Skip to content

MANAGING QUALITY IN HOSPITALITY

Introduction 

The report is based on Expedia which is providing a revolutionary way to their consumers to book travel tickets. This is one of the leading travel platforms with an extensive brand portfolio. The main purpose of this assignment is to identify the concept of quality management. Also, this will describe the problem which is being faced by Expedia.co.uk. Along with this, the project assists in identifying the impact of techniques that are used by Expedia in improving the quality of services that has been delivering top their customers. The recommendation should be provided for better improvement and how to manage the quality in a proper manner by the company.   

Identify and describe the concept of quality management 

Quality management is the work that helps in managing the business activities and various other tasks that are required to maintain and manage a desired level of excellence. This includes determination and evaluation of quality policy and procedures to develop and execute quality planning and assurance and also help in control and maintain the quality of services that assist the company in attracting a large number of customers (Pereira-Moliner, et. al., 2016). There are various booking websites which include Expedia.co.uk, Trivago, Booking.com, Hotels.com, Ebookers, and Agoda that are used various unauthorized strategies to attract customers which creates an issue for their goodwill. The report is based on Expedia and they need to maintain the quality of its services in order to provide good quality facilities to the users who are book tickets to travel. Along with this, quality management concern with organization products and services which is consistent. 

Quality management is mainly focused on not only provide great goods and services but also this will help them in achieving desired goals and objectives in a proper manner. With the assistance of this concept, Expedia can understand the requirement of improving the quality which is offered by customers. For this, they need to develop an only genuine strategy that is fulfilled by them and does not hurt the customers in any manner. If they do not maintain the quality of services so their review will be poor and the customer base is reduced as compared with their competitors (Nair and Choudhary, 2016). Expedia and other related competitors are using tactics such as they are offering fake discounts and limited availability banners to pressure clients to book hotel tickets in a quicker way. As per the results, these websites have been ordered to comply with the Competition and Markets Authority (CMA) by September 1. 

There are four main elements of quality management such as quality assurance, quality control, quality planning and improvement of quality facilities which need to be done by expedia.co.uk. Quality management consists of four main elements which are as under:

Quality Planning – It is that procedure that assists in identifying the quality standards accuracy to the quality services and decides how to reach with the desired standard. 

Quality control – In this, the continuing effort needs to upload the process of integrity and reliability in order to reach an accurate outcome. 

Quality improvement – It is that process in which the purposeful changes in improving the confidence and reliability of the results. 

Quality Assurance – The planned and systematic activities are required to provide accurate consistency which involves specific services and goods that will meet with the correct requirements and needs of customers. 

Besides this, the main motive of quality management is to ensure that organization stakeholders are work together to make correct improvements in company procedures and activities in a proper manner (Molina-Azorín, et. al., 2015). It includes organization procedures, goods, services, facilities and culture that are achieving the long term success which stems from customer satisfaction effectively. Expedia needs to adopt a quality management concept which can help them in maintain and make improvements in their services which are provided to the client’s related top discounts offered and availability of hotel booking. This will assist in developing a reliable strategy that gains the attention of customers and does not waste their money on any fake action. For this, Expedia gains high goodwill and reputation among customers as well as in the market place. 

In addition, the process of quality management involves various collections of guidelines and instructions that are formulated by a team to make sure that goods and services are provided with correct standards. This procedure begins when Expedia sets its quality targets to reach and that is agreed on the customers who are using their sites for booking hotel tickets. Expedia.co.uk is one of the world’s leading travels booking platform which provides various types of offer which maintain their customers’ base and generate higher profitability (Nair and Choudhary, 2016). The company needs to target their desired customers who are always booking tickets from their sites. After that need to take appropriate action to measure the quality which is offered to clients. They are work for providing the best services to their customers so that they can maintain and manage their goodwill in the large market area. Also, this is required for them is to identify and analyze the major issue which is faced by them while delivering services to the users in a better manner. 

Outline the problems being currently experienced by Expedia.co.uk. 

The concept of service from customer perspectives is regarded as the customer’s experience with the facilities provided. A small division within Microsoft launched an online travel booking site named is Expedia.co.uk. They are giving consumers a revolutionary new way to research and book their demanding tickets of hotels in an easy manner. Expedia is one of the leading online travel companies which is also known as Expedia group (Mardani, et. al., 2016). Currently, it is the world’s leading platform with an extensive brand portfolio and it is serving both leisure and business travelers with tastes and budgets ranging from reserved to lavishness. Due to huge competitions, there are various websites that have been accused of using tactics in which they are offering fake discounts and limited availability of hotel rooms which pressures the customers to book a ticket in a fast manner. Such sites include expedia.co.uk, Trivago, Hotels.com, Agoda, Ebookers, and Booking.com. Along with this, high-quality service performance develops and measure benefits in profit, cost-saving and increase market share. As per the outcome, the company has placed service quality at the top priority and develops an appropriate strategy to deal with customers and satisfy them. In the case of Expedia.co.uk, the quality is being judged in terms of fake services and facilities that are offered by them. Such problems are faced by Expedia that are described as under:

Insufficient service quality – The inappropriate quality is provided by the company to the users of the online platform. In the context of quality improvement of services which is provided websites of Expedia. The major problem which is faced by Expedia is insufficient to service quality due to huge competitors so that this will mainly impact on its income and profitability level. There are various competition companies and sites which are also offered online ticket booking of travels such as Trivago, Agoda, Hotels.com, and Booking.com that directly impact on company growth (Moutinho and Vargas-Sanchez, 2018). The UK regulatory investigation of 15 months led towards an agreement to clamp down on pressure selling and potentially misleading the offers which are provided by sites of travel booking. So that they are accused by using tactics that include fake discounts and limited availability banners to pressure customers to book tickets in a faster manner. 

Reduction in rating – It is important for every online platform company is to get appropriate and best reviews from its users so this will enhance their business in a faster manner. Along with this, it is also required for them is to focus on developing a strong customer base on online sites which gives them a good review so that their business will increase in the market place. In the case of Expedia, it can be seen that they are getting bad reviews due to the use of poor tactics to gain the attention of their customers. But they do not that the UK has consumer watchdog which continuously focuses on their activities that will reduce the trust among consumers towards Expedia Company (Zornoza, et. al., 2015). As a result, they are getting poor reviews on Trust pilot with context to their provisions of quality services. They also get the worst rating of 1.2 out of 10 reviewed by 2454 customers from online. 

There are various ways which are helpful for reviewing the Expedia.co.uk can meet with Dimensions of service quality in a proper manner or not that are described as under:

Reliability –Expedia is a reliable booking website as it is a partner with a reputed travel accommodation company and also provides various options so that they can easily identify the room that is suitable for customers. But in this case, they are seen as the customers cannot trust on this site because they do not trust pilot in any manner. 

Responsiveness – in this scenario, Expedia is responsive towards its customers and they are able to offer them accurate quality services which reduce the trust among users regarding the company (Molina-Azorín, et. al., 2015).

Assurance – As per the situation, it is observed that Expedia is not providing assurance to their users but they are offering fake discounting offers which reduce trustworthiness among them. 

Empathy – Expedia is world’s leading site which book travel tickets but as per the case, it is seen that they do not understand their customer’s feelings and demand so this can lead towards face major issue. 

Tangibles – in the case of Expedia, it is analyzed that they do not offer tangible services that are free from all fake and transparency in their services. 

Impact of techniques could have on Expedia.co.uk in terms of delivering consistent and effective quality management 

The continuous improvement, so inherent to Benchmarking is providing great benefit to Expedia. Benchmarking technique is the process that helps in measuring and evaluating the performance of an organization’s goods, services and procedures against another business which has to be considered as best in the industry (Khudia, et. al., 2015). The benchmarking is that technology that can be used by Expedia in order to measure the company quality services that are offered by them. Along with this, benchmarking provides required insights that assist in understand and evaluate the company with the same type of business. Benchmarking helps Expedia in order to identify such areas to make improvements in quality services. This technique is directly impacted in terms of delivering consistent and gain effective quality management. 

Advantages of Benchmarking:

There are various advantages of benchmarking which help in improving the productivity of an organization (Weckenmann, et. al., 2015). Moreover, such advantages can provide a clear image and picture of the major key factors of benchmarking in the Expedia. 

Implements creative ideas – It is that technology that helps the company in finding out the major key factors that an organization. Along with this, Expedia needs to develop creative and innovative ideas that assist them in gaining positive reviews and also analyze the customer’s response to their services. 

Increased competition – It can be analyzed that while doing business, Expedia faces various issues such as huge competitors so that they can perform their great work (Ross, 2017). The competition assists them in maintain and take a position in gaining higher success or growth levels. With the assistance of the benchmarking technique, it will increase healthy competition among different competitors. 

Quality of work – It can be seen that Expedia can use this technique so they can easily maintain and manage the quality services. This will help them in enhancing the customer base and getting positive reviews and also enhance the rating as well (Zeng, et. al., 2015). Also, it will aid in effectively maintain consistent quality management in a proper manner and gain higher success or growth. 

Disadvantages of Benchmarking: 

There are some disadvantages are also occurs with the use of benchmarking technique and tools to make improvement and betterment in delivering quality services (Kotler, et. al., 2017). 

Stabilized standards – It can be analyzed that most of the organizations are compare their working environment with another company that is gaining quite well in the same sector. Expedia is able to stabilize the standards which create a negative impact on their business operations and delivering in quality based services to the users in terms of discounts offered and availability of hotel rooms. 

Lack of customer satisfaction – At the time of processing benchmarking, the company finds out such results which can be necessary to make improvements for growth and success. Sometimes, Expedia cannot able to analyze their customers’ needs so this will create a negative impact on their business functions and profitability ratio as well as goodwill (Peters, Kallmuenzer and Buhalis, 2019). Due to huge competition, they are using accused tactics in which they are offering fake discounts so this will reduces customer loyalty and trust factors towards Expedia.co.uk. 

Increased dependency – Most of the company think that with the use of Benchmarking technique assist them in improving their company position as its support in gaining success and top placed. But they need to know that if a firm needs to gain growth so they should work hard not depends on any method or tool. In the case of Expedia, they need to develop their own idea rather than the use of another site concept which help them to deal with such a situation.

Recommendations 

Some of the recommendation for Expedia in order to make improvement in quality services that is described as follows:

    • They need to provide only genuine offers and discounts to their customers.
    • They required developing appropriate relevant strategies that help the company in maintaining quality services. 
    • Expedia can analyze whole competitors’ tactics and develop unique tactics that are legal and offered to their customers. 
    • They can necessary actions which assist in increasing their goodwill and reputation all over the world. 
  • They can add some more features in the websites where they offer good services so this will enhance review rates in a proper manner.

Conclusion 

On the basis of the above-described report, it can be concluded that Expedia is one of the leading online booking company which provides hotels to the customers. Quality management is the act which helps in measuring and evaluating the company offered services to the users. There are problems and issues which are faced by Expedia.co.uk in the current time period due to huge competition. For this, they are using various techniques and methods which can help to make improvements in their quality services in a better way. Along with this, all the techniques have advantages and disadvantages on the basis of this they make their decisions.

References
  • Peters, M., Kallmuenzer, A. and Buhalis, D., 2019. Hospitality entrepreneurs managing quality of life and business growth. Current Issues in Tourism22(16), pp.2014-2033.
  • Kotler, P., Bowen, J.T., Makens, J. and Baloglu, S., 2017. Marketing for hospitality and tourism.
  • Ross, J.E., 2017. Total quality management: Text, cases, and readings. Routledge.
  • Weckenmann, A., Akkasoglu, G. and Werner, T., 2015. Quality management–history and trends. The TQM Journal27(3), pp.281-293.
  • Zeng, J., Phan, C.A. and Matsui, Y., 2015. The impact of hard and soft quality management on quality and innovation performance: An empirical study. International journal of production economics162, pp.216-226.
  • Khudia, D.S., Zamirai, B., Samadi, M. and Mahlke, S., 2015, June. Rumba: An online quality management system for approximate computing. In 2015 ACM/IEEE 42nd Annual International Symposium on Computer Architecture (ISCA) (pp. 554-566). IEEE.
  • Molina-Azorín, J.F., Tarí, J.J., Pereira-Moliner, J., Lopez-Gamero, M.D. and Pertusa-Ortega, E.M., 2015. The effects of quality and environmental management on competitive advantage: A mixed methods study in the hotel industry. Tourism Management50, pp.41-54.
  • Zornoza, R., Acosta, J.A., Bastida, F., Domínguez, S.G., Toledo, D.M. and Faz, A., 2015. Identification of sensitive indicators to assess the interrelationship between soil quality, management practices and human health. Soil1(1), pp.173-185.
  • Moutinho, L. and Vargas-Sanchez, A. eds., 2018. Strategic Management in Tourism, CABI Tourism Texts. Cabi.
  • Mardani, A., Jusoh, A., Zavadskas, E.K., Zakuan, N., Valipour, A. and Kazemilari, M., 2016. Proposing a new hierarchical framework for the evaluation of quality management practices: a new combined fuzzy hybrid MCDM approach. Journal of Business Economics and Management17(1), pp.1-16.
  • Nair, G.K. and Choudhary, N., 2016. Influence of critical success factors of total quality management on financial and non-financial performance of hospitality industry: an empirical study. International Journal of Productivity and Quality Management17(4), pp.409-436.
  • Molina-Azorín, J.F., Tarí, J.J., Pereira-Moliner, J., Lopez-Gamero, M.D. and Pertusa-Ortega, E.M., 2015. The effects of quality and environmental management on competitive advantage: A mixed methods study in the hotel industry. Tourism Management50, pp.41-54.
  • Pereira-Moliner, J., Pertusa-Ortega, E.M., Tarí, J.J., López-Gamero, M.D. and Molina-Azorin, J.F., 2016. Organizational design, quality management and competitive advantage in hotels. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management28(4), pp.762-784.