CASE 12

Service Quality at the

Day One
Madeline Lewis had recently transferred to the Remington Hotel to improve the level of
service quality. She had been with the company for five years and had been quite suc-
cessful in improving the level of service quality at the two previous hotels to which she
had been assigned. Madeline knew that the Remington was going to be a real challenge.
The mix of business was 60 percent individual transient guests and 40 percent group
business. Of this group business, about one-third consisted of motor coach tour groups.
On her first day on the job, Madeline witnessed quite a sight. There was a line of
about 20 guests waiting to check in when two motor coaches arrived, and more than
80 additional guests and guides walked into the lobby to check in. Needless to say, the
two front desk agents had a look of terror in their eyes as they worked diligently to pro-
cess the registrations for those waiting to check in. Some 40 minutes later, everyone had
been checked in, but the general manager said to Madeline, “I’m glad that you are here;
we need to work out a better system. Let’s meet for lunch tomorrow to discuss your ini-
tial ideas.” Madeline had just picked up a pen to start brainstorming ideas to present to
the general manager when a guest approached her desk.
“Hello, my name is Britt Spencer, and I stayed at your hotel last night with my family.
We really did not have a good experience, and I want to tell you about it. I want to make
sure that this does not happen again, to me or anyone else.” Mr. Spencer then proceeded
to tell Madeline his account of the events. “I was traveling with my wife and our son,
who is four years old. Our connecting flight was delayed, so we did not arrive at our final
destination until 10 p.m. The Remington had an advertised check-in facility at the air-
port, and I assumed that I would be able to secure my room while waiting for the lug-
gage. When I approached the employee at the hotel’s airport facility, I was told that
check-in service was not available at that time of the day. I found this to be surprising,
since this was the very type of situation in which an airport facility would be beneficial.
“Next, my family took a shuttle van from the airport to the hotel, where we were
given directions to the front desk. Two front desk clerks were on duty when the passen-
gers from the airport shuttle arrived a little before 11 p.m. However, one of the front
desk clerks was apparently going off duty at 11, and she proceeded to close her drawer
at that exact moment. This left a line of approximately 10 or 12 guests to be checked in
by one clerk. Needless to say, it took some time to process all of the guests, and we had
to wait 20 or 30 minutes for our turn. We were assigned to a room, but at this point we

342
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 Case 12: Service Quality at the Remington Hotel 343

had a few bags and my son was fast asleep and had to be carried. When I asked for
assistance with our luggage, I was told that no one was available at that time of night.
The hotel was large, having over 1,000 rooms, and the rooms were spread out among
several adjacent buildings. Our room was two buildings away from the lobby area. My
wife and I struggled to carry the luggage and our son to the room. We arrived there
about 11:30 and attempted to enter the room. The key unlocked the door, but the door
would not open. After a couple of attempts, we heard a woman’s voice in the room. Ob-
viously, the room had been double-booked and the woman woken from her sleep. I used
the house phone to call the front desk and explain the predicament. The front desk man-
ager offered a quick apology and said that she would send someone with a key to a
nearby room. About 10 minutes later, a housekeeper happened to be going through the
hallway, and she let my family into the room that I had been given over the phone.
However, the housekeeper had no idea what was going on and took my word. After we
had been in the room for 10 minutes, the phone rang and I spoke with the front desk
manager. She acted as though she had sent the housekeeper to open the room, but she
still needed to send someone with the room keys. She apologized one last time and told
me to call the front desk if I had any other problems.” Madeline went home that night
and began to think about all the challenges the Remington was currently facing.

Day Two
When Madeline met with the general manager the next day, she was presented with a set
of service quality data that was collected earlier in the year. Hotel guests participating in
the survey were asked to record their perceptions pertaining to the hotel’s service quality
on all five service quality dimensions. Respondents were asked to rate the hotel on a 1 to
7 likert scale ranging from 1 (strongly disagree) to 7 (strongly agree). Typically, the
higher the number guests recorded, the more favorable the perception of the hotel’s ser-
vice quality on each dimension. Guests were asked to rate the hotel on their perception
of the hotel’s tangibles (rooms, dining facilities, lounges, etc.), reliability, responsiveness,
empathy, and assurance. Results were presented as follows:
Customer Perceptions
Tangibles 6.2
Reliability 5.8
Responsiveness 6.1
Empathy 5.3
Assurance 5.0

Discussion Questions
1. Based on Madeline’s Day 1 observations and conversation with Mr. Spencer,
provide examples of the service quality gaps (e.g., knowledge, standards, delivery,
communications, and service) that are evident at the Remington Hotel.
2. Given the customer perception information that was provided by the general
manager on Day 2, which one dimension of service quality should Madeline
attempt to improve first? Please explain your answer.

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 344 Part III: Assessing and Implementing Successful Service Strategies

3. After further reviewing files left by her predecessor, Madeline found that customer
expectation data was also collected and yielded the information provided below.
How does this impact the decision you made in answering question #2 above?
Customer Expectations
Tangibles 6.4
Reliability 6.5
Responsiveness 6.8
Empathy 5.5
Assurance 5.0
4. What other piece of information does Madeline need to make sure that her efforts
to improve the service quality of the Remington have started in the right direction?

Copyright 2010 Cengage Learning. All Rights Reserved. May not be copied, scanned, or duplicated, in whole or in part. Due to electronic rights, some third party content may be suppressed from the eBook and/or eChapter(s).
Editorial review has deemed that any suppressed content does not materially affect the overall learning experience. Cengage Learning reserves the right to remove additional content at any time if subsequent rights restrictions require it.