Service Management Report: Tourism and Hospitality, Backpackers Place

This report provides a detailed analysis of the service management strategies for the Backpackers Place Company, a planned tourism and hospitality business in New South Wales, Australia. The report begins with an executive summary outlining the key aspects of the business including operation strategy, service blueprint, and service delivery system. The operating strategy emphasizes the importance of an adaptive culture, customer focus, and the service marketing trinity (operations, marketing, and human resource management). The service blueprint outlines customer actions, onstage and backstage actions, and support processes. The service delivery system discusses strategic mission and vision, market analysis, customer benefit packages and the nature of the service. The report then addresses potential business issues related to productivity and quality, along with employee management strategies. The report recommends adopting the SERVQUAL Model to ensure high service quality and customer satisfaction. The report concludes with a summary of key recommendations for the successful establishment and operation of the Backpackers Place Company.

Running head: SERVICE MANAGEMENT
Service Management for Tourism and
Hospitality
September 14
2019

SERVICE MANAGEMENT 1
Executive Summary
The aim of this report is to discuss about the operation strategy, service blueprint, and service
delivery system that will be adopted by the Backpackers Place Company while establishing
business in the New South Wales, Australia. The report has also discussed about the quality
management and employee management into the business. From the analysis it has been
identified that human resource management, marketing, and operations are the key elements
that are needed for the implementation of the services. Besides this, the report has highlighted
customer action and backstage action of the business is the critical points of the service
blueprint of the company. In addition to this, the company is planning to offer reservation
system in the business where it will enable customer to book the services. Further, the
company is recommended to manage the satisfaction of its employees from reward and
recognition system and organizing training programs for upgrading employee’s skills. In the
end, the report has recommended company to adopt SERVQUAL Model of quality
management to ensure the delivery of expected level of quality to the customers.

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Table of Contents
Executive Summary...................................................................................................................1
Introduction................................................................................................................................3
Operating Strategy.................................................................................................................3
Service Blueprint....................................................................................................................5
Service Delivery System........................................................................................................6
Issues in the Business.........................................................................................................8
Service Employee Management.............................................................................................8
Quality Management Measures – Service Quality model......................................................9
Conclusion................................................................................................................................10
References................................................................................................................................12

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Introduction
In the Lehman’s term, the service management could be determined as the tactics of work
that supports a business in managing its procedure and technology and ultimately deliver high
level of services at the reasonable manner (Kowalkowski, Kindström and Brehmer, 2011). It
is the suitable resource allocation to carry the best outcome of the business. The business can
use the service management for enhancing the numerous aspects of the company. Customer
service could be considered to be the new level with the support of service management
(Grönroos and Ravald, 2011). The intent of this report is to present different service related
aspects of the Backpackers Place which is being planned to introduce in the New South
Wales in the industry of tourism and hospitality. The report is comprised of detailed analysis
of the company’s operation system, service blue print, and service delivery system. In
addition to this, the report is also highlighting the service employee management that has
been planned in order to smoothly operate the business and give strong competition to the
existing players in the market.
Operating Strategy
Under the Corporate Culture and Performance, cultures that enable the adoption of the
practices and strategies that unceasingly respond to the altering markets and new competitive
environments are said to be the “Adaptive Cultures.” This is also considered to be the healthy
culture that support the immediate strategy of the organization and business context, and are
forward looking and struggle to direct for the positive alterations. The unhealthy
characteristics of the Un-adaptive Cultures are determined as inward focus, bureaucracy, and
arrogance. Though these characteristics can also support the immediate strategy of the
business and business context, but weaken its capability to accept the change. The consultants
of the organizational development can make use of Kotter and Heskett framework in order to

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determine the healthy and unhealthy cultures characteristics for the client, and the procedure
required shifting from one to the other (Chatterjee, 2009). But, Kotter and Heskett designate
that there is need of effective leadership in order to shift from an un-adaptive Culture to the
Adaptive Culture (Chatterjee, 2009). Considering the situation of the Backpackers Place, the
new business plan needs to establish an effective and adaptive culture within the
organization. In order to do so, the business has to focus on the customer and care about their
desires. In addition to this, the business must care about the employees and stockholders,
procedures, and people that make useful change. The Backpackers Place will concentrate on
establishing an effective leadership into the business such that it can focus on managing the
workforce within the business.
Further, under the operation strategy the Backpackers Place Company has to adopt the
service marketing trinity which is focused towards underlining the relationship between three
elements that are operations, marketing, and human resource management in order to deliver
best services to the customer (Lovelock and Patterson, 2015). Under operations head, the new
business will focus on enhancing the quality of its services and delivering the services to the
customers properly such that the business could satisfy their needs. The operations of the
company will also be focused on ensuring delivery safe and secure services to the tourist and
clients. Besides this, another element of the service marketing trinity is marketing. Marketing
is the set of activities adopted by the business for making customer aware about the services
and products offered by the business. This helps business in increasing the knowledge of the
business about the services of the business. The marketing strategies that will be adopted by
the Backpackers Place are advertising over television and radio and digital marketing through
digital platforms. This will help the company in increasing its brand recognition by
highlighting the benefits of its services to the target audience. Further, the third head is
human resource of the business. The Backpackers Place will focus in the initial stage to hire

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10 employees who will be experienced and skilled in the same industry. This will ensure
offering best and effective services to the customers. Besides this, it will help the business in
understanding the need of the customer effectively.
Service Blueprint
x
The service deliver blueprint for the Backpackers Place Company is comprised of four stages
that are customer action, onstage action, backstage action, and support process. This blueprint
is comprised of complete procedure that takes place from the customer action to the end
result of service delivery. In the initial stage that is customer action, an individual visit the
website of the company or store in order to review the services offered by the company. They
get involve in checking the authenticity of the service and then taking the decision of
Customer
action
Website/Store
visit
Checking
authenticity
Taking
decision
Onstage
actions
Check and
authorise access
Checking
customer detail
Backstage
actions
Picking up
documents
Answering
telephone calls
Storing
document
Support
Process
Maintaining
reservation
system
Maintaining
book
inventory

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purchase or directly after visiting the store/website the customer reserve the services. Second
stage is comprised of onstage actions that take place in the business. Here, the business allow
access to the customer and check the details of the customer. Third stage is the backstage
action that is comprised of receiving document and answering telephone calls. In the fourth
stage, support process where company allow reservation facility to the customer.
The two stages that are most important in this process are customer action and backstage
action. The customer action stage is considered to be essential because without the desire,
need and willingness of the customer the business cannot deliver services. Therefore, the
business has to focus on maintaining attractive business website and store in order to entice
different customers. Another stage that is important and critical in the service blueprint is
backstage action. At this stage, the back office employees come under the direct contact with
the customer through telephone call and encourage purchasing the services. At this stage, the
business has to focus on providing training to the workforce. The backstage action step is
essential because it help the customer in making the perception about the business (positive
or negative perception).
Service Delivery System

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Nature of Service – At the service delivery system of the Backpackers Place, the company
has to follow maintain the cross-organization relationship in order to have corporative
interaction and transaction with the businesses involved in the similar type of businesses.
This will help the company in receiving affordable raw material to offer affordable services
to the end user (Chen, Zeng, Lu, Sun and Zou, 2012).
Servicing Protocol – The service protocol that company will adopt is reservation system that
will allow the customer to book their services in advance through this system. During peak
season, there is possibility that every customer does not get the services hence; the company
will offer reservation to the customers who are planning their vacations.
Strategic Mission and Vision
Market Analysis
Designing Customer Benefit Package
Detailed Service Designing
Manufacturing and Delivery of
Services

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Perishable – The tourism services of the company are perishable that cannot be availed again
in the future due to the nature of the business (Moeller, 2010). As the tourism business is
based on season, climate, customer traffic, etc. the offers and packages changes as per the
trend and market. Besides this, the other products that are offered by the company that is
trekking shoes, belt, etc. are non-perishable in nature.
Issues in the Business
The Backpackers Place Company can deal with number of issues in the market while
operating the business and some of the issues can be related to the productivity and quality.
The productivity issue that the company can experience is due to lack of proper scheduling
and organization of the work which results in raising barriers for the business such as
declining profitability and sales. This issue can be overcome by the company by planning and
designing an organized operation in the business. Besides this, the quality issue can impact
the business goodwill in the market. This issue can take place in the business due to using
poor quality services and avoiding the security of the customer (Bar-Isaac and Shapiro,
2013). This can be overcome by the business by contacting with the suppliers that can offer
high quality services.
Service Employee Management
The Backpackers Place Company has to get involve in hiring of skilled and experienced
workforce that can add value and help business in attaining the competitive advantage.
Employees are the one who get into the touch of the customers to deliver the services.
Therefore, it is important to hire skilled workforce and also to offer significant training to
upgrade their skills. The employees of the company must be trained related to the way they
need to interact with the customer such that they can leave a good image of the business in
their eyes. Besides this, if the employee is not interested in the job he may ignore the

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customer and dissatisfy their need (Khan, Khan and Khan, 2011). Therefore, it is important to
satisfy the employee’s such that he/she can deliver best services to the client.
Job satisfaction of the employees is important for the higher productivity, low employee
turnover, and motivation. The ways that can be adopted by Backpackers Place Company to
increase the satisfaction level of the employees is offering a positive environment for work,
developing potential and skills through training, recognition and reward, increasing the
employee engagement in the business by involving them in the decision making procedures
(Xu and Cooper, 2011). In addition to this, the company must measure the satisfaction level
of the employees such that it can identify the reason behind their unproductive performance.
Quality Management Measures – Service Quality model
The basic motive of most of the businesses to manufacture services and products and sell of
the customer is to generate profit. These services should meet the expectations of the
customer related to the quality standard. If the business does not meet the quality standard, it
has been deal with the consequences such as losing customer trust (Sallis, 2014). The quality
is also important for the number of reasons like reputation of the business, customer retention
and value, safety, legal issues, etc. (Ugochukwu, Bagot & IsHak, 2013). Therefore, the
business must first think of how to meet the quality standard to avoid all such issues. The
Backpackers Place Company is recommended to adopt the SERVQUAL Model as its quality
model to avoid all the challenges in the business.
SERVQUAL is said to be a multi-dimensional instrument of the research that is created to
meet the expectations of the customer and perceptions of a service by focusing on the five
dimensions that are considered to signify the quality of the service (Ravichandran, Mani,
Kumar and Prabhakaran, 2010). SERVQUAL has been created on the paradigm of
expectancy-disconfirmation that means the quality of the service is understood as the degree

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to which the pre-consumption expectations of the quality of the consumers are confirmed or
disconfirmed. This model works to meet the five identified gaps that are expected service by
the customer vs. perception of the management, perception of management vs. service deign,
service design vs. communication, and expected service vs. perceived service (Naik,
Gantasala and Prabhakar, 2010). The below table is specifying the five SERVQUAL Model
items:
Dimension Definition
Empathy It talks about the provision of caring and
attention to the consumer.
Reliability The capability to offer promised services
accurately.
Responsiveness The willingness of the business to support the
consumer and offer quick services.
Tangibles The appearance of the equipment, personnel
and other physical facilities.
Assurance The understanding of the employees and their
capability to convey confidence as well as
trust.
Conclusion
The above report has discussed about the operation strategy and service blue print of the
Backpackers Place Company which is involved in offering tourism and travel services to the
clients in the New South Wales, Australia. Besides this, the paper has also discussed about

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the service delivery system and employee management system in the business. From the
analysis, it has been identified that the company needs to assure effective operations, human
resource and marketing strategies such that it can meet the expectations of the customers. In
addition to this, the analysis highlighted that the Customer action and backstage action of the
business are the two main points in the service blue print. The analysis also highlighted that
the company can deal with the productivity and quality issue that can be overcome with
proper allocation and use of high quality resources. Further, the company is recommended to
adopt SERVQUAL Model in order to manage the quality into the business.