Designing an internal service quality system in a hotel

Fostering higher quality is a precondition for tourist satisfaction. Quality in tourism can basically be divided into:

• the quality of the offer (primary and secondary), or technical quality,
• the quality of service delivery, or functional quality,
• the quality of the provider (the reputation of the organisation, provider and/or destination), or prestige quality.

An internal service quality system (INKS) is a framework for designing internal service quality systems for hospitality businesses, with four subsystems: standard operating procedures (SOPs), training for delivering SOPs to a high standard, monitoring of service delivery and staff rewards. INKS addresses functional quality: how to deliver services and keep organisational service quality gaps (positioning, specification, delivery and communication) in tourism businesses as small as possible. INKS is a clear and transparent systemic framework for building a business’s own quality system, regardless of its size, sector or type of property. It should be stressed that INKS is not about encouraging certification under well-known quality labels such as ISO standards, but about defining standards and rules for carrying out business operations. INKS consists of three basic phases: leadership for quality, quality implementation and quality evaluation.

• Theoretical foundations
• Procedures and phases of designing an INKS
• Practical part: examples of standard operating procedures (SOPs), examples of training and monitoring in line with SOPs, examples of evaluation

After the training, participants:

• understand the components of an internal service quality system and the difference between technical and functional quality,
• can design basic standard operating procedures for delivering hotel services,
• can plan staff training for delivering standardised services,
• know the methods of monitoring, controlling and evaluating the quality of service delivery.

Hotel directors, hotel operations managers, and directors and heads of individual departments.

Preferably in person, at Turistica or at the client’s premises. At the client’s premises, the workshop can be combined with an analysis of existing processes and standards and the preparation of concrete proposals for improvement.