Search results

This paper considers the renovation of hotels in the context of facilities management. It evaluates a study carried out in Egypt into the attitudes of hotel general managers about the importance attached to hotel renovation and refurbishment. The findings show that whilst hotel managers express a belief in the importance of hotel renovation, there is little evidence of strategic thought in the renovation process. Instead, the focus appears to be on the “softer” customer satisfaction aspects of hotel management. There is scope for a more strategic view of FM among hotel managers and owners.

This paper examines conceptual links between facilities and hospitality management in the context of customer satisfaction. In both areas, there has thus far been a lack of theorising about the subject‐matter which might legitimately be encompassed within subject boundaries. By focusing on the single area of customer satisfaction an attempt is made to show how this process might proceed, albeit in a narrowly focused manner. The paper examines “hard” and “soft” dimensions to facilities management in hotels by means of an investigative probe into the nature of customer complaints in hotels. No claims are made for the generalisability of findings, rather it is the intention to show how, in the application of facilities management concerns, it is possible to engage in conceptual development and empirical study.

The purpose of this paper is to present some of the fundamental barriers and challenges in the use of Six Sigma as a business improvement methodology in the hospitality industry.

The approach taken was to collate data through observations made by the third author during the execution of the research project within the case study company as well as collating data from company story boards and interviewing relevant and appropriate staff members in the case study company.

The challenges of “data collection”, “defining projects” and “getting group consensus” can be considered to be somewhat very challenging in the context of hospitality industry.

Due to limited time constraints, the number of people participated in the study was relatively small. Perhaps a simple survey questionnaire could also be distributed to a number of people at the top management level, middle management level and front‐line staff personnel in the case study company.

The paper provides an excellent resource for many researchers and practitioners equally who are engaged in research and applications of Six Sigma in the hospitality industry. Moreover there is a dearth of literature on the use of Six Sigma in the hospitality sector.

This study seeks to investigate the impact of empowerment on both organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) and average check size per customer for individual restaurant servers in the United States.

This empirical study was designed by using three different sources of information: employees' self‐reports, supervisor‐ratings and system‐generated productivity indexes. The study obtained a final sample of 108 servers who are in charge of table services such as order‐taking and delivering food with a point of sales (POS) system.

The results demonstrate that influence, a dimension of empowerment, has a positive effect on supervisor‐rated OCB whereas attitude, the other dimension of empowerment, has a positive impact on average check size per customer. In addition, OCB appears to be negatively related to average check size per customer.

The findings are important given that few studies have examined the impact of empowerment on organizationally meaningful outcomes since past empowerment studies predominantly related empowerment to attitudinal and/or behavioral outcomes measured by self‐reports. The relationship between two consequences of empowerment raises a managerial issue. Given that OCB has a negative relationship with an individual's average check size, it would be problematic to reward servers individually solely based on objective indicators of performance.

This study presents empirical evidence that empowered employees are more likely to demonstrate helping behaviors and generate larger check sizes.

The purpose of this paper is to understand the deficiencies in Six Sigma project capability and empirically validating its impact on project success.

Deficiencies are identified from literature focusing on Six Sigma challenges or barriers. The study used a survey approach by circulating questionnaires to 400 Six Sigma professionals from 40 multinational organisations. The conceptual model is composed of 16 items measuring five constructs for hypothesis testing. Furthermore, structural equation modelling was used to identify the relationship between Six Sigma project capability deficiency and project success.

The findings of the study suggest that inadequate top management support, inadequate resources and change management and inadequate quality maturity form Six Sigma project capability deficiency and affect project success.

The study uses resource-based view to understand the deficiencies in Six Sigma project capability and their impact on project success. The study confirms that organisational capabilities in implementing Six Sigma affect the success of the projects.

The results of this study reveal that inadequate top management support, inadequate quality maturity of the organisation and inadequate resources and change management result into a deficiency in Six Sigma project capability. Quality managers in manufacturing and service organisations should attempt to improve these capabilities to achieve competitive advantage.

The study contributes to the literature by exploring the capability outlook of Six Sigma. The study attempts to fill the gap in Six Sigma literature by providing a structural model for understanding Six Sigma project capability deficiency and its impact on Six Sigma project success.

The hotel industry is one of the primary sectors contributing to every country's economy by promoting and reinforcing tourism. The pandemic situation across the globe is forcing the hospitality industry to adopt a suitable operational excellence (OPEX) methodology and its associated tools to deliver quality service at an affordable cost. However, there is limited evidence of applying one of the prominent OPEX methodologies, such as Six Sigma (SS), to enhance the hospitality industry's productivity and performance. Thus, the purpose of the study is to explore the application of the SS methodology to reduce the cycle time of a pantry workstation in a United Arab Emirates (UAE) hotel sector.

The research adopted a case study approach using DMAIC (define-measure-analyse-improve-control) phases to improve the performance of the minibar updating process attached to the hotel rooms. In addition, the study effectively used several tools, including normality tests, control charts, capability analysis, cause and effect diagram, failure mode effects analysis (FMEA), value stream mapping (VSM) and GEMBA, to validate the root causes and draw robust inferences.

The average cycle time and standard deviation of the pantry process were drastically reduced. Further, the analysis showed that the process capability index was substantially improved. Consequently, a notable improvement in the process performance was witnessed, which has resulted in a profit of $50,000 per annum in the hotel.

The article provides a structured and disciplined approach of SS in a hotel which can be used as a benchmarking document by the academicians, practitioners and policymakers for OPEX within the hospitality industry. Further, it paves the way to develop a road map for applying SS in the hospitality sector.

As per the authors' knowledge, to date, no case study has been reported in top tier refereed journals regarding the application of SS in the hotel sector. Thus, the current case study bridges this gap and reiterates that SS can be effectively used with meticulous planning and deployment in the hospitality industry.