Hotel Front Desk Research Articles

Hospitality service aesthetic of luxury hotel front desk and its effect on consumers’ willingness-to-pay price premium

Hospitality service aesthetic of luxury hotel front desk and its effect on consumers’ willingness-to-pay price premium

Consumers’ Brand Experiences With Robotic Service Failures: Modeling Appraisal, Attribution, and Psychological Reactance

Due to the stretched capacities of human staff, consumers are increasingly placed in situations where they are “required” to use technology amidst their travel experiences, despite potential service failures in robotic technologies. Yet, research into how robotic service failures could potentially spill over to consumers’ brand experiences, robot experiences, and adoption intention remains unexplored. Drawing on appraisal, attribution, and psychological reactance theories, an interconnected research model of service failure, attribution, and (in)voluntary robot adoption was tested via two experiments. A mixed-design quasi-experiment (Study 1) found a significant interaction effect of service failure and attribution on brand experience in the hotel concierge context. Study 2 provided further evidence for the causal effects in Study 1 by employing a between-subject quasi-experiment in the hotel front desk context with additional measures. Collectively, this research contributes to the literature by highlighting how temporal, situational, and contextual factors in HRI may impact evaluations of brand and robot experiences.

Consumer resistance to service robots at the hotel front desk: A mixed-methods research

The diffusion of service robots, powered by artificial intelligence (AI) technology, at the hotel front desk is facing challenges. Drawing on innovation resistance literature, this study investigates consumer resistance to hotel front-desk service robots by developing a service robot resistance model. A mixed-methods design was used involving qualitative interviews and quantitative surveys. The results identified eight barriers to using service robots that can be categorised as functional, social interaction, and aesthetic barriers. Consumer resistance occurs in response to the risk of malfunction, complexity, usage barrier, lack of warmth, and unattractive appearance, whereas flexibility barrier, communication barrier and stiff kinesics have no statistically significant effect. This study contributes to innovation resistance research and provides guidance for the adoption and diffusion of service robots in the hospitality and tourism industry.

What fuzzy requests bring to frontline employees: An absorptive capacity theory perspective

This study uses absorptive capacity theory to construct a model to explain how frontline employees learn from customers’ fuzzy requests and then improve their performance. The research model is empirically examined using data collected from 364 hotel front desk service employees and further analyzed through a structural equation model. The study shows that request severity significantly influences need recognition, experience assimilation, concept transformation and inertia change. Request legitimacy has a positive effect on need recognition, experience assimilation, concept transformation, inertia change and cost assessment. Performance is positively affected by experience assimilation, concept transformation, inertia change and cost assessment. Some meditation and moderation effects are also identified. This study is the first to reveal the positive effects of fuzzy requests. These findings may help managers better handle and utilize fuzzy requests, with implications for organizational policy and for the support of frontline employees.

호텔 프론트 데스크 종사자의 감정노동, 감정고갈, 직무만족, 감정지능의 관계

This study was designed to identify the relationship between emotional labor (EL), emotional exhaustion (EX), and job satisfaction (JS) of hotel front desk workers and to investigate the effect of emotional intelligence (EI). This study has several differences from previous studies. First, this study was designed to comprehensively analyze the relationships between EL, EX, JS, and EI. Second, the homogeneity of the research subjects was secured. Third, this study analyzed EI by dividing it into four dimensions. It can be said that active factors have a greater effect on outcome factors (EX and JS) than negative or passive factors. The result shows that workers with high EI are more likely to recover from EX than those with low EI.

Big Five Personality Traits on Job Satisfaction Mediated by Procedural Justice

The aim of this paper is to investigate relations between an isolated dimension of Big Five personality traits and job satisfaction, while considering a mediating effect on this relationship. More specifically, personality traits like Openness to experience, Conscientiousness, Extraversion, Agreeableness and Neuroticism or OCEAN, are treated as antecedents of job satisfaction while procedural justice is considered as mediator in understanding the underlying mechanism. Data was gathered via a questionnaire in a cross-sectional study of Big Five Inventory (44 items), Job Satisfaction Survey (12 items) & Procedural Justice (9 items). Primary data were collected from 127 hotel front desk managers working in three-star hotels within central region in Malaysia and were analyzed by using SPSS v25 and PLS-SEM v3.2.8. It was found that across the traits, Neuroticism had the strongest relationship with job satisfaction, while Conscientiousness did not have any relationship with job satisfaction. Procedural justice completely mediated the association between Conscientiousness and job satisfaction, but only partially mediated the relationships between Openness to experience, Extraversion, and Agreeableness and job satisfaction. By assessing the Big-Five personality traits as predictors of job satisfaction, this research adds to the body of knowledge and gives crucial information to indicate that organizations should place a greater emphasis on improving employees’ justice, which is the underlying relationship between personality and job satisfaction. The findings from this paper may allow organizations related to hotel industry to formulate strategic plans to diminish employee turnover rates while increasing job satisfaction and thus profitability.

온라인 여행사(Online Travel Agency)를 통한 객실 판매로 인한 특급 호텔 종사자들의 역할스트레스가 자기효능감, 조직몰입에 미치는 영향 연구

The purpose of this study is to verify the relationship between self-efficacy and organizational commitment of role stress caused by the sales of rooms through online travel agencies. In order to test the conceptual model, this study conducted a survey with hotel employees of the three-star, four-star, five-star hotel front desk, room sales, and room reservation departments. A total of 336 valid surveys were analyzed through structural equation modeling. The results are as follows. (1) role stress (role conflict, role ambiguity) negatively affects self efficacy; (2) self efficacy positively affects organizational commitment; (3) role stress (role overload) negatively affects organizational commitment; Ultimately, this study Identifies role stress caused by room sales through online travel agencies and suggests ways to reduce role stress, to increase self efficacy and organizational commitment to hotel employees.

Understanding the relationships among emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and emotional intelligence of hotel front desk employees

ABSTRACT This study was conducted to understand the relationship among emotional exhaustion, job satisfaction, and emotional intelligence of hotel front desk employees. The importance of this study are focusing on only the hotel front desk employees, and dividing emotional intelligence items into four dimensions. Surveys were carried out at 12 five-star hotels in Seoul. Emotional exhaustion was negatively related with “use of emotion.” “Others’ emotion appraisal” had a positive moderating effect between emotional exhaustion and job satisfaction. To raising job satisfaction, improving the ability to use of emotions for constructive activities, and perceiving and understanding the emotions of others are necessary.

The Speech Act of Request and Refusal in English as a Foreign Language: Hotel Front Desk’s Linguistic Politeness

The subject matter discussed in this paper is how hotel front desk receptionists handle requests and refusals in their interactions with customers when they use English as a Foreign Language (EFL). The method of this research is descriptive with a qualitative approach, examining the interactions of front desk employees who work at Hotel Surya Duri, Indonesia. The sample consists of seven people who were given a discourse completion test which questioned them on how they deal with five different scenarios of customer requests and refusals. Results showed that employees perform independent research largely on how to deal with customer requests, but overall do not adequately master how to engage with foreign customer requests and refusals in EFL. This study suggests that concerned parties may benefit training current employees in foreign language communication training.

Influence of Ethical Leadership and Talent Management on Employee Performance: Does Employee Commitment Matter in Malaysian Hotel Industry?

Purpose-The purpose of this study is to examine the influences of ethical leadership and talent management on hotel front desk employees’ performance. This study also tests the mediating effect of employee commitment in the relationship between ethical leadership, talent management and employee performance. Leader member exchange theory and social exchange theory has been used as the underlying theories for the framework in this study.Methodology-Data is collected through online questionnaire distributed to front desk employees working in One-star, two- star and three-star hotels around Malaysia particularly in Penang and Kuala Lumpur. 150 usable questionnaires are collected from the targeted respondents. Sample size have been identified using G power software and Partial Least Square (PLS) is used to analyze data.Findings - The findings of this study show that the ethical leadership does not have significant relationship with employee commitments, while talent management has a positive and significant relationship with employee commitments. This study also confirms the mediating effect of employee commitments between the relationship of talent management and employee performance.Contribution -The current study contributes towards the body of knowledge by incorporating leader member exchange theory and social exchange theory. This study also contributes by proving the mediating effect of employee commitment in the hotel industry. The study provides information for hotel managers about why and under what circumstances employees perform better.

Lines at the Hotel Front Desk: A Case for Effective Capacity Management

Lines at the Hotel Front Desk: A Case for Effective Capacity Management

Cultural Conflicts At The Hotel Front Desk:, A Case Of English For Tourism

Cultural Conflicts At The Hotel Front Desk:, A Case Of English For Tourism

Front desk technology innovation in hotels: A managerial perspective

Understanding technology innovation is a key strategic management concern in hotels. Still, the existing hotel technology research has focused heavily on technology adoption processes; even though technology adoption is mandatory for most employees. There is a lack of scholarly knowledge of the company-wide managerial processes and effects associated with technology innovation. To fill this research gap, using Helkkula et al.’s (2018) service innovation archetypes as a theoretical lens, this research explored the effects associated with hotel front desk technology innovation by a large multi-national hotel corporation. Following a qualitative approach, written interviews of 251 hotel managers were conducted. Three-step thematic analysis was used to examine the data. Specifically, the sequential hiring, training, and implementing process associated with technology innovation, the outputs of technology innovation, and experiential value were examined to develop a comprehensive operational framework. The framework provides strategic knowledge on successful development and management of front desk technology.

Intolerant Behaviours-Front Desk Service Sabotage in Budget Chain Hotels

This study uses semi-structured in-depth interviews with budget hotel front desk staff to extract and summarize the types of service sabotage behaviour and motive. Simplifying the service process and rejection of customers are discovered to be the most common types of service sabotage, whereas personal convenience, vindictive psychology on customers, stereotyping, and work pressure are the main motives for sabotaging service. In addition, this study clarifies the difference between the antecedents and motives of service sabotage and analyses the difference between service sabotage phenomena in budget hotels and international hotels.

English lesson material of reservationist professions in handling personal hotel rooms through telephone

Reservationist / reservation officer of Front Office Hotel is in charge of handling hotel room reservations. The duty of the hotel's front-line reservationist is to record and complete tasks related to hotel room orders, filing room reservation data, control room inventory well, calculate forecasting, make arrival list guests (arrival list) based on existing bookings, create group information lists, create VIP information lists, create room occupancy statistics, and create daily, monthly, and yearly reports. One ability to apply good selling techniques namely the ability of a reservationist to communicate with foreign guests using the English language. English is the language of international communication, which is needed by employees who work in the world of tourism and hotels in Bali, especially for hotel front reservationist. A hotel front desk reservationist is required to communicate using the correct and standard English when serving guests who make hotel reservations. Reservationists who accept hotel room bookings by phone, usually start the conversation using the standard greeting. As a reservationist, the understanding of hotel products should really be considered, such as the location of the rooms, the types of rooms available, the applicable room rates and other service facilities available at the hotel.

Blindsided Abroad

Blindsided Abroad Chuck Dean It has been said that an out-of-body experience has little lasting effects, but a near-death experience is capable of changing a person's life in the most dramatic ways. I had such an experience while visiting China in 2006, and can vouch for the truth in that saying. There were no warnings that I was up for a heart attack. Heart disease doesn't generally run in the family and my high blood pressure seemed to be under control by using the medicine issued by the VA pharmacy. However, it did happen and there was nothing I could do but go through the experience. It began on a hot, steamy summer night just three days before I was due to fly back to the U.S.A. My gracious hosts wanted to make sure I had a good send-off with a nice spicy meal, so they took me to one of their favorite street barbecues. Not long after returning to my apartment, however, I was suddenly stricken with what I thought to be acid reflux. It felt different though—much worse—so I downed the pills I usually take to counter the acid. It did not let up though, and by 9:00 pm it had turned into the excruciating chest pains. I agonized for the next several hours but kept taking pills until morning, when it finally subsided. Never having had a heart attack before I had no idea what one felt like, and was not even thinking in that direction. The next day I was pretty wasted from lack of sleep and the trauma my body had endured all night long. We went through the day, and like clockwork as 9:00 pm rolled around, I had the same attack again. Immediately I began downing the acid reflux pills hoping that I could catch it before it got worse. In a moment of calm I sat down and e-mailed my doctor at the VA in Seattle letting her know that I needed to see her as soon as possible upon my return. I told her that something needed to be done about the horrendous acid reflux I was now having. As the evening went on, I experienced the same terrible chest pains for another four to five hours. Sunday was no different, and as if the pain was on a clock, the attack returned at 9:00 pm. [End Page 82] Exhausted, I made it to the airport early Monday morning for my flight home. I few from Nanning to Guangzhou where I was supposed to make a connection on a Delta flight to Los Angeles and then connect from there to Seattle. It was going to be a 20-hour ordeal, but I was happy to be going because I would then go directly to the VA hospital to deal with the intense pain. That didn't happen. After lugging my baggage to the Delta counter, I was informed that the flight to LA had been cancelled and that I needed to stay over to leave the following day. At first I became frustrated but then decided that perhaps it was for the best. A restful day and night in a hotel before the long fight would be good a thing. I checked into a hotel adjacent to the airport, and around 9:00 pm (once again on the clock) I was assaulted again with chest pains. I happened to be on instant messenger with my host in Nanning at the time and all I could do was type "in pain" and then collapsed on the bed. She called the hotel front desk and told them I was in trouble and soon two young hotel employees came to my room, and one, speaking good English, said "sir, we must take you to the hospital." I was checked into Guangzhou People's Municipal Hospital and rushed to the intensive care ward. I was afraid that the language barrier would be an issue, and so far no one in the hospital spoke English—not even the head cardiologist. He came to visit and only looked me over but could not...

Insights into emotional contagion and its effects at the hotel front desk

PurposeThis paper aims to draw attention to the need for a nuanced view of the emotional contagion framework. It proposes and empirically tests a refined model of emotional contagion and its effects in the hotel sector by focusing on the front-desk service encounter interactions.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from three separate groups of paired informants: receptionists, hotel customers and interaction observers. The sample included 573 full customer service interactions in 47 hotels in Catalonia. The model was tested with structural equation modelling.FindingsEmotional contagion has specific mechanisms at the hotel front-desk. No relationship was found between receptionists’ inner mood and their outwardly displayed emotions. Yet, receptionists’ displayed emotions enhance customer mood, and, largely, customer satisfaction. Ultimately, this affects customer behavioural intentions. It was also discovered that guests are able to clearly distinguish between their satisfaction with the specific service encounter at the front desk and the overall satisfaction with the hotel stay. The positive effects of employees’ displayed emotions are of particular importance in lower-star hotels and are less important at the high end. Perceived training opportunities have a positive effect on customer satisfaction and improve the employee-displayed emotion.Research limitations/implicationsResearchers should examine employee outcomes that are more stable than mood, but may enhance or be related to the effective display of emotions at the front desk, such as employee satisfaction and commitment. In general, emotions and behaviours of employees and consumers should be further examined in other services across the hospitality industry, in different cultural contexts and in terms of their impact on company performance. Researchers should heed the precise type of mechanism that takes place in each service context.Practical implicationsThe hotel management should focus their efforts on ensuring positive emotional performance, regardless of employees’ inner mood. Managers should carefully interpret differentiated results according to whether they have been drawn from overall satisfaction or customer service interaction surveys. The training provision is of particular importance in lower-star hotels, where customer outcomes depend more on employee-displayed emotion.Originality/valueThis study empirically corroborates that customer outcomes of front-desk services are linked to receptionists’ displayed emotions, and not to employees’ feelings. Onsite data collection, multiple-informant approach, paired dyads and structural equation modelling hold a great potential for study designs that seek insights into interpersonal phenomena in hospitality services research.

Hospitality experience: Creating value by the front-desk work analysis and organizational innovation

Hospitality is a growing sector in the service field and it sustains a representative position in the tourism productive chain. Rio de Janeiro's hospitality market expects to expand itself with the creation of 6.160 new ones until 2016. That intensifies the need to improve services in order to keep competitiveness. Ergonomics is a science focused on both well-being and performance improvement. This research aims to identify how organizational ergonomics can help creating value on hospitality services. A literature review is the first step, followed by a field research. The Ergonomics Work Analysis (EWA) methodology was applied on a hotel front desk, located in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The preliminary results showed how Human Resources Management and Operational Management works separately, causing difficulties to service quality management. We propose then that Ergonomics might bridge this gap, supporting organizational innovations so as to help increasing system performance and customer satisfaction.

Dominance, bargaining power and service platform performance

In this paper we study the relationship between a firm (hotel) and a service platform (Ctrip.com). We start with a newsvendor hotel facing two kinds of customers. D-customers order the room directly from the hotel front desk; C-customers order the room through Ctrip.com. Ctrip.com charges the hotel while introducing its members to the hotel. The hotel decides how many rooms are allotted to Ctrip.com to achieve optimal profit. We consider the situation where one party’s demand cannot be observed by another, and study the commonly used wholesale price contract. Interestingly, the contract can always coordinate the system. We then investigate the influence of bargaining power on the profit division under situations where Ctrip.com and hotel, respectively, dominate the system, and find that increasing (or decreasing) a party’s bargaining power without considering the other does not necessarily benefit (or damage) the first party. Further, we discuss how the parties choose dominance and appropriate bargaining power to make a trade-off for better cooperation. An interesting phenomenon is that bargaining power for each party can be identical when any party dominates the system. We also propose a threshold at which the wholesale price contracts can always be the Pareto optimal for the channel.

Consumers' inferences about quality across diverse service providers

AbstractWhen consumers encounter different services as part of the same service experience they may use information about one group of service providers to draw inferences about the quality they expect to receive from another group of service providers. This research identifies the conditions under which information about the quality of one type of service (e.g., a hotel's front desk) influences quality perceptions of another type of service (e.g., a hotel's tour services). Results show that consumers' beliefs about managerial control influence generalizations across service providers. Also, consumers infer managerial control from the spatial proximity between the premises of the service providers. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.