Hospitality Sector Solutions

Europe is the world’s no. 1 tourist destination, with the highest density and diversity of tourist attractions. As a result, the tourist industry has become a key sector of the European economy, generating over 10% of EU GDP (directly or indirectly) and employing 9.7m citizens in 1.8m businesses.

The product of tourism is essentially different from conventional businesses: it involves a product which is not merely heavily service-oriented but one which is bought for consumption many months in the future and possibly thousands of kilometres away from the point of purchase.

Many tourism organisations operate with narrow profit margins and are in a constant attempt to reduce their operating costs without compromising the quality of services delivered. Consequently the key priority for managers working within tourism organisations is to deliver a product to their customer that balances the need to meet customer requirements with the need to ensure an effective and efficient operating system. Achieving such balance is crucial to the long-term competitive success.

Securing high performance levels is challenging to tourism organisations, which are typically characterised as experiencing continuous fluctuations of demand for what is essentially a perishable product. Thus the achievement of high performance levels means that the focus should in the ensuring the effectiveness and efficiency of the operations in any part of the quality chain.

Failure to meet requirements in any part of the quality chain creates problems elsewhere and leads to more failures and ultimately poor service that the consumer experiences during the service encounter.

The management of the risk associated with operations is essential and tools that may be used to mitigate the risk and achieve high levels of performance are implementation of management systems.