Abstract
The success of hospitality sector firms depends largely on the degree to which frontline employees offer a high-quality service to customers. In this context it is of vital importance to determine how to promote positive employees’ attitudes and behaviors through the human resource practices. This study analyzes the indirect effect of empowerment via affective commitment on the extra-role service. In addition, the moderating effect of service training on the empowerment–affective commitment–extra-role service relationship is explored. The data was collected from a sample of frontline employees working in three-to-five-star urban hotels in Santiago de Compostela (Spain). The results of the study suggest that for empowerment to lead to greater emotional attachment to the organization and extra-role customer service, it is necessary for frontline employees to perceive that they have received a moderated-high level of training in customer service. This finding is particularly interesting for frontline employees’ management in hotels sector.
Highlights
Nowadays, hospitality firms face to a complex and highly competitive environment together with more demanding tourists who call for personalized experiences
To address the aforementioned research gap, our study proposes that the effect of empowerment on frontline employees’ affective commitment and, on their extra-role service, will be moderated by service training
A large part of the success in the hospitality sector lies in frontline staff, as they are responsible for providing service to customers and meeting their demands [6,7,28]
Summary
Hospitality firms face to a complex and highly competitive environment together with more demanding tourists who call for personalized experiences. The frontline employees are the ones who with their behaviors promote the customers’ perception about the service quality and achieve their satisfaction and loyalty [5,6,7] These employees play an important role in the innovation of services in hospitality firms [8]. It is required that frontline employees take the initiative to expand their roles, going beyond the formal requirements of their job and performing everything possible to solve customer’s problems, adapting for the specific challenges and providing a high-quality service [4,7]. In other words, they need to perform an extra-role customer service
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