Managing Quality Service in Hospitality: How Organizations Achieve Excellence in the Guest Experience

MANAGING QUALITY SERVICE IN HOSPITALITY: HOW ORGANIZATIONS ACHIEVE EXCELLENCE IN THE GUEST EXPERIENCE, 1st edition teaches the concept of treating customers as guests and creating a "WOW" experience for them. Many other texts in this subject area skip over guest-focused service strategy in hospitality or service This text fully covers the topic of managing hospitality organizations by using academic studies and real life experience from companies like Walt Disney Company, Marriott, Ritz-Carlton, Darden Restaurants, Southwest Airlines and many others. The text is written in three sections: strategy, staffing, and systems. Each chapter includes at suggested hospitality activities for students, in which students are encouraged to visit local organizations to talk with guests, employees and managers to obtain a variety of perspectives on the guest experience. Other activities will have students going to the internet to visit established sites for hospitality organizations. Real and hypothetical hotels, restaurants, and other business types found in the hospitality industry are included as case studies giving the opportunity for discussion of hospitality concepts and principles. "Ethics in Business" segments encourage students to analyze ethical issues associated with chapter topics. Each chapter opens with learning objectives and discussion questions at the end. The included Instructor's Guide provides answers to the end-of-chapter questions and to the discussion questions following the chapter cases, additional field exercises in hospitality, true-false and multiple-choice quizzes, and additional material to assist the instructor in preparing course outlines and lesson plans, providing the best known about managing hospitality organizations big or small.

Robert C Ford (Ph.D. Arizona State) is currently a professor of management in the College of Business Administration (COBA) of the University of Central Florida (UCF) where he teaches management of service organizations. He joined UCF as the chairman of its hospitality department after serving as the head of management at the University of Alabama at Birmingham. He was UCF's COBA the Associate Dean for Graduate and External Programs for five years. Bob has authored or coauthored numerous publications currently focusing on service management in both top research and practitioner journals. He serves on several editorial boards including Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, British Journal of Management, Journal, Journal of Leadership and Organizational Studies and is the associate editor of the Journal of Service Management. He has also published several books including Managing the Guest Experience in Hospitality, Achieving Service Excellence, Managing Destination Marketing Organization and most recently The Fun Minute Manager. Bob has served the Southern Management Association (SMA) in every elective office including president. He has held important roles in other organizations as well. He was a founding member and later Chair of the Accreditation Commission for Programs in Hospitality Administration and currently serves on the Destination Marketing Accreditation Commission. Bob has been recognized for his work by organizations he served including the Distinquished Service Award from AOM's MED, election to SMA Fellows, election as its dean and SMA Distinquished Service Award. In recognition of his service to hospitality education he was given the Paul Brown Award by the Florida Hotel and Lodging Association.

Michael C. Sturman is an Associate Professor at Cornell University's School of Hotel Administration, and is the Kenneth and Marjorie Blanchard Professor of Human Resources. There, he teaches undergraduate, graduate and executive education courses on human resource management, compensation, and cost-benefit analysis. His current research focuses on the prediction of individual job performance. He has published research articles in such journals as the Journal of Applied Psychology, Academy of Management Journal, Personnel Psychology and Journal of Management. He has also published practitioner papers in the Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, International Journal of Hospitality Management, Lodging Magazine, Lodging HR, A.A.H.O.A Hospitality, HR Com and the American Compensation Association Journal. Michael holds a Ph.D., M.S. and B.S. from Cornell University's School of Industrial and Labor Relations, and is a Senior Professional of Human Resources as certified by the Society for Human Resource Management.

Cherrill P. Heaton (Ph.D.) recently retired as Professor of Organizational Communications from the University of North Florida where he taught organizational and business communications to students in the graduate business programs for thirty years. In addition, he taught short courses in effective business communication in numerous executive education programs. Besides serving as editor of Management by Objectives in Higher Education, he is the co-author of several articles on service management and four texts; Principles of Management: A Decision Making Approach; Organizational Theory, Achieving Service Excellence: Strategies for Health Care; and Managing the Guest Experience in Hospitality. He also served as managing editor for the Academy of Management Executive.