Centre for Tourism, Hospitality and

Culinary Management
Bachelor of Science (Hons)
in
International Hospitality Management
Quality Management
August December 2014
Individual Assignment
Impacts of Globalization on the Quality Management of
Hospitality Industry
Kamila Dias
12057717

10 October 2014

I hereby state that this material is original and a result of my own

effort. Any material copied from other sources will be given their
due respect in the form of referencing and bibliography
Date/time received:
Lecturers signature:
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Marks

1. 0 Introduction

The purpose of this essay is to investigate how globalization affects the

quality management of hospitality industry.
Nowadays,

to

sustain

in

competitive

business

environment

organizations must to implement quality management. Ray (2014), states that

quality management ensures consistent delivering of services and products,
which can meet or even exceed customers expectations. In order to meet
customers expectations, organizations need to understand customers
preferences and factors, which influence designing of its services.
One of the forces, which influence quality management in hospitality
industry, is globalization. Globalization is the process of developing
international relations among the countries and involves economic, cultural
and technological exchanges (Cline, n.d.). Undoubtedly, hospitality industry is
by nature involves international communication and understanding of impacts
of the globalization is vital for implementing quality management.
Thus, to deliver high quality service it is crucial to consider
globalizations influence on hospitality industry.

2. 0 Impacts of Globalization to Quality Management

Kapiki (2012), argues that shifts in travel markets, international

competitions and advancements of internet had made hospitality industrys
structure more complex. These changes are directly impacted quality
management systems in hospitality industry, because customers demands
and preferences have changed. Globalization gave opportunity to wide range
of choices and this is one of the causes that made customers became more
quality-oriented and knowledgeable in choosing services.
There are some impacts from globalization issue to the quality
management in hospitality industry:

Increased competition. Globalization gives possibilities to offer

products and services from international organizations. Therefore, to
sustain in the competitive environment organizations must to
differentiate their products and services, by building competitive
advantage.

In turn, this lead to adopting and developing quality

systems in order to produce high quality products and services (Cline,

n.d.).
Outsourcing. Mohanty (2008), states that globalization enables of
sharing of quality practices between different organizations on a base
of outsourcing. Thus, hotels that wish to improve their businesss
processes enabled to get specialists from other hotels (Willson, 2011).
Moreover, such practice offers opportunity to train existing employees
in order to perform high quality service.

Larger Market. Globalization caused developing of the customers

base. This is why, nowadays customers travel not only for leisure, but
for business, health, education and others purposes. Therefore, in
order to provide services, which meet expectations of different types
customers, hotel industry needed to understand the value of these
types (Kapiki, 2012). Thus, it led to developing quality service
management in accordance of customers types. For example: for
business clientele oriented hotels, more businesss facilities will be
used, whereas in a resorts hotels service are more oriented on fun and

more entertainment facilities are used.

Different cultures. Blossfeld et al. (2011), states that globalization gave
opportunity for hospitality industry to change and develop their
strategies, when it enters places with different cultures. Entering in the
business of other countries must to adopt new unique management
strategies, which will be suitable for the culture of that particular
destination. For example: what type of food hotel cannot serve due to

religion.
Technological

advancement.

Undoubtedly,

such

technological

advancement as Internet gave opportunity for accelerated growth of

globalization.

Nevertheless, it has eased customers access to

travelling abroad (Blossfeld at al. 2011). Moreover, it caused hotels

managers to implement this feature for quality of service, as this is
became customers demands. However, using of technological
advancements for hotels services is increasing satisfaction of the
customers, because processes can be done in faster way.

As it stated above, there are several impacts of globalization towards

quality management in hotel industry, such as increased competition,
outsourcing, larger market and technology advancement. These impacts
stresses on fact, that globalization opened opportunities and threats for the
hotel industry, because customers needs have changed and it became
necessary to develop quality systems based on their needs.

3.0 Current Quality Strategies in Hospitality Industry

Saunders et al. (1988), argues that quality in the hospitality industry

mostly involves intangible goods, rather than tangible one. Thus, customer
satisfaction highly depends on the service side. Furthermore, quality of
service includes customer as a part of transaction and assessed after
customer will experience that service.
Chan (2011), states that hospitality industry is strongly emphases
quality management in order to develop competitive advantage, increase
customers satisfaction and customers loyalty. Oakland (2003), explains that
quality management is about building teamwork inside the organization. Thus,
it is essential for the hospitality industry to practice cohesion of each
department in order to achieve continuous improvement.
Kapiki (2012), emphasizes that hospitality industry puts effort to deliver
high quality service, however the gap between expectations and real

experience may occur. Thus, there are some practices in quality management
implemented by hospitality industry.
One of them is perceived quality service model (Gronroos, 1990). This
model helps to figure out what influence customers perceived quality in
organizations service.
Chart 1:

Expected
Quality

Experienc
ed
Quality

Total Perceived
Quality

Image

Marketing
Image
Word-of-Mouth
Customer Needs

Technical
Quality

According to perceived quality service model (1990), customer

perception of quality occurs from marketing efforts of the organization, image
of the organization, power of world-of-mouth and customers needs.
Experienced quality is formed from an image of provided service, which in
turn has two dimensions: technical quality and functional quality. Technical
quality is concerned about: product, which guest receives from interaction with
service provider. However, in service industry technical quality cannot be

Function
al Quality

measured alone, without functional quality. Functional quality emphasizes on

how this service was delivered to guest. Lastly, if perceived quality is equal
with experienced quality it leads to guests satisfaction (Prevos, 2012).

Kapiki (2012) states that SERVQUAL technique highlights main

characteristics of high quality service such as tangibility, empathy, reliability,
assurance and responsiveness. This technique can be measured internally
and externally. Internal side includes measuring of processes inside the
organizations, whereas external includes customers expectations, needs and
experience.
Moreover, this technique is measuring characteristics of high quality
service against service quality gap model.

Next is the Service Quality five gap model. This practices is focusing
on five distinct gaps, which influence on customers quality assessments.
According to Shanin (2010), all customers have expectations to the quality of
service and they measure them against experienced quality. Thus, to provide
high quality of service these expectations should be identified, when
designing service.

It includes: customer expectations management

perception gap, management perception service quality specifications gap,

service quality specifications delivery of service gap, service delivery
external communication gap and expected - perceived service gap. All these
gaps are interrelated and show relationships between them.

Image 1:

Ariyasinghe (2012)

As it can be seen from the picture, model is divided on two parts, which
are represented customer and provider sides. First gap is customer
expectations management perception gap, which reflects differences
between

customers

expectations

and

managements

perception

on

customers expectations of quality service. For example: how well managers

understand expectations of customers.
Second gap is management perception service quality specifications
gap. It shows difference between managements perception and service
quality specifications. For example: how different is a characteristic that
service has against managements perceptions of what customers need.

Third gap is service quality specifications delivery of service gap,

which reflects differences of service specifications and actual delivered
service. For example: performance of service delivery, whether service was
delivered according all its specifications.
Fourth gap is service delivery external communication gap, which
shows differences between service delivery and interactions with customers
about service. For example: whether how service provider describes service
is match with actual provided service.
Fifth gap is expected - perceived service gap. It simply shows
difference between customers perceived quality of the service and expected
quality. All these gaps are interrelated and show relationships between them.
Thus, this model is helpful to identify and solve causes of the gaps and
this lead to increase in quality service (Shanin, 2010).

Partlow (2002), states that Jurans Quality Trilogy is widely practices by

hospitality industry in order to maintain high quality service. This practice
includes three steps:
Quality planning establishing of a system, which is determine
processes that needed for meeting customers expectations. For example:
identifying customers needs and planning ways how to deliver service
according these needs.
Quality control is constant monitoring of performance of service. For
example: it may help to identify differences between established system and
actual performance.

Quality Improvement: the process of seeking for new ways to improve.

For example: constantly improve strategies and practices, which are already
implemented or searching for new ones.
To conclude, it can be seen, that globalization caused very competitive
environment for the hospitality industry. Quality management of the service
became one of the main indexes of the competitive advantage. Thus, to
provide high quality service, such practices as: perceived quality service
model, SERVQUAL techniques, service quality five gap model and Jurans
quality trilogy.

4.0 Conclusion

As it stated above, globalization is the process of going on

international level. Globalization gave many opportunities for organizations to
develop market share in other countries and expand the business. As

hospitality industry is based on international operations, globalization

drastically influences its businesss process.
These involves increased competition between organizations in
hospitality industry, which in turn lead to seeking for improvement in quality of
the service; outsourcing sharing of businesss processes between
organizations; larger market more types of customers entered the market
(business, health and education travelers); different cultures organizations,
which enters other countries need to understand local culture and adjust to it;
technological advancements globalization allowed sharing of achievements
in technology, which in turn impacted management of organizations (using of
Internet).
Thus, to maintain high quality service there are practices such as
perceived quality service model, SERVQUAL techniques, service quality five
gap model and Jurans quality trilogy, quality management practices, which
help to understand needs of customers and design the service according
these needs.
In conclusion, it is possible to see that globalization influences quality
management of hospitality industry, because it pushes organizations to
continuous improvement of its products and services.