TLH339 Service Quality: West India Quay Hotel Report, June 2021

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of service quality management at The West India Quay Hotel, a 4-star hospitality business. The report begins with an introduction to service quality in the hospitality industry, highlighting its importance and the hotel's recent challenges following renovations. Task 1 critically evaluates the main theories and principles of managing service quality, including total quality management (TQM) and its eight principles, such as customer focus, leadership, and employee engagement. The SERVQUAL framework is also discussed, detailing its five dimensions: tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. Task 2 critically appraises the current management of service quality at the hotel, assessing its impact on staff motivation and engagement. Task 3 focuses on developing a customer feedback system framework that the hotel can utilize to monitor and continually improve service quality. The report concludes with a summary of findings and recommendations for enhancing service quality and customer satisfaction. The report is well-structured and supported by relevant literature.

Service Quality

Table of Contents
Introduction......................................................................................................................................1
Task 1...............................................................................................................................................1
Critical evaluation of the main theories and principles of managing service quality in The
West India Quay Hotel...........................................................................................................1
Task 2...............................................................................................................................................6
Critical appraisal of the management of service quality for The West India Quay Hotel,
establishing the impact of its current services delivery practices of the motivation and
engagement of staff................................................................................................................6
Task 3...............................................................................................................................................8
Produce customer feedback system framework that The West India Quay Hotel can utilise to
monitor and continually improve service quality...................................................................8
Conclusion.....................................................................................................................................12
References:.....................................................................................................................................13
Books and Journals...............................................................................................................13

Introduction
Business firms operating in services industry provides services to the customer rather than a
product and ensures that company meets the perceived value through their quality services and
facilities. Hospitality industry is a broad category of the service industry providing leisure,
entertainment, luxury and satisfaction to the customer consuming the services through distinct
business sectors. Service quality is term which is referred to as the comparison of customer’s
expectation related with services with that of company’s performance level. Business firms with
a high level of service quality have potential to meet the expectations of customer while
remaining economically competitive and relevant in the industry (Radivilova and et. al., 2019.
The West India Quay Hotel is 4 star rating hospitality businesses operating since 2000 AD. In
2005, the hotel expanded its business into event planning and management by including
conferencing and banqueting suites of three event spaces which are adequate for organising
conferences, meetings, social events and other function. The Hotel is located near Canary Wharf
in East London, with 120 modern and stylish en-suites rooms along with other facilities such as
gym, spa and swimming pool. Recently, The West India Quay Hotel initiated renovation and
refurbishment which increased their business but lost the quality in services and received bad
reviews from customers. Therefore, the objective of the report is to produce a Customer
Feedback System framework for the hotel to monitor and improve the service quality.
Furthermore, the report also conducts critical evaluation of main theories and principles of
managing services quality in the hotel along with the importance of measuring service quality.
This is not all, the report also executes critical evaluation of the current management of service
quality of The West India Quay Hotel and impact it has on the motivation and engagement of
staff working in the hotel.
Task 1
Critical evaluation of the main theories and principles of managing service quality in The West
India Quay Hotel
Total quality management is defined as the significant technique which is based on the
concept that employees working in an organisation should continuously enhance their ability to
provide quality products and services as per the conceived value of customers (Akter, Wamba
and D’Ambra, 2019). Evidently, many business firms agree that it is imperative to have quality
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but gets difficulty in execution; therefore a good quality management can assist and provide a
road map to The West India Quay Hotel to maintain and have good quality in the services.
Quality management system determines the way in which quality is managed within the
organisation and way in which organisation operates. Generally there are eight principles of
quality which ensures that business firms maintains and deliver desired quality services as per
the expectation level of customer.
Principles of managing services quality
 Customer focus: One of the significant principles in managing quality is organisation
should focus on the needs and wants of customer without which a business will no longer
exist. This principle covers both the aspects customer services and customer needs (Liu
and et. al., 2020). In order to maintain and deliver good quality services it is imperative
for The West India Quay Hotel to understand the customer needs and wants by analysing
the potential trend and their buying habits. Apart from that, while delivering services,
hotel must ensure that delivered services meets their expectation and perceived value.
Ability of the West India Quay Hotel in understanding their needs and reacting
appropriately to meet those will assist the company in attaining customer loyalty,
increase revenue and building long tern relationships. Leadership: Second most significant principle in maintain quality is the good and
effective leadership styles and ability. Leaders are meant to direct and guide the efforts of
employees in a right direction as per the defined goals and objectives to generate desired
result (Xiao and Kumar, 2021). Leaders of The West India Quay Hotel are responsible
for creating productive and progressive working environment where all the employee are
aware about the mission and objective of business and ensures that they are equally
participating in attaining those objectives. Implementing this principle at West India
Quay will rely upon establishing strong vision of the business and appointment effective
leaders with the potential of encouraging the team members to on a common mission and
goal. Good leadership at workplace enhances employee’s engagement and motivation
level which in turn leads to satisfaction of customer’s needs and wants.
 Engagement of people: Just as without customer business firm would reach nowhere, in
a similar way it won’t reach too far without balanced, effective and multi skilled
taskforce. Employees in the organisation are crucial at each level as they are the key
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factors in determining the success of company and this principle is concerned with
recognising and appraising them. Engagement of staff means that they are working to
their maximum potential and are highly valued at workplace (Kim and et. al., 2019). It is
imperative for The West India Quay Hotel to ensure that employees are motivated and
highly engaged not only in their day to day operations but also in the organisation as a
whole. Leaders and managers must encourage employees to actively participate in
decision making which make them feel valued and responsible. Employees with high
engagement at workplace are satisfied, creative and productive which delivers quality of
services. Process approach: Process-driven approach is concerned with efficiency and
effectiveness in the overall management of the business firm. In the context of The West
India Quay Hotel, process approach means hotel activities are managed as processes,
measured and these activities are inter-linked with each other to bring unity and harmony
to attain the business objective. Well managed processes in the hotel operations helps in
reducing cost, eliminate waste, brings consistency and promote ongoing improvements
(Cao and et. al., 2019). The West India Quay Hotel can develop process in each of their
functional and operational departments such as marketing, finance, front office, HR,
event planning and housekeeping department so that resources are used in a most
effective way resulting in increasing profitability and minimising wastage. Systematic approach to management: The fifth principle is closely linked to the previous
principle and argues that indentifying, understanding and managing process with the help
of using clear and precise system will help The West India Quay Hotel in increasing
organisation’s effectiveness and efficiency in achieving mission and objectives. A
systematic approach allows each member in the organisation to have access to every
stage and stay in tune with the current progress. This approach in the West India Quay
Hotel enables each employee to dedicate the right amount of attention to key tasks which
in turn helps in eliminating wastage of time, efforts and resources and resulting in
increasing efficiency of a business (Adeinat and Kassim, 2019). Continual improvement: This principle focuses on bringing necessary and on-going
improvement in the business process to be remaining competitive and relevant in the
market industry. As a old proverb says that if you’re not moving forward, you are most
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likely going backward”, therefore it advisable for the West India Quay Hotel to always
encourage changes and improvement into the business activities in order to keep up the
pace with the rapid change taking place and enhance its competitiveness. Factual approach to decision making: Sometimes business firms in order to keep up the
pace with the fast changing environment often make decisions rashly without proper
understanding and good judgement which leads to the wrong strategies and poor decision
making. This principle suggests that good and effective business decisions can only be
made with the help of a logical approach, based on data and analysis. It is advisable for
The West Quay Hotel to make business decisions based on facts and figures that help in
making decisions with more clarity and confidence (Park, Lee and Nicolau, 2020). Mutually beneficial supplier relations: Once business firms have got excellent
management system, good customer relationship, and comprehensive business plan; there
is also another significant factor which is essential to take into account which is suppliers.
While delivering products and services, The West India Quay Hotel relies on several
suppliers which as farmers, FMCG companies, textile suppliers, technology firms etc.
This principle states that relationship between the hotel and its suppliers must be
mutually beneficial to deliver value added services to the customers. Better relations help
both the parties in responding the frequent changes in demand and needs of customer
through increased productivity and seamless business practices.
Theories of managing quality
Company’s ability to attain excellence in the delivering quality services completely depends
on the attributes of the services along with their desired level. Sometimes this also depends on
the prioritization of services attributes in a consistent manner with the help of appropriate quality
indices within the limits of resources (Nikel, Eldeeb and Mohamed, 2020). Therefore it is
essential to build an operational procedure which prioritizes the attribute of customer services in
a simple, accurate and inexpensive way. SERVQUAL is a well established framework which
measures the quality and has liner and symmetrical relationship between n service quality gaps
and overall service quality. This is a significant multi scale tool developed to assess the
customer’s perception with regards to the service quality in service and retail industry. With the
help of this tool The West India Quay Hotel can attain and manage maximum quality in their
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services and increase customer satisfaction. In order to measure service quality this framework is
segregated into five notions such as:
 Tangibles: This attributes are concerned with physical facilities provide by The West
Quay Hotel such as rooms, pool, gym, spa, banqueting, conference halls, restaurants etc ;
along with necessary equipments and appearance of staff members. At the time of
refurbishment hotel have improved its physical facilities such as reception area, rooms
and restaurants to provide good ambience to the customer resulting in quality services
(Kennedy, Mahajan and Urpelainen, 2019).
 Reliability: This attribute of maintaining service quality is concerned with ability of the
employees to perform work independently and accurately without the intervention of
managers and leaders. Employees should be able to deliver consistent and friendly
services to the customers as hospitality industry completely depend on customer
satisfaction, excitement and entertainment.
 Responsiveness: Another significant attribute in delivering and maintaining quality
services is the willingness of employees to help and respond to the customer needs. The
West Quay Hotel has been receiving bad reviews on trip advisor with regards to their bad
services as staff members show rigid attitude and are not supportive at all. Apart from
that restaurant staff is callous and show no apologies for the inconvenience. In order to
deliver service quality it is essential to listen customer carefully, behave in professional
manner and show positive attitude towards work and customer (Dedeoğlu and et. al.,
2020).
 Assurance: This attribute is essential in maintaining service quality as it represents the
ability of staff members to inspire trust and confidence. Employees of The West Quay
hotel must build and display trust towards co-worker and must be confident that every
one shares common goal and are working collectively towards the common objective.
 Empathy: While delivering services in the hospitality industry managers and employees
must build the feeling of empathy towards the customer to be able understand their needs
and build positive relations. This attribute helps in delivering personalised services to the
customer making them feel valued and important for the company thus builds customer
loyalty.
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Task 2
Critical appraisal of the management of service quality for The West India Quay Hotel,
establishing the impact of its current services delivery practices of the motivation and
engagement of staff
The presented case study is on the West India Quay Hotel which is a 4 star hotel situated
close to Canary Wharf in East London, operating since 2000 AD. Being an oldest hotel, the
company went into the restoration process where they have updated reception area, restaurants
and rooms while keeping other things constant. The hotel has a total inventory of 120 modern
and stylish rooms including standard, premier and executive en suites rooms. Hotel also
possesses conference and banqueting suites of three event spaces which are ideal for organising
corporate and social events. Since the refurbishment of hotel, their business have grown
significantly in both rooms and event but due to old style of management their operations are
failing and generating great amount of dissatisfaction among customer and workers working in
the hotel (Cobell and et. al., 2019).
The West India Quay Hotel is still using a bureaucratic style of management which is
beneficial to some extent but gets fail when it comes to contemporary hospitality industry and
millennial workers. Bureaucratic style of management is effective in defining clear roles and
responsibility, determining level of hierarchy in an organisation, forming and compliance with
rules, regulations and policies and removing favouritism from the organisational culture. This
style has brought consistency and commitment in delivering quality services to the customer,
however have created a barrier for employees to grow and flourish in the competitive market and
within organisation. Under bureaucratic style of management employees are aware of their job
roles and responsibility as leaders delegate the task as per the area of interest and expertise of
employees which brings efficiency and effectiveness in the work produced by employees.
Additionally, this type of management style fosters the culture of profession and discipline where
each employee work and act as per the desired set of standards, practices and norms (Álvarez-
García and et. al., 2019).
On the other hand, due to the bureaucratic style of management The West Quay Hotel is
dealing with poor and bad critics from their customer despite of heavy sales and wide customer
share and one of the reasons behind is growing dissatisfaction among the employees. Hospitality
industry focus on customer’s satisfaction but the hotel is not meeting the expectation level of
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customer because workforce of the company feels isolated and undervalued primarily due to the
lack of motivation and engagement of employees in organisational culture.
Impact of current services delivery practices on the workforce
Present service delivery practices used by the West Quay hotel is customer-oriented and
personalised services where they are making efforts to make customer feel satisfied and valued
(Kalargyrou, Trivella and Sigala, 2020). The hotel is presently operating on good service
standards in recognition, assurance and attentiveness where they used personalised approach of
using the guest’s name while addressing to them and call them once they check-in to ensure that
room is satisfactory. This approach has no doubt increased the customer satisfaction but left
employees, an important asset, dissatisfied and undervalued. Below mentioned are the impact on
employee motivation and engagement in the West India Quay Hotels: Less values and respect: Evidently employees are the key to success for any organisation
as they contribute their efforts towards the attainment of common objective and
delivering service quality. With the bureaucratic style of management, leader and
managers of the hotel does not seek participation of the employees in significant areas of
decision making which makes them feel isolated and undervalued. Apart from this, hotel
employ staff at low level of management on temporary basis, whereas top level
executives and managers are permanent which brings disparity and mismanagement into
staff and employees feel that they are respected and valued (Ali, 2019).
 High turn-over rate: Employee with no satisfaction and motivation are less productive
which results in absenteeism and high employee turn-over rate. Employees are driven and
motivated by the healthy relationship and positive working environment rather than
money and other facilities. Employees show great desire to work at place where he is
provided with opportunity to participate, make decisions and show his ability to make
significant impact into the business practices. Employees at the West India Quay Hotel
employs staff at temporary basis and provide less training which make them feel insecure
about their professional and personal development.
 Less productivity: Employees at workplace desire to feel recognised, valued and
appraised for the work done, lack of which makes them less productive and engaged at
workplace (Osman and Saputra, 2019). The West India Quay Hotel provides no reward
and recognition programmes due to which employees does not receive feedback and
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suggestions related with their areas of improvement and areas of excellence. Employees
with no recognition and appraisals feel disappointed and work with less enthusiasm and
energy resulting in low engagement at workplace.
Recommendations
In order to improve critics and reviews of customer about the callous attitude of waiters,
no apologies for inconvenience and lack of support in providing services to customers; can be
improved by adopting best and relevant management style. Employees play significant role in
enhancing the experience of customer as they interact directly with them and works closely to
provide them provide them exceptionally service solutions (Ristiyani and Setyawati, 2019). With
the help of delegative style of management The West India Quay Hotel can increase the
participation of employees in decision making and making them feel valued, confident and
respected. Apart from this modern approach of recruitment and selection practices will provide
the employee with adequate training and compensation benefits which is also crucial in keeping
the moral of employees high and boost their motivation level.
Task 3
Produce customer feedback system framework that The West India Quay Hotel can utilise to
monitor and continually improve service quality
Customer feedback
Customer feedbacks can be defined as the opinion, comment, input or information received
by the company directly from customer with regards to the experience and level of satisfaction
associated with the products and services offered by business firm. Customer feedbacks can be
collected by the West India Quay Hotels through several ways such as email, social media, calls,
polling, surveying customers, interviewing etc. The objective of customer feedback is to analyse
and identify whether the desired products and services were successful in delivering perceived
value and meet the expectations level of customer. Customer feedback informs the hotel where
they need improvement and where they are expertise and experienced (Ho and Wu, 2019).
Importance of feedback for the West Quay Hotel
Since the refurbishment of the hotel, The West Quay Hotel is facing significant challenge in
dealing and handling customer feedback and reviews due to which hotel’s brand rapport have
affected at significant level. Hotel group is too busy in handling the influx of tourist as some of
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the bad reviews of clients and guests left unnoticed which have increased dissatisfaction among
customer and customer loyalty have declined to a significant level. Measure customer satisfaction: Collecting and analysing customer feedbacks from
clients helps the West India Quay hotel in determining the level of performance.
Customer satisfaction and loyalty are the two crucial factors essential in determining the
success of hospitality industry. Customer satisfaction and performance of a hotel go hand
in hand as their level of satisfaction tells whether company meets expectation level or not
(Friman, Lättman and Olsson, 2020). Enhance products and services: Customer feedbacks reveal to what extent does the
products and services meets the expected value of customer and informs customer where
improvements are required. Therefore, customer reviews helps company in bringing
necessary changes and increase their value. Customer retention and loyalty: Customer retention and customer loyalty are the two
significant objectives on which hospitality industry works. Customer feedbacks help
hotels in understand the reason and causes behind the poor customer satisfaction and
helps in enhancing the services by determining the areas of improvement.
Ways to collect customer feedback
 Chatbots: One of the significant ways to interact with customer and keep them engaged
with the business is chatbots. It is a frictionless method to get in touch with customers
and ask them prompted questions on a real time basis or passively answers the inbound
feedbacks.
 Short surveys: Customer surveys are also significant way the West India Quay Hotels
can use to ask specific questions with regards to the product features, services, aspects of
service process and part of their experience in a straightforward and unique way (Muskat
and et. al., 2019).
 Social media: However, The West India Quay Hotel group is currently using Facebook
to solicit feedbacks from customer but they need to make more use of social media such
as Instagram, LinkedIn, Pinterest and other platforms to interact with customer as
customer are easily available there and like to interact over social media sites and
platform.
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Customer feedback system framework
It order to respond effectively to the customer feedbacks it is essential for the West Quay
Hotel to have AI powered customer feedback system which will allow to promptly address the
feedbacks and deliver customer service quality (Muskat and et. al., 2019). “MonkeyLearn” is the
best solution for hotel which is an intelligent customer feedback framework; a text analysis tool
which allows company to collect customer feedbacks from numerous sources, analysis and
produce qualitative results. This framework offers one stop platform for seamless process to
analyze and visualize the customer feedbacks so that one is left unnoticed and unaddressed.
Below mentioned are the few steps to create and develop MonkeyLearn customer feedback
system framework for the West India Quay Hotel: Collect feedbacks: With the help of CSAT, email, social media platforms, chat
conversation or any other sources which West India Quay Hotel to use to collect
feedback, MonkeyLearn integrations allows company to upload excel files or CSV
directly on ZenDesk, Survey Monkey, or Google forum. By doing so hotel company can
extract all the data at one time from all sources and even can automate the customer
support process. (Friman, Lättman and Olsson, 2020). Setting goals: After collecting a data it is essential to know what West India Quay Hotel
wants to do with the customer feedback system. Setting goals will allow hotel to make
best use of collected data and extract information what they need. For instance, West
India Quay Hotel aims to respond effectively to the customer feedback and resolve their
issue as soon as possible, so this goal will help them to collect relevant feedbacks first
which needs attention. Set up Automatic system at one place: With the help of MonkeyLearn studio West
India Quay hotel can connect multiple analysis tools and techniques at one place to
bring uniformity such as keyword extraction, aspect classification and sentiment
analysis. Company can choose a template or build the new one and collect data from
integrations, analysis and visualization will take place automatically. Automatic NPS
survey classifier is the best tool which automatically categorizes survey responses such
as customer support, quality, pricing etc, and is great in customer feedback analysis (Ho
and Wu, 2019).
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Therefore, with the help of MonkeyLearn framework, the West India Quay Hotel can address
customer feedback on a real time basis from numerous sources and not a single feedback won’t
left unnoticed even in the peak season.
Figure 1MonkeyLearn Studio Dashboard, 2021
Source: (A Guide to An Effective Customer Feedback System, 2021)
Figure 2How Does MonkeyLearn Studio Work?, 2021
Source: ( A Guide to An Effective Customer Feedback System, 2021)
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Conclusion
From the above mentioned analysis it is concluded that in order to deliver perceived service
quality to customer it is essential for the company to integrate several principles and theories
which not only help in maintaining the quality but also crucial in delivering quality as per the
expectation of customer. On the other hand, there is need to integrate best management practice
which is effective in boost satisfaction and motivation level of employees because employees in
hospitality are key to success as they represent the hotel brand and contribute towards making
customer experience good or bad. Furthermore, it is imperative for hospitality business to
integrate customer feedback system tools and techniques to respond to customer’s feedbacks and
queries on time as company’s performance is determined by the quality of feedback and if left
unnoticed it may result in poor brand image or growing dissatisfaction among the loyal
customers.
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References:
Books and Journals
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Akter, S., Wamba, S.F. and D’Ambra, J., 2019. Enabling a transformative service system by
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Cao, H., and et. al., 2019. Dynamic embedding and quality of service-driven adjustment for
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Radivilova, T., and et. al., 2019, January. The methods to improve quality of service by
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