Service excellence: A tip for guest house owners

In the tourism and hospitality industry, service providers need to provide the experience that their customers want.

Whether they are staying in a hotel, attending an event buying from a luxury retailer or getting a massage at a spa, customers place a heavy value on the encounter as a whole.

This means that successful organisations should focus not only on the physical product they sell but rather they must also think about the overall impression and feeling they leave for their customer and for that customer to keep coming back.

Being able to achieve this requires an understanding of service excellence and the ability to not only tap into customer needs and requirements, but also their desires.

It is the path forward for tourism and hospitality businesses that want to uncover the secret for standing out from competitors in the industry during this time of recovery.

It is crucial for establishments, particularly in the mushrooming business of guest houses to realise that service excellence is an important area where many in the industry need to investigate and uncover new opportunities for adoption and development.

After doing some research in the case of Botswana, guest houses are usually small businesses that are run without the owners or employees necessarily having a tourism and hospitality background.

This presents a gap bringing forward the realisation that such organisations rarely make study’s for profiling the 21st century traveller, understanding customer service and how to achieve it within their organisation.

Although some organisations may understand the principle of providing outstanding customer service, they struggle to implement it in their regular interactions with their clientele.

There is currently a need for tourism and hospitality establishments particularly guest houses that want to excel to therefore, better understand what drives customers.

They need to understand how to bridge that gap between brands that believe they provide an outstanding experience and the meagre number of customers who actually agree with this.

This could give them the power to create stronger brand experiences and allow their organization to rise above the competition. The key to bridging this gap lies in understanding service excellence.

Each interaction that customers have with a particular business in the tourism and hospitality industry needs to reflect a commitment to customer service and should answer the needs of each client for them to remain competitive.

olivia.nthoi@gmail.com