Technology Helpful in Hospitality Industry Service Innovation Performance
Any means of knowledge sharing and team-oriented culture is a known fact to be the main influence on service innovation performance. On the other hand, there has been a relatively little substantive research focusing on such issues.
The hospitality industry- includes the restaurants, hotels and accommodations, the entertainment industry and as well as the transportation services- has been and continuously facing competition, and thus far, that competition is increasing. Those who are serving for this industry must be able to keep up with the changing flow of global competitiveness for them to be able to attract potential customers as well as to satisfy the needs and wants of these customers through the use of further studying the increase of their sophisticated demands. Some of these customers are tourists, who are looking for a more unique and memorable experience. And some of them writes down the experiences and in a way, share it to other people through blogs and other means of readable media. To keep up with this challenge in the field, there has recently been more emphasis on knowledge sharing in the hospitality industry, and even on the concept of “teamwork”, industry of the same service in a way, creates a certain type of standardized practice by adapting the most effective which has been tried and proven by those who have used it before. And that just created the “organizational charts” within the business. With that, the importance of knowledge management (KM) and knowledge sharing (KS) has been firmly established. Many studies have recognized the importance of KM and KS in supporting innovation in an organization.
On the other hand, despite the increasing research on product and service innovation including both service innovation performance (SIP) and new service development (NSD), most of the focus has been on manufacturing and technology-based industries. Only a few studies have addressed in some depth the implications of SIP in the hospitality and tourism sectors.
Additionally, current hypothesis provide only fragmentary insights into the origins of KS, and thus offer limited guidance for KS practices. To date, there has also been little empirical examination of the important relationship between KS and SIP. Also, although organizations are increasingly relying on teams to respond to the rapidly changing marketplace by coming up with new innovations in management practices as well as goods and services discussion of the ability of KS to stimulate SIP is still very limited.
Knowledge management is essentially a social process, everyone who is dealing with the business should also take the social and cultural factors into consideration. Businesses and industries both large scale and the small scale can only increase a competitive advantage if they are able to incorporate the knowledge, expertise and skills of their employees and make use of the most effective managerial practices in their day-to-day operations. This entails the sharing of knowledge and the transforming of it into practice. Sharing is the single most important factor in KM implementation. Some research has also analyzed the factors determining the degree of an individual’s engagement in inter-organizational KS, such as his or her personality, willingness, and organizational commitment Studies of the factors affecting KS have identified a number of different variables, such as technologies, motivations , leadership and collaborative culture, and organizational and communicational climate.
Besides, most of the KM and KS research has shown the continuous need for such tactics in the tourism and hospitality services. Hotels can always improve the quality of their services by improving or rather enhancing the employees’ knowledge of full customer service through the effort of knowing the customer’s needs and wants to satisfy their preferences.
Surely the hospitality and tourist businesses definitely understands how knowledge is shared at full throttle, and also knowing what is need not to be shared, by this effort, they can fully use the KS.
This is consists of making the employees understand the goals of their company which includes the service for the guest and also the continuous improvement through KS and KM. And to top it up, the tourism and hospitality industry employees should be aware that their participation and combined thinking are playing a vital role in reaching the increased customer approval rating of their services.
Have you ever heard of the saying: “Knowledge is power”? This is so true. This also creates a “special problem” within the hospitality industry. Because if competition is visibly high, different hotels and other service industry may keep a secret for their own company’s good, this will just invite cases of hoarding, and eliminating hoarding behavior is quite difficult to achieve for any team or company.
To understand how to inspire “individuals” to share their knowledge has become crucial to the hospitality industry. And as a result, organizations has to create a positive team culture that supports solid relationships and active, healthy collaboration.
One of the ways which knowledge sharing may take place through employee–customer and employee–employee interactions in hotels, each with its own special features was to make use of any chosen means of communications in the present competition. The internet is playing a very visible role in this situation by making a direct communication line from the potential customer towards the hospitality management team. Of course, the KS made possible by employee–employee interaction is also very important. For sometimes, unexpected problems may occur and should be solve in the most immediate time possible.
In the complex environment of hotels, personal and direct communication between and among employees aids shared decision-making and reliable knowledge transfer. The direct communication between instructors and trainees found in “apprentice” relationships, a special case, allows for the implicit transfer of tacit and process-oriented knowledge.
There is a wide variety of technology to choose from with regards to improving the performance of the quality within the hospitality industry. The management should always look forward in giving the customer the full satisfaction of their whole stay within their business premises.
Hotels.com for example, is being used by almost every hotel in the whole world to cater the hotel searchers from around the globe. This website has an overview of what the customer will be getting from their stay in the hotels. Though the site may be showing all the services from the hotels, some hotels may be adding some freebies to attract the shoppers to become a booked customers. Through this websites; the customers may be able to choose which hotels to book their stay. And they definitely can choose a room of their choice with all their specifications being laid up on them though the website interface. All they got to do was to click on the dropdown boxes to settle their choices. And the customer is also given a chance to talk to a Customer Service Representative from the hotel if ever they want to make any changes in the reservations that they have made. Right there and then, they can have the room locked under their name on the booking date. And they can also read on comments of the previous hotel guest that made a comment on different hotel ratings sites present around the internet.
Though not every hospitality service is not offering the park-fly-and -book, Some of the service caterer will take care of the parking, the plane flight and hotel accommodation details, and that is quite a relief on the part of a busy customer.
These are some way of making full use of the technology of the internet. It’s only a matter of know how.
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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