ABSTRACT
Total Quality
Management (TQM) methodology can help organizations to achieve business
excellence. This methodology is also useful for the hospitality industry;
almost all hotels focus on quality management to improve their business by
enhancing customer satisfaction, competitive advantage and retaining guest
loyalty. TQM is teamwork; every functional department must work cohesively
together and support each other in order to achieve business excellence.
Different departments in a hotel have different roles in delivering the service
to hotel guests. This dissertation is
aimed to find out how the Engineering Department, a back-of-house department in
a hotel, supports the hotel goal of quality management together with the
factors and practices that could impact the department both positively and negatively
to achieve the quality.
In addition to the literary review, which reviewed
existing knowledge,
a qualitative
approach was adopted for this research to collect primary data; structured
interviews were conducted in Hong Kong and Beijing in China. Fourteen hotel
engineers, with at least 5 years working experience in 5-star chain hotels, were
interviewed.
This research
revealed that the major role of the engineering department is to ensure the
efficient operation of all physical plants including electrical, mechanical,
fire, hygiene and safety systems as well as production equipment; it plays a
key role in providing a comfortable and safe environment for occupants
including guests and staff. Comfort and safety are the essential factors in the
decision making when people select hotels; therefore, the effectiveness of
engineering department will affect the overall performance of the hotel. Quality tools are
essential for the control, management, measurement and analysis of engineering
tasks; they are important in maintaining the efficiency and improving the
performance of the department. The top five critical
success factors include: support from senior management, an effective team,
leadership and management skills, communication, and clear quality requirements,
whereas the top three barriers are: inadequate support from senior management,
unfair work environment and bureaucratic policy – traditional financial
practice.
In conclusion, the engineering department is one of
the major internal service providers in a hotel; it supports other departments
to complete the final product delivered to hotel guests.
Acknowledgements
I would like to express my appreciation for my dissertation
advisor, Dr. Dimitris Folinas, and my general dissertation advisor, Dr. Rathin
Basu, for their support and guidance.
I would also like to thank the following fellow engineers for
their participation in the interviews and the contribution of their knowledge
and experiences
Table
of Contents
Table of Tables
Table of Figures
Chapter 1: Introduction
1.1 Background
1.2 Research
Questions
1.3 Aims and Objective
1.4 Structure of the
Dissertation
1.5 Conclusion
Chapter 2: Literature Review
2.1 Introduction
2.2 Role of the
Engineering Department
2.3 The link between
Engineering and the hotel quality performance
2.4 Quality
methodology and tools
2.5 Performance
measurement
2.6 Critical success
factors
2.7 Negative factors
2.8 Summary
Chapter 3: Methodology
3.1 Introduction
3.2 Research Design
and Approach
3.3 Objectives of
the Research
3.4 Justification
for using Qualitative & Quantitative Approaches
3.5 Data Collection
Methods
3.6 Interview design
3.7 Conclusion
Chapter 4: Results and Analysis
4.1 Introduction
4.2 Interviewees
4.3 Key findings
4.4 Key concepts of
the study
Chapter 5 Conclusion and Recommendation
5.1 Introduction
5.2 Recommendations
for hotel engineers and general managers
5.3 Recommendations
for future research
5.4 Summary and
Concluding Remarks
References:
Appendices
Appendix A : Declaration of interviewee
Appendix B : Interview Questions
No comments:
Post a Comment