Award Date

Summer 2010

Degree Type

Professional Paper

Degree Name

Master of Science in Hotel Administration

Department

Hotel Administration

First Committee Member

Gail Sammons, Chair

Number of Pages

31

Abstract

Over the past year, the hotel manager of the Westin Versa, Napa, a 179 room franchised hotel located in the city of Napa, California has struggled with conveying to his younger agents (aged 18 to 24) the concept of empowerment. They have had a difficult time with what he defines as "basic common sense" when providing company brand standards to guest recovery situations that go beyond the usual five minutes of a guest interaction. In these scenarios, the young agent is forced to balance the operational needs of the hotel with the wants of the guest and find a middle ground that will satisfy both parties. While the agent has received empowerment training and the concept has been reinforced with the necessary tools needed to make personal decisions to solve guests’ problems, in many cases a supervisor or manager will be called to cope with guest issues which clearly could have been handled by the young agent. Guest dissatisfaction is then often escalated as the guest looking for resolution from one individual is instead handed-off to another member of staff thus invalidating the time spent with the first agent.

Keywords

Consumer complaints; Consumer satisfaction; Employee empowerment; Hospitality industry; Hotel front desk personnel – Training of; Hotels – Management

Disciplines

Hospitality Administration and Management

File Format

pdf

Degree Grantor

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Language

English

Rights

IN COPYRIGHT. For more information about this rights statement, please visit http://rightsstatements.org/vocab/InC/1.0/

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