The purpose of training programs carried out tourism industries, such as hotels and airline companies, is to train friendly and polite employees to achieve customer satisfactions.
Until now, hotels have been bench-marking systematic training programs...
The purpose of training programs carried out tourism industries, such as hotels and airline companies, is to train friendly and polite employees to achieve customer satisfactions.
Until now, hotels have been bench-marking systematic training programs of airline companies; however we should take into consideration, whether it is appropriate to imprudently absorb and apply those to hotels regardless of distinctive industrial characteristics, such as yield management and customer service. In this thesis paper, we will compare the two industries that of hotels with that of airlines in terms of training results according to the importance of program contents, and training results IPA and Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory were used as measuring tools for training results.
Firstly, through IPA, we will find out, to what extent and direction the importance of training programs to trainees and actual performance results influence the overall satisfaction and evaluation perceived by trainees.
Secondly, through Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory, we will find out to what extent the positive disconfirmation factor and negative disconfirmation factor influence the overall disconfirmation.
Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory is a method to decide whether a product, is considered satisfactory or unsatisfactory according to disconfirmation degrees by comparing the expectation before and performance results after usage of the product.
Samples of trained employees at customer service encounters, hotel employees of room division and F&B Dept. and airlines employees of reservation & ticketing Dept. and flight attendants, were surveyed for this research. Descriptive analysis was used as analysis method, as well as factor analysis, multiple regression analysis. This research was carried out using the SPSS 13.0 & Excel Software.
The research results are as follows;
Firstly, if we look at the gap between importance and performance rates perceived by trainees regarding 26 variables of training contents, for all training programs, it turned out to be that they are generally unsatisfactory.
Supporting evidence is that the performance rates were lower than expected importance rate of all training programs
Secondly, according to IPA results, 'Basic service attitude' training, covering subjects such as proper greeting methods, proper posture, telephone communication, positive facial expression, communication, glooming, and 'service quality'training, covering' subjects, such as customer's psychology, foreign languages, business manners, understanding foreign cultures, service mind, handling customer complains, safety measures in case of emergency and fire, were highly rated in both importance ad performance. This indicates that such training programs should be carried out continuously.
Thirdly, areas evaluated higher in performance compared to importance were generally personnel management and welfare, including sexual harassment prevention education of hotels and customer's psychology, foreign languages of airlines.
Fourthly, according to results of training gap of IPA applied to Expectancy Disconfirmation Theory, service quality training turned out to be unsatisfactory in influencing satisfaction. (Service training/adapt an organization training) and evaluation.
Lastly, when comparing negative disconfirmation factors of hotels and airlines, the service attitude and service quality training influence the overall satisfaction(service training/ adapt an organization training). However, in the case of airlines, service quality and security/safety training influence Service training satisfaction and security training, job training, influence adapt an organization training, and corporate related training and security training influence evaluation.
Therefore we can conclude that hotels are more service oriented compared to airline companies.
These result suggests, that although hotels have been benchmarking airlines so far, hotels should rather provide diverse training programs in order to understand customer's needs.
For customer satisfaction, the cooperation of employees is essential. To successfully manage customer service process, the company needs to understand employees needs, promote change through appropriate training programs and support the newly created programs at the management level and facilitator level.