Communication in the hospitality industry
In this competitive business environment, communication is one of the inevitable facilitators of the modern business environment. As stated by Altin, et al. (2018), communication is the process of conveying messages comprising of information from the sources to the recipients exchanging thoughts and feelings. In every organizational sector, communication plays a pivotal role in enhancing business growth, development and success. The hospitality industry is a dynamic business sector that requires clear communication as it handles servicing the patrons and customers directly. In this research aspect, the hotel chosen under the hospitality industry is “Hotel Victoria” of Darwin, Australia. The research aim is essentiality of having communication in improving productivity in the hospitality industry of Hotel Victoria is discussed. According to the opinion of Ashton (2018), clear communication skills enhance good experiences with the guests and it conveys them listening to their feedback as well as conveying clear messages. Communication helps in creating communications and job satisfaction as well as motivation of the employees in providing top-notched quality services to the patrons. In this research study, the researcher will be discussing the importance of communication in the hospitality industry along with the challenges faced of having communication gaps and ways of improving communication in it.
In this context, the researcher discusses about the importance of communication to improve productivity of the hospitality industry. As opined by Chauhan and Singh (2017), in the hospitality industries, managers have to spend time behind written and verbal communications with the parties and employees. In a hotel industry, communication is important to the manager in order to clearly communicate things with both the guests as well as staff members. In Hotel Victoria, communication is important as it hosts diverse national and international patrons and customers. With enhanced communication skills, it enhances excellent experience that helps in valuing the customers with feedback as well as conveying the clear messages. Elbaz et al. (2018) had stated that good communication is important in the hotels as it enhances customer loyalty that levitates businesses of the hotels. It is essential to train both the managers and staff-members of Hotel Victoria with excellent communication skills. It is because; it facilitates innovation and improvement of services to the customers that enhances levitation of reputation and statuses of Hotel Victoria. Moreover, with good communication; the chances of miscommunication and misunderstandings between the hotel employees and the customers are reduced consequently (Garay et al. 2017).
Communication challenges in Hotel Victoria
According to García-Villaverde et al. (2017), effective communication in Hotel Victoria will also enhance motivation of the staff-members and also encourages innovation at the workplace. It helps in improvement of servicing of customers, effective utilization of resources, methodical way of organizing events and systematic workflow. It will definitely reduce the rate of complaints received from the customers and that will help in raising standards of Hotel Victoria. The guests across the world and from Australia will be interested to visit Hotel Victoria to enjoy its elegant way of hosting patrons. As per the outlook of Liu et al. (2018), with enhanced communication among the employees and managers of Hotel Victoria, competence, responsible attitude, courtesy and accuracy of the business operation is also enhanced. It also helps maintaining standards of the hotel and also adds impression to the patrons for enjoying their hospitality. Through effective communication, the customers feel that their feedback is valued and it shows a positive sign of improving hospitality services in the hotel (Malik et al. 2017).
As mentioned by Murphy et al. (2018), communication is important to satisfy the customers immensely as the hotel industry largely depends on the ratings, reviews and recommendations. It is important and crucial for the staff-members of the hotel industries in mastering the communication skills for ensuring happiness and success of the guests. Through effective communication, anticipated wants and requirements of the guests are fulfilled, which are not even the part of hotel standard maintenance. As opined by Nadda et al. (2017), effective communication helps in incorporating, listening and retaining of information that helps in making better customer representation as well as helps in better servicing of the customers. Moreover, communication also helps in collecting feedback from the employees and customers that helps in assessing the needs and requirements of them. It also enhances high retaining of the highest standards in Hotel Victoria as per the requirement of global hospitality industry (Sheehan et al. 2018).
In this research context, the challenges pertaining to having communication gap in the hospitality industry is discussed. As per the outlook of Nieves and Quintana (2018), one of the challenges is linguistic barrier that makes communication between the guests and employees of Hotel Victoria a bit difficult. Though English is considered as an international language, there are people travelling internationally lacks skill in spoken English, which makes the staff-members and patrons face difficulty in communicating with one another. Due to limited knowledge, chances of miscommunication increases, resulting in high satisfaction among the guests and staff-members. It, therefore, causes gaps in communication process, thereby hampering the overall business process of the hotels. Sheehan et al. (2018) had mentioned that another communication gap is identified between the services given by the hotels and extent of satisfaction of the guests. The difference between the perceptions about the offerings of the hotels with that of customer expectations causes dissatisfaction among the customers. This is caused due to extensive communication gaps between the customers’ and the managers and staff-members of the hotel. As a result, chances of miscommunication occur that negatively impacts on the service evaluations received from the customers (Tang et al. 2018).
Improving communication in Hotel Victoria
As mentioned by Tarí et al. (2017), another gap identified due to communication gap is between the specific designing of the services with that of managerial perceptions pertaining to customer expectations. The occurrence of gaps in the management cause reduced expectations of the customers and that prevents designing as well as services provided to the customers due to diverse constraints. The customers on not receiving services feel unsatisfied that also negatively influence the services of the staff-members. It, therefore, results in reducing of the customer satisfaction as well as hindrance to the hotels’ status and reputation. Yadegaridehkordi et al. (2018) had stated that another gap identified due to communication gap in the hospitality industry exists between the designing and standards of servicing. The managers those are not quite aware of the customer expectations as they have the correct standards of servicing. Due to quality interruption, the standards of the hotels degrade, resulting in deterioration of the services. It, therefore, results in low satisfaction of the customers and hence the gap exists between the delivery of services and external communications. As opined by Altin, et al. (2018), the communication gap also occurs due to gap in expectations and perceived services by the customers. On getting low quality of service as perceived, the satisfaction levels of the customers are lowered and they are left disgruntled. Hence, these fundamental service gaps are largely caused due to lack of communication or communication gap in the organization.
In this context, the different ways of improvement of communication in the hospitality industry and hotel businesses are discussed. According to the outlook of Ashton (2018), one of the ways of improving communication in the hotels like Hotel Victoria is through setting-up a non-verbal communication as an important component of effective communication. The non-verbal communication comprises of several things like voice quality, voice, eye contact, friendly gestures, attentive nature, body position and body movement. These gestures have to have to be friendly, warm, approachable and welcoming making the guests comfortable in communicating with the hotel managers and staff-members. Chauhan and Singh (2017) had stated that through providing training to the employees for managing the guests and patrons in Hotel Victoria will also help in improving communication. With the setting-off training workshops by the employees, the employees including managers and staff-members can sit that helps in reinforcing the best practices. It ensures provision of compliances that helps addressing of new issues and thereby providing employees for voicing their concerns to feel heard by the hotel management. Workshops are held through automatic sequences that facilitates improvement of employee understandability as well as team needs concurrently (Garay et al. 2017).
According to Elbaz et al. (2018), presence of efficient work plan comprising of diverse timescales as well as milestones those are to be reached by the employees in hospitality industry is another way of improving communication. The presence of work plan helps in accomplishing the tasks in time and also facilitates completion of the milestones within time. It is possible in presence of improved communication in Hotel Victoria that also makes the best utilization of the resources in accomplishing the tasks assigned to them. The chances of miscommunication are highly reduced that also facilitates improvement of the employee- manager relationship that also impacts strongly on the communications among them and also better servicing to the customers (Malik et al. 2017).
García-Villaverde et al. (2017) had opined that brainstorming process is also to be present at the workplace that can help improvement in the workplace of Hotel Victoria. With the enhanced brainstorming process, the training on languages local, English and some international languages are provided. It is provided to enhance the business of Hotel Victoria through servicing a large number of national and international customers with their languages. It enhances productivity of the hotel as the customers are highly satisfied with the servicing of the hotel staffs and with their diverse cultural welcoming. According to the outlook of Murphy et al. (2018), with enhanced communication in the hospitality industry, the transparency in communication across the hotels is enhanced. With enhanced communication, the sales figures, company goals, management of decisions and balancing of trust and control with the hotel staff-members have also increased considerably. It also facilitates provision of high transparency to Hotel Victoria that provides a high sense of belongings’ as well as encourages engagement of the employees (Nadda et al. 2017). The corporate values are also improved with the increased transparency with increased communication. The staff-members involve in open conversations that help in fulfilling the communication goals. It also enhances representation of the corporate goals through communication; thereby satisfying both the organizational customers and employees of Hotel Victoria (Tang et al. 2018).
Conclusion
The aim of the research study is exploring the essentiality of having communication in improving productivity in the hospitality industry of Hotel Victoria has been discussed. In this context, communication is a pivotal factor in modern day business and plays an important role in the hospitality industry. Communication facilitates creation of communication as well as listening to feedback for implementing the reviews in the organization. It has discussed the importance of communication in the hospitality industry that discusses about the essentiality of communication in collecting and valuing feedback and also levitation of organizational statuses and reputation. It also makes utilization of resources and also helps maintenance of standards of the hotels. The challenges like linguistic problems, service gaps between the hotels and extent of satisfaction of the guests, industry standards and specific designing of the services and gaps in expectations and perceived services are received. The ways of improving communication in the hospitality industry like Hotel Victoria are enhancing non-verbal communication, providing training to the employees, presence of efficient work plan, brainstorming process and transparency in communication are also discussed. To improve communication in Hotel Victoria, open conversations representing involvement of discussing corporate goals among the employees and managers of the organization are discussed. In this aspect, the sales figure, dynamicity, customer retention and ways of customer satisfaction are included in effective communication in Hotel Victoria, Darwin, Australia.
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