Munaza Kazmi
The hospitality industry has perhaps been hit harder than any other in this current COVID-19. Folks around the globe have fewer flexible income, threat of disease, blocking of airlines, as a result are not traveling & spending as much. Hotels & Resorts are somehow on the edge of bankruptcy. This tornado has created a great deal of insecurity as to if these hotels can continue to operate & end off in solvency.
Hospitality companies whether giant or small are eyeing ways to keep budgets low, & to become more efficient just to stay floating in this very challenging situation. Cutting labor costs has been a popular theme during times of economic downturn in all industries. But this seems acutely risky turn in the hotel enterprises where service quality could be at stake by cutting cost. It is because though customer would be spending less but quality of services would be scrutinized by the customer more than ever due to the fact that customers are fewer & quality conscious.
Service quality is the key factor that determines the competitive rewards & economic benefits in hotels. It combines from tangible to intangible products & services like the equipment, facilities, food & beverage to intangible stuff akin to environment, atmosphere & quality of products. Though, it is an established fact, that any error might lead to drop in sale, a valuable customer & off-course the hotel’s image.
Following the introduction of TQM & ISO9000 standards, the services quality of hotels has been moving towards the positive direction with the touch of sophistication in service management. Although the chart is going upwards nevertheless there are some loopholes to be found, e.g. high staff turnover, tribulations in technical quality, unstable functional quality, meager timeliness & pertinence of service. Compared with international hotels, there are still widespread problems in the service quality of Pakistani hotels, which ultimately demands for improvement.
In contemporary times & specially in this era of pandemic, everyone is besieged for delivering the best, competition has become stronger & tougher. Unless you’re in the industry, you probably won’t know what Six Sigma is or why it is so imperative.
Let me solve this mystery. Six Sigma is a tool that is being used by outsized & extremely profitable companies to assist their businesses run better & smoother than ever before. The fundamental concept behind its development was to abet companies in dropping waste, moreover it has helped many save millions of dollars since its inception. As General Electric’s CEO, Jack Welch wrote in the annual report that in immediate three years, Six Sigma had saved the company more than $2 billion. “We didn’t invent Six Sigma we learned it”. The cumulative impact on the company’s numbers is not anecdotal, nor a product of charts. It is the product of 276,000 people executing & delivering the result of Six Sigma to our bottom line.
Though the success stories of Six Sigma can be heard worldwide, but it’s fame is not so high in the hospitality industry due to the myths associated but a successful example could be quoted from the celebrated & world renown Starwood Hotels & Resorts, according to the management of Starwood Hotels, in the year 2012 programs that had developed under the technique of Six Sigma have delivered more than $100 million in profit, as a result the company became one of the profitable hotel operators of the world: having net margin approximately 15%, higher those of rivals Hilton Hotels & Marriott International, as well as the industry average of 9%.
Form the facts demonstrated it seems a prolific proposal that for the hotels operating in Pakistan should invest in Service Quality for getting recognition among the leading hotels of the world to make an edge in the international market, moreover to counter the shortcomings of COVID-19. Six Sigma may add value to the hotel enterprises in various areas including: greater customer loyalty, improved productivity, efficiency in F&B production, reduction in losses, lower turnover among employees, lessening wait time during peak hours, standardization of cleaning, reduction in inventory surplus, lessen turnaround time of making room, increase in employee satisfaction level.
Seeing this, we can comprehend of the effectiveness of Six Sigma quality management strategy on the service quality of the hotels. Further, it is also deemed as a cost saving strategy, as it paves the way for zero chance of error in the process, that obviously leads to cost saving, since there comes no room for rework. In order to attract the maximum opportunities of doing rich business, it would be a magnificent incentive to get hands on Six Sigma Quality Management Technique as earlier as possible, moreover it would be a novel practice for Pakistan’s hotel sector & would provide long lasting benefits to the country in the big picture.