MS3304 --- Buddies' WIKI: Q4) Choose One Topic (Could be Untaught Topic) about the Issues Occurred in F&B Operations and Explore the Details about it. Give Your Own Recommendations for Improvements

How to Keep up with the Quality of Room Service/In-Room Dining Service

Room service is a customized service provided by hotel for guest to enjoy their meal delivered and served by staff in their room. It was first offered by Waldorf Astoria in the late 1930s. Room service offered by hotels is very expensive as hotel charges their room service food with much higher price than market price together with a 15% service fee. As room service is not a profitable business for many hotels due to decline in demand and high operating cost, it is commonly found in medium to large scale hotel which aims at providing full-service to their customers or to keep their first class customers or VIP. There is high customer-contact and it is very important to maintain the service quality for the whole process of room service.

However, the service quality of room service cannot be easily controlled. Room service quality varies when it is provided by different staff of the hotel. Server usually provides room service alone or with one more staff assist and no other servers can give immediate help if there is anything goes wrong. If the server performance does not match with what customers expected, it will lead to customers’ dissatisfaction which probably affect the customer consideration of using the same hotel for their next travel. The reputation of hotel may also be affected if dissatisfied customers post negative comments on the Internet, which stop other customers from choosing the hotel. Besides, the overall turnover rate for employee in the restaurant-and-accommodations sector has increased to 66.3% in 2014 according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics’ Job Openings and Labor Turnover. Facing the high turnover rate of employee, it means hotel always has to train new employee for providing up to standard service. This use a lot of resources and pose threat for providing continuous high quality room service. So, how can hotels keep up with their room service quality by having a group of well-trained and competent employee?

Recommendations

1. Giving Training Courses and Set Clear Guidelines

Even if the server has basic knowledge related to hospitality, the room service procedure may be differ for one hotel to another. Thus, hotel may give training courses to staff who would is going to provide room service. The course content may include serving attitude, standard procedures and way of response to accidental situations for providing room service. For example, customers always come first, how dishes and cutlery should be placed in front of customers, what sentence should be said when serving the customers, etc. As service is difficult to be precisely presented by words, sample videos can be shown and practices can be given to help staff better remember and understand what to do. It is important for the hotel training staff to emphasise on why servers have to follow various steps in procedure and how it is associated with other departments and customer satisfaction. When the employees understand the reason behind every acts in the room service, they will be more please to follow the procedure. Hotel should give out guidelines in course and give practical examination to see whether the staff can follow all basic procedures and are ready for work before they start providing room service.

2.Provide Checklist for Room Service Server

A checklist may also be provided to assist new servers who may not be very familiar with every details of providing room service. It can help the employee to check and make sure that he or she has done what is needed basically to provide an up-to-standard room service to hotel customers. For example, knock the door and ask politely before starting room service, confirm the bill with customer before leaving, etc.The checklist should return to manager to make sure the new servers have used the checklist to assist checking their own work in room service.

This is a checklist for housekeeping inspection. Similar checklist could be set up for room service staff to check whether they have missed any details.

3. Sudden Inspection

As in-room dining service is done by one to two person only for each time, the hotel cannot have instant monitoring for room service provided by every servers. To tackle with this problem, the training staff can have sudden inspection for the server performance with an evaluation form. The training staff may follow and observe room service provided by every staff from time to time and evaluate on staff’s service. The training staff should give encouragement as well as suggestions on what they should improved to provide better service to customers. This enables hotel to make sure the room service provided by servers matches with hotel requirements and fulfill customers expectation.

4. Company Culture Reinforcement and Evaluation Meeting

Ways Great <b>Meeting</b>s Can Drive Your Organization Forward

To tackle with the high turnover rate of employee, holding company culture reinforcement and evaluation meeting is important. Reminding their employees about the hotel vision and culture regularly helps increase their sense of belonging of employee to hotel. It is also important to deliver a message to the room service employee that they are not only providing room service but customers’ impression on hotel and hotel reputation depends on hoe they perform. Doing evaluation helps employees to better understand their duty and responsibility for their job position and perform better in the future. Allowing employees to understand the meaning of their work help increase their work satisfaction, which may help to sooth the high turnover rate problem.

Evaluation:
Through doing research on this topic, I understand that the demography always changes and the need of new generation is different from the customers hotels used to service. More of them focus of budget-conscious tour and they pay more attention on hotel providing core service and fashionable design rather luxury one. They treat hotel as a place for overnight stay only rather a place enjoying leisure as they would like to put more time on exploring the place they visit. The service provided by hotels around the world has to keep up with the trend to stay competitive in the hospitality industry. I learn that working in hospitality has to be adaptable to changes and modify the way of serving the customers according to trends when necessary.

References:

MS3304 --- Buddies' WIKI

Q4) Choose One Topic (Could be Untaught Topic) about the Issues Occurred in F&B Operations and Explore the Details about it. Give Your Own Recommendations for Improvements

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