Quality Management in Hospitality: Airbnb Report and Benchmarking

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of quality management within Airbnb, an online marketplace for tourism experiences. It begins by defining quality and its importance in the tourism industry, followed by an introduction to Airbnb and its operations. The main body of the report delves into the concept of quality management, its evolution, and the current problems faced by Airbnb, such as reservation cancellations, unresponsive customer service, and negative customer reviews. It then evaluates Airbnb's performance based on the five dimensions of service quality: reliability, assurance, responsiveness, empathy, and tangibles. The report also examines the impact of benchmarking techniques, both internal and external, on Airbnb's ability to deliver consistent and effective quality management. Benchmarking is presented as a tool to identify performance gaps, improve customer experience, and enhance overall profitability. The report concludes with recommendations for Airbnb to improve its quality management practices and enhance customer satisfaction.

MANAGING QUALITY
IN HOSPITALITY,
TOURISM AND EVENTS

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................1
MAIN BODY..................................................................................................................................1
Quality Management...................................................................................................................1
Problems being currently experienced by Airbnb.......................................................................2
Impact Benchmarking techniques could have on Airbnb in terms of delivering consistent and
effective quality management......................................................................................................4
RECOMMENDATIONS.................................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................8

INTRODUCTION
Quality can be defined as a degree to which a product or a service satisfies specific
requirements or not (Gutierrez-Gutierrez, Barrales-Molina and Kaynak, 2018). Quality in
tourism industry is one of the most important factors to be focused on as most of the time
customer satisfaction depends upon the level of quality product or service that are being offered
to them. It helps the organizations to assess their customers experience and bring required
improvement within their products or services. This assignment will lay emphasis on Quality
management report of Airbnb. Airbnb is an online marketing place that offers tourism experience
to their customers. It was founded in 2008 whose headquarter is in San Francisco in California.
This assignment will focus on quality management concept, problems currently being experience
by Airbnb and techniques could have on Airbnb in terms of delivering consistent and effective
quality management.
MAIN BODY
Quality Management
Quality of service can be defined as an evaluation of product or service and extent to
which they meet their customers’ expectations and enhances their satisfaction level.
Organizations should focus on developing various strategies through which they can determine
parameters that influences service quality so that they can increase their customer base and
enhance their customers satisfaction (Dasgupta, Ranjan and Ramalingam, 2017). Quality
management can be defined as act of checking all task or activities that are required to be
accomplished in order to maintain a desired level of excellence. It helps an organization to
ensure whether their products or services offered achieve and maintain a desired level of quality
or not. Evolution of Quality management can be described with the help of few stages that
includes quality policy, implementing and creating quality assurance, control, planning and
improvement which is also known as Total quality management (TQM). TQM is an effective
management approach which is used by various organizations in order to achieve customer
satisfaction and improved products or services. TQM is a continuous process that helps in
detecting, eliminating or reducing errors in improving customer experience, ensures that
employees work up to the expectations they are required to work and fulfil their desired
objectives.
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Problems being currently experienced by Airbnb
Thousands of hosts every year do all of their booking through Airbnb and all booking
means more earning and profit for host. But unfortunately, there are various kinds of problems
that are being faced by Airbnb in terms of their customer experience (O’Neill, Sohal and Teng,
2016). There are various operations of Airbnb that ate not going smoothly because of which
various customers had to face various kinds of issues and had to suffer a lot. There are various
websites like Trustpilot where customers have shared their worst experience and have given
lowest rating to Airbnb many of the customers have even shared their worse experience on
websites like Trustpilot such as: one of the customer’s booking was cancelled 1 hour before
check in because of which they had to stay a night in foreign country and had to book a hotel in
triple price then they should have paid. When they tried to contact Airbnb, no response was
given. Some of them have rated Airbnb as a scam organization who provide lowest price for
their services but none of the services were provided to their customers in fact their deposit was
also not refunded to them and eventually they ended up booking themselves that ended up 4X
greater price then it should have been (Gunasekaran, Subramanian and Ngai, 2019). More than
80 percent of customers have rated Airbnb as worse organization that offers worse service to
their customers. There are less than 15 percent customers who were happy by Airbnb services or
had an average experience with them but most of them did not have a better experience with
them. Many customers even say that Airbnb is only focusing on making money, they are not
focusing in enhancing their customer’s experience.
Some of the most common problems faced by Airbnb customers and are currently being
experienced by the company are as follows:
 Change in check in or check out time because of which customers faced lots of issues and
they had to either leave early or check in hours before they arrive.
 Reservation cancellation is another problem faced by Airbnb is that right before check in
reservations done by customers were cancelled and, in many cases, customers were not even
refunded their money (Van Dooren, Thijs and Bouckaert, 2017). Many times, Airbnb fails to
notify their customers about the cancellation on time because of which customers had to
suffer a lot. In some cases because of the host or change of plan of host, reservation or
booking was cancelled from host side.
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 Airbnb allows both host and customers to share their reviews and many times even if host is
in the fault, they write negative reviews about the customers. Many times, host were not
helpful and friendly in fact they were quite rude to their customers because of which many
customers try to cancel their booking or suffer various other kinds of problem during stay.
Evaluation of whether Airbnb meets requirements of Dimensions of Service Quality
There are five dimensions of service quality that are required to be fulfilled by the
organizations if they want to enhance their customer’s experience (Soares, Soltani and Liao,
2017). Evaluation of Airbnb on the basis of these service quality dimensions can help them
understand currents problems or issues within their products and services in a better manner.
 Reliability: Reliability means that an organization all of their services correctly for the first
time. It also helps in explaining that organizations is focused on fulfilling their promises and
pay attention to the results of the services that they provide to their customers. It also means
that customers can rely on the organization for providing them appropriate services in a
proper manner. Reliability has been ranked first in dimensions of service quality. According
to the current problems faced by Airbnb and their customers review Airbnb has failed to
provide a reliable service to their customers.
 Assurance: Assurance can be defined as employee’s knowledge, curtesy and their ability to
transfer trust and confidence to their customers. Assurance in dimensions of service quality
varies i.e. it can be third as well as second. It helps in informing customers about their native
language, listen to them, regardless of their customer’s education level, nationality and age
(Manatos, Sarrico and Rosa, 2017). Assurance is majorly impacted by employees’ attitude,
behaviour and response towards their customers and their ability to provide competent,
friendly and confidential service. According to the current problems faced by Airbnb fail to
assure their customers and provide friendly service to their customers as more than 80
percent customers have written bad reviewed about the company.
 Responsiveness: Responsiveness is willingness of employees involved dealing with the
customers in a correct manner and tell customers when the things will be done, provided
them with required attention, promote organizations products and services, respond to all the
customer’s required in a definite manner. Responsiveness has been ranked third in
dimensions of service quality. If any kind of issue is faced by the customers then, employees
are expected to respond in an appropriate manner and resolve issues or problems faced by
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their customers (Honarpour, Jusoh and Md Nor, 2018). According to the current problems
faced by Airbnb, they do not meet required criteria of responsiveness.
 Empathy: Organizations need to make their customers feel that they are their first priority by
providing service to them. Empathy means paying attention to their customers, they are
caring and provide service to their customers on the basis of it. One of them ain point of
empathy is to make their customers feel that they are unique and special to them. According
to dimensions of service quality empathy is measured on the basis of security, access and
credibility. According to the current problems faced by Airbnb, they need to work on their
empathy as they fail to make their customers feel special in fact many times they had even
responded in a rude manner to their customers. Tangibles: One of the main dimensions which is used by customers to assess the quality of
service is physical image of the service. Tangibles are tools, machines, equipment’s used to
provide service or representation of service such as booking statement, speed, effective
transaction etc. Tangibles of dimensions of service quality have same importance as empathy
and it also helps in showing consistency across culture (McAdam, Miller and McSorley,
2019). According to the current problems faced by Airbnb, tangibles provided by them are
quite below the average as most of the customers are not satisfied with their service and
physical image of their service is not good.
Impact Benchmarking techniques could have on Airbnb in terms of delivering consistent and
effective quality management
Benchmarking is one of the most important tools in quality toolbox (Honarpour, Jusoh
and Long, 2017). Benchmarking is a systematic process that helps organizations to measure
one’s performance against leaders in order to determining best practise that can help them to
enhance their performance and provide better and quality service to their customers. It is one of
the most important component of total quality management technique which is used by
companies to evaluate their current strategies used by them, evaluate their products and service
with one of their best competitors. In order to successfully implement benchmarking within the
organization companies need to make it a part of their continuous improvement program that
incorporates feedback process. There are two types of benchmarking: internal and external
benchmarking. In internal benchmarking, organizations benchmark against their own products.
Whereas in external benchmarking organization seek projects from other companies for
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comparative analysis (Spofford Jr, Russell and Kelly, 2016). Both internal and external
benchmarking have their own advantages and disadvantages. In internal benchmarking,
examination can be done over a certain period of time whereas in external benchmarking
organization can compare their products and services with their toughest competitors. External
benchmarking is extremely important for organization as it helps them to get to know what a
good product or service consist of. Benchmarking technique has its own advantages and
disadvantages. One of the main advantages is that it helps in enhancing overall performance of
the company, it helps an organization to provide a specific short- and long-term plan to increase
customer experience on the basis of their past performance. If there are any kind of changes
required within the services, they can easily bring required changes within their products or
services. But this technique has its own limitations such as: it helps in comparing their
performance with their competitors but it does not consider the circumstances under which their
competitors have achieved success.
Using benchmarking Airbnb can identify gaps within their overall performance, products
and services as compared to another organizations. Various top organizations use benchmarking
as one of the main methods through which they can identify scope of improvement with their
performance, ways to enhance their customer experience and satisfaction, increase overall profit
and finally improve their services. It is one of the best techniques that can be used by Airbnb in
order to identify gaps within their services, scope of improvement and enhance their customers
experience and satisfaction in a much better manner (Rocha-Lona, Garza-Reyes and Kumar,
2017). Benchmarking can help Airbnb to deliver consistent and effective quality management.
This will help the organization to identify all kinds of loopholes, issues they are facing. With the
help of this technique they can even compare their overall performance with their competitors so
that they can understand what are the changes that are required to be brought so that they can
compete against their competitors and enhance their overall performance and customer
satisfaction. This technique will also help Airbnb to gain competitive advantage. All kinds of
errors can be identified, enhance their overall services and bring all kinds of required changes.
RECOMMENDATIONS
Here are few recommendations that can help resolving Airbnb’s identified problem and
enhance their customer experience and satisfaction related to their products and services:
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 Airbnb can focus on developing customer service community where they can test their new
services. They can even use these customer service community to get feedback from the
customers related to their existing services and use those feedbacks to bring improvement
within their products and service. This customer service community can also help them to
identify flaws or loopholes within their current services that are required to be improved in
order to increase customer satisfaction (Kumar, Maiti and Gunasekaran, 2018).
 Airbnb should focus on implementing total quality management technique within their
organization to improve their overall quality management like they can focus on providing
training to their employees on regular basis on concepts and methods of quality. This will
also help them to encourage their employees to become proactive and address as well as
identify any kind of quality related issues or problems that are being faced by the
organization as well as by the customers of the organization.
 Appropriate methods such as benchmarking or KPI can be used by Airbnb to measure their
current performance, quality and respond consistently and based on results of these
measurement techniques proper and required quality decision making should be done in
order to improve their customer experience and satisfaction. However, it is a long process
that aims at customer satisfaction through an integrated approach.
 They can also used models such as six sigma or PDSA model as these models will help them
to bring improvement within their quality. These models can help them to provide great
success in finding and reducing quality related problems.
These recommendations can help Airbnb to identify all the issues faced by them and by
their customers in a better manner. With the help of these recommendations they can
successfully build a positive environment and resolve all the issues in a better manner. These
recommendations will also help them to develop quality management stages (quality planning,
quality assurance, quality control and documentation) to increase overall quality of their services
that they provide to their customers.
CONCLUSION
From the above assignment it has been summarized that there are various kinds of issues
or problems that are being faced by Airbnb which is impacting their customer’s experience and
satisfaction. Due to these issues most of the customers of Airbnb had to face lots of issues. These
issues are not only impact their overall service quality but are also impact their overall brand
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image. It has been analysed that with the help of quality management technique they can bring
improvement within their service quality and enhance their customer satisfaction and can again
restore trust of their customers within the organization and its services in a better manner. By
focusing on implementing above provided recommendations Airbnb can enhance their quality
management. It has also been analysed that there are various measures that are required to be
taken by Airbnb if they want to enhance their services and one of the measure is by
implementing TQM.
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REFERENCES
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century enterprises: Research pathway towards Industry 4.0.
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resource-related quality management practices in new product
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selecting the right methods and tools. Productivity Press.
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