QUALITY ASSURANCE IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY: QUALITATIVE ASSESMENT OF NIGERIA

Abstract

Hospitality is currently the fasted growing economic activity in Abuja-Nigeria. It has also been instrumental in creating jobs and has significant impact on other sectors of economic growth. Based on the above factors much attention need to be placed on the quality of the hospitality industry in Abuja-Nigeria in other to systematic compete with other destinations. Quality assurance is becoming an increasing integral component of the service industry. However, despite some indication that quality assurances are receiving attention in the hospitality industry, its adoption continues to be very slow. This paper examine the usefulness of quality assurance in hospitality operations and how to encourage it's observances in the industry.

Headnote

Abstract

Hospitality is currently the fasted growing economic activity in Abuja-Nigeria. It has also been instrumental in creating jobs and has significant impact on other sectors of economic growth. Based on the above factors much attention need to be placed on the quality of the hospitality industry in Abuja-Nigeria in other to systematic compete with other destinations. Quality assurance is becoming an increasing integral component of the service industry. However, despite some indication that quality assurances are receiving attention in the hospitality industry, its adoption continues to be very slow. This paper examine the usefulness of quality assurance in hospitality operations and how to encourage it's observances in the industry.

Key words: Assurance, Control, Hospitality, Quality, Standard.

Introduction

The hospitality industry like all services sectors, quality assurance is everything. Without a quality that is properly designed, well made and reliable, customers will go elsewhere for the goods and services they require. Hospitality industry strives to produce quality products and services for the guests (customers) in other to ensure repeat purchase. Whether tourism, catering, bar or accommodation, recreational park etc, quality is an issue. The saying "garbage in, garbage out" recognized that if you put in poor quality into hospitality operation, the output will be poor quality products and services. Quality assurance should be impeccable, because confidence in hospitality industry relies heavily on having access to reliable, good quality goods and services. Quality to a large extent is fundamental to the success of all hospitality industry which simply implies that without quality assurance, the Hospitality business will fail to meet the guest expectations if quality assurance is not an integral part of its operational process. Quality Assurance is a relatively abstract construct that is sometimes difficult to interpret. Quality standards, which are documented as a set of specifications, rules and procedures, provide the necessary context for measuring and controlling qualit y in hospitality industry.

Brief history of hospitality industry in Nigeria

The colonial masters introduce hospitality industry in Nigeria by the establishment of catering guest houses in 1920s (Nigeria Railway Caterers Ltd.) and other catering guest houses across the country in the 1950s marked the beginning of what turned out in the later years to form the genesis of formal hotel business in Nigeria. The early hotels were owned by government.

The importance of the growth and development in number and quality of hotels in Nigeria cannot be over emphasized based on the central role of hotels plays in the development of the tourism industry of a nation. Hotels account for about 50% of the tourism expenditure and the availability of comfortable and safe accommodation constitutes a central point in a tourist's decision to visit a particular destination. It is for this reason that countries around the world are expanding and adapting their hotels to satisfy the "home away from home" label. Ibru ( 2004 ) stated that Nigeria has an estimated over 5000 hotels with over 90000 let-able rooms. The importance of the development in the quantity and qualit y of hotels in Nigeria is underscore by the central role hospitality industry play in the development of the tourism sector of a nation.

Study area

Nigeria is with a landmass of about 923, 773sq kms is Africa's most populous country with about 140millon people (National Population Commission, 2008) . A major oil producer, located in West Africa, it shares boundaries with Chad Republic, Cameroon and Benin Republic. Administratively, it is divided into 36 states with Abuja as the Federal Capital Territory. Besides its natural features, Nigeria's culture assets are more among the most attractive in the whole word. Nigeria has over 250 ethnic groups within its geo-polity and each of them is identified with a unique cultural heritage. Nigeria was founded by colonialists who amalgamated the north and south regions of the country in 1914. Nigeria gained independences as a sovereign sate from the British on October 1, 1960. The nation got its name from the river Niger which flows through a large part of the country into the Atlantic Ocean. The three main religions are Christianity, Islam and Traditional religion.

Objectives

The objectives set are:

- To provide an overview of the concepts and techniques pertinent to quality assurance in the hospitality industry.

- Identify the hospitality industry.

- Importance of quality assurance in the hospitality industry

- Identify problems of achieving quality assurance

- Suggest solutions

Conceptual clarification

Rundell (2007) defined hospitality as friendly and generous behavior towards visitors and guests, intended to make them feel welcome: food, drink, room and entertainment given to customers by a company or organization. Another scholar Cooper et al (1996) in educating the Educators in Tourism gave the definition of hospitality which stated that hospitality is a combination of physiological and psychological elements with security and level of service. Hospitality is concerned with the provision of physiological and psychological comfort within defined levels of services.

The primary interesting elements is that of the social relationship fostered by the warm, friendly, welcoming, courteous, open, generous behaviors, of host creating the hospitable social environment. This promotes the positive feeling of security and comfort created by physical structure, design, décor and location of facility. Finally, the provisions of accommodation facilities to sleep, eat, relax and wash, together with the supply of beverage, service and entertainment.

The Hotel Proprietors Act of 1956 defines a hotel as "an establishment offering food, drink and sleeping accommodation if so required to any traveler who appears able and willing to pay for services and facilities provided. This implies in common law, a hotel must offer:

* Food

* Accommodation to its guest

* Liability for the property of guest

* Conform to public health and safety regulations

* Provide high standard of cleanliness and socialization.

The term hospitality emerges as the way hotelier and caterers would like their industry to be perceived. It conveys an image that reflects the traditions of service that goes back over many centuries. In 1987, the hotel catering and institution management association, the industry professional association changed the name of its Journal to Hospitality, likewise in 1991, the British Hoteliers, Restaurateurs and Caterers Association, the United Kingdom Industry's main trade association changed its name to the British Hospitality, this has also been adopted by educators so that most, if not all universities and colleges now offer courses on hospitality management (Jones, 2002).

Hospitality has been defined as the cordial and generous reception of guests (Angelo and Vladimir 1994). It has also been defined as those commercial activities which offer consumers ( guest ) accommodation, meals and drinks when they are away from home while promoting a warm friendly experience that benefits travelers (George, 2001). The term hospitality is derived from the Latin word hospe, which means host or guest, and also hospitium, which means guest chamber, inn or quarter (Chon and Sparrowe, 2000)

From the above it is easy to understand what hospitality industry is all about. Lillicrap and Cousins, (1990) gave an apparent view of the hospitality industry saying, the main purpose for the industry is to provide accommodation food and drink to guest.

The hospitality industry composed of the tangible and the intangible services Akan (1995) gave three elements of the hospitality product/services. He argues that these include the physical facilities, the personal, and the process. This argument is summarized in the table below.

Quality assurance

Quality is a word in everyday use that is very difficult to define in the hospitality industry because of its unique nature of product and services which are tangible, intangible and has time lapse. Experts have formulated different definitions for quality. It has different meanings for different people and in different contexts. Quality is degree of excellence. Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English (2008) defined quality as how good or bad something is, that which makes a thing what it is a nature character, kind; property, attributes, social status, grade of goodness, excellence, profession, high grade of excellence.

The International Standards Organization (ISO) considers quality to be "totality of characteristics of a product that bear on its ability to satisfy a stated and implied need" (Godwin, 1999). Various experts have formulated definitions of quality. One of the most common definition is by (Juwaheer, 2004) ''quality is excellence, value, conformance to specification and meeting or exceeding consumers' expectation '' (lee, et al 2001.) says that quality is '' conformance to requirement'' and Juran (1988) defines it as '' fitness for purpose and fitness for us.''

This study will defined quality concepts as '' the fitness of hospitality products and services for the purpose and use or the measure of utility, obtainable from the product and services offered in hospitality industry.'' To illustrate this further, an appreciation of way to improved quality can possibly make one grasp the concept of quality more clearly. According to Deming (1994), there are three ways of improving quality. These include innovation in design of a product or service, innovation in processes and improvement of existing processes.

Quality could also be sum as the standard of something when it is compared to other things like its; how good or bad something is, a high standard quality has to do with good standard of excellence. The essence of quality of product or services is to ensure that product and services meet the desired satisfaction. The challenge for the hospitality industry today is to produce quality products and services. Any hospitality organization that meets this challenge can use quality as a competitive weapon.

Quality Assurance: quality control is confused with quality assurance. Though the two are very similar, there are some fundamental differences. Quality control is concerned with the product, the practice of checking goods as they are produced to be sure that their quality is good enough while quality assurance is process - oriented. Basically, quality control involves evaluating a product, activity, process, or services. By contrast, quality assurance is designed to make sure processes are sufficient to meet objectives. Quality assurance ensures a product or service is manufactured, implemented, created, or produced in the right way; while quality control evaluate whether or not the end result is satisfactory.

Quality Assurance in the hospitality industry border on three principles namely; customer satisfaction, employee involvement, and continuous improvements in quality. Quality Assurance is the systematic monitoring and evaluation of various aspects of product services to ensure that standards of quality are being met. Controlling is a process that involves ascertains the extent to which expectations are being met, taking actions to ensure that they are met and making some modifications, in view of realities that emerge during execution.

Methodology

Focus Group

Denzin and Lincoln (1994) defined Focus Group Discussion (FGD) as a collective conversation or group interview. The size of the group may vary from small (6 persons) to large (12 persons) and may or may not be guided by a facilitator. The main purpose of a focus group discussion is to obtain in-depth information relating to concepts, perceptions and practices in the context of the subject from members of the group (Morgan, 1998). Ideally this is not a question and answer session but an opportunity to gain insight on the subject from the point of view of experts, practitioners and stakeholders in a purely interactive session. Focus Group Discussion methodology has been used successfully by Mbeng (2009), Refsgaard and Magnussen (2009) as well as Balch and Mertens (1999) to gaining greater insight on the subject and resolving unexpected issues encountered by questionnaire and interview methodologies.

For the purposes of this discussion, six parallel FGD sessions of four participants each were held with the authors acting as the facilitator.

Focus Group Discussion

The purpose of the focus group discussion was to strengthen and corroborate evidence and findings from field observation by the authors. Participants in the group discussion were randomly drawn from a short list of stakeholders in the six geo-political zones of Nigeria hotel and tourism board and private hospitality/catering organization. The main factors considered while selecting participants were:

* Knowledge of the subject.

* Spread, in terms of geographical representation.

The process for recruitment of participants involved sending a formal invitation letter and subsequently a telephone confirmation of attendance when requested by the participant.

Focus Group Design:

The objectives of the Focus Group Discussion were:

a) To provide a platform for stakeholders to discuss the barriers and success factors of quality assurance in the hospitality industry.

b) To strengthen evidence and findings from the field observations by the two author.

The FGD provided a relaxed and semi-formal atmosphere that encouraged participants to freely air their views on the subject. A mix of small group activity exercises and full group discussion was adopted. Following an ice-breaker exercise and general introduction, a small group exercise was conducted to determine participants' levels of understanding of the subject. During the ice breaking discussions, participants were divided into four groups of four discussants each ensuring that people who might know each other were separated. The exercises were recorded by audio as well as video means for subsequent transcription; small group activities were based on an interactive team exercises. Such exercises were completed and collected after each session; and feedback to the full group recorded on flipcharts. The Focus Group was facilitated by the two author. The information gathered from the transcript, handouts and flip charts during the small and whole group sessions were then synthesized to provide an overall position of the entire focus group on current assessment of quality assurance in Nigeria. This was with a view to prescribing recommendation for adaption.

Dimensions of quality assurance in hospitality

- Establishment of standards

- Measurement of performance and its comparison with standards.

- Any corrective action which may be necessary.

Standards impl y the criteria or yardsticks against which actual performance is measured so as to ascertain whether the performance is adequate or inadequate. Actual performance has to be compared with an agree standard and that where necessary corrective action has to be taken when it has varied from the agree standard.

The quality standard for services and products is of major importance in the hospitality industry, that is an area in which measurement is extremely difficult, and the measuring instrument usually the informed opinion of a skilled personnel and organisation policy. The skill of the personnel is also required to decide what the action should be.

Establishment of Standard: Standards could be defined as "criteria for performance, selected points in an existing program at which measures of performance are made so that managers can receive signals about how things are going. The various standards that can be established in the hospitality industry are:

* Physical standard

* Cost standard

* Revenue standard

* Intangible standard

* Goals as a standard

Though there are other standards but it is not covered by this content.

Measures and Compare Performance against Standard: Having established standards, the next step is to measure performance and compare it with the standards already put in place. The measure should be done by the applicable department designed for the purpose while what is measured is relevant to the type of activity being performed.

A Key Issue is how do we Measure? There are four common sources of information used in measuring performance. These are:

* Personal observation

* Statistical reports

* Oral reports

* Written reports

Another step is what do we measure?

* Environment

* Internal business process indicators

* Human resources indicators

The essence of comparing the actual with the expected is to ascertain any deviations that might have occurred and the extent of those deviations.

Corrective Actions: Based on the nature, extent and cause of the deviations, corrective actions will be taken.

Control is about organizational plans and performance, there are specific variables on which control is usually focused on people. Managers achieve results through people, for things to work according to plans, there is compelling need to control the behavior and performance of people as it concerns work. Supervisors oversee the work of their subordinates and correct them when those specific variables are lacking; they also appraise them at the end of a given period.

The imperatives of quality assurance and contrl in the hospitality industry

* Saving money or avoiding new cost (e.g. due to new regulations)

* Saving time (which may also involve saving money but sometimes may not e.g. in emergencies).

* Increasing efficiency, productivity, and or accuracy, and aiding budgeting.

* Creating new assets, e.g. intellectual property rights, enhanced trends, or trust through new investment.

* Generating additional revenues or other return from the identification, creation and marketing of new products and services by exploitation of the assets.

* Identifying risk and reducing it to acceptable levels.

* Supporting better-informed and more effective decision making in business

* Ensuring effective communication with key stakeholders.

Challenges of quality assurance in the hospitality industry

* Some employees may believe that involvement of quality assurance create more work with little payoff

* Lack of genuine support by some managers

* Some supervisor in the hospitality industry particularly resist the concept of empowerment of subordinates

* Quality assurance requires an environment free of threat and implied job security

* Lack of team or group work.

Recommendation

If hospitality industry must be developed in Nigeria, hospitality assets products and services must be built upon intrinsic quality assurance practice. The hospitality assets, products and services must be supported b y and packaged with requisite step b y step quality assurance policy framework at every stage of production of goods and services to ensure guest (customer) satisfaction at the end of the cycle. To do this, government and private sector must formulate a comprehensive quality assurance master plan for the hospitality industry; this will go a long way in creating a more attractive and internationally acceptable hospitality products and services.

If we must take advantage of the hospitality business, there is an urgent need for a determined, sincere and focused attention at improvement of quality assurance in the hospitality sector in Nigeria.

Conclusion

In other to properly position the hospitality industry for the impending boom in Nigeria tourism, all necessary regulations that ensure quality assurance in delivery of hospitality products, services and adoption of best practices must be put in place. This must include special prior approve quality assurance process that will ensure high standard in the hospitality industry that guarantee guest satisfaction, repeat purchase and real value of money. All hospitality organization must be responsive to the needs of customers and other stakeholders and must demonstrably be effective. This is achieved through the application of quality assurance. If our hospitality sector is well repositioned through quality assurance process, it will play a key role in making tourism a valuable vehicle for economic development of Nigeria.

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