company focused on maintaining the performance standards, which
could make the business sustain in the long run.
3. Use the Complaint Handling Worksheet to evaluate if the complaint response was
effective and to identify ways to make it more effective in making the guest satisfied. (Be
sure to submit your completed worksheet when you submit your project.)
4. Describe changes in the recovery process that would minimize the recurrence of such a
situation and ensure long-term guest relationships:
I personally feel that recruitment and selection of some more skilled and knowledgeable
candidates from the food and beverage sector could be a good option for making sure that the
food items are prepared quickly without compromising on the quality though. I also found that
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SHA604: Building Guest Loyalty
The Hotel School, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
the company should make some addition of differentiable features and this also do support the
concept of product differentiation, which could allow Agrotissa to stay ahead of the competitors
too (Hwang, Baloglu and Tanford 2019). The marketing techniques could also be improved with the
engagement of social media platforms, which should raise awareness among customers and
create a loyal customer base too.
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SHA604: Building Guest Loyalty
The Hotel School, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
Part Three: Measure the Guest Experience
For this part of the project, you will explore how in-operation feedback, guest satisfaction
surveys, and mystery shops could be implemented in your operation.
1. Review your performance standards from part one of the project. Describe how your
service staff could consistently observe and assess the guest experience against the
performance standards. Include how staff could request specific feedback from guests
related to the performance standards.
With the introduction of internet based technologies and rapid usage of social
networks, the staffs of the company could provide the guests with a feedback form
after their meal at the restaurant so as to acquire their responses and feedbacks and also
opinions, based on which necessary changes could be done. Moreover, the online
surveys and asking for feedbacks in emails and social networks should also raise the
chances and scopes for prioritizing on the performance standards through necessary
changes done (Koo, Yu and Han 2019).
2. Document five items you would include on a guest satisfaction survey to collect your
guests’ perceptions, preferences, and opinions related to their experience. Explain what
decisions you could make based on the trends you uncover with these questions.
Quality
Health benefits
Ambience
Staff behavior
Overall experience
These are the five components that would be included in the guest satisfaction survey
for collecting the perception, opinions and preferences of the guests.
3. Document five items you would include on a mystery shop questionnaire to measure the
behaviors and outcomes related to your performance standards.
How was the quality of food?
How was the behaviors of staffs?
How would you like to rate the ambience?
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SHA604: Building Guest Loyalty
The Hotel School, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
Will you visit our restaurant again?
How will you rat the overall experience?
Please make sure you submit your completed Performance Standards Worksheet and
Complaint Handling Worksheet with your project.
References
Berezan, O., Krishen, A.S., Tanford, S. and Raab, C., 2017. Style before substance? Building
loyalty through marketing communication congruity. European Journal of Marketing, 51(7/8),
pp.1332-1352.
Chenini, A. and Touaiti, M., 2017. Building Destination Loyalty Using Tourist Satisfaction and
Destination Image: A Holistic Conceptual Framework.
Han, H., Lee, J.S., Trang, H.L.T. and Kim, W., 2018. Water conservation and waste reduction
management for increasing guest loyalty and green hotel practices. International Journal of
Hospitality Management, 75, pp.58-66.
Hwang, E., Baloglu, S. and Tanford, S., 2019. Building loyalty through reward programs: The
influence of perceptions of fairness and brand attachment. International Journal of Hospitality
Management, 76, pp.19-28.
Koo, B., Yu, J. and Han, H., 2019. The role of loyalty programs in boosting hotel guest loyalty:
Impact of switching barriers. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 84, p.102328.
Larsson, A. and Viitaoja, Y., 2017. Building customer loyalty in digital banking: A study of bank
staff’s perspectives on the challenges of digital CRM and loyalty. International Journal of Bank
Marketing, 35(6), pp.858-877.
Laškarin, M., 2013. Development of loyalty programmes in the hotel industry. Tourism and
hospitality management, 19(1.), pp.109-123.
Lo, A.S., Im, H.H., Chen, Y. and Qu, H., 2017. Building brand relationship quality among hotel
loyalty program members. International journal of contemporary hospitality management, 29(1),
pp.458-488.
© 2017 eCornell. All rights reserved. All other copyrights, trademarks, trade names, and logos are the sole property of their respective owners.
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SHA604: Building Guest Loyalty
The Hotel School, Cornell SC Johnson College of Business
Mongdong, M.A., 2015. The Analysis of Service Quality, Innovation, and Corporate Image on
Customer Loyalty of Ragey Von Von Restaurant. Jurnal EMBA: Jurnal Riset Ekonomi,
Manajemen, Bisnis dan Akuntansi, 3(1).
Raab, C., Berezan, O., Krishen, A.S. and Tanford, S., 2016. What’s in a word? Building program
loyalty through social media communication. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 57(2), pp.138-149.
Šerić, M., Gil-Saura, I. and Mikulić, J., 2017. Customer-based brand equity building: Empirical
evidence from Croatian upscale hotels. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 23(2), pp.133-144.
Suh, M., Moon, H., Han, H. and Ham, S., 2015. Invisible and intangible, but undeniable: Role of
ambient conditions in building hotel guests’ loyalty. Journal of Hospitality Marketing &
Management, 24(7), pp.727-753.
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