寫一篇管理方面的留學生dissertation-Five star hotel management in China 

 

Hospitality in China 5 star hotel 

Since 1980, the industry scale of China's hotel industry has acquired multiples development. The supply of hotels grew rapidly with the expansion of demand. Taking foreign- related hotels as examples, in 1980, there were 203 hotels, in 2010, the number of star hotels increased to 14,237. During the same period, the number of rooms of hotels increases more than 30 times (Wu, et al., 2013). Every five years, the growth rate of hotels was more than 50% (Wu, et al., 2013).  Beijing is the area in which there are the most five star hotels in China. By the end of 2012, there are 62 5 star hotels in Beijing, 5 star hotels expand rapidly, leading to intensified competition among the hotels (Sherman, 2011). The key of competition between five star hotels lies in whether the quality of service of hotels is excellent, or whether the services that hotels offer meet or exceed customers’ expectations (Stambler, 2011). The level of service quality depends largely on staff. The level of service quality is closely related to employees’ satisfaction, if hotel employees have a high degree of satisfaction, it will be more likely to promote the hotel's service quality, so as to improve the competitiveness of the hotel, making the hotel develop rapidly (Ryan and Huimin, 2007).  Employee satisfaction is affected by many factors, of which there is a close link between emotional labour and employees’ satisfaction (Tse and Ho, 2009). Therefore, for China’s 5 star hotels, how to implement employees’ emotional labour management, how to improve staff’s ability in emotion regulation to improve employees’ satisfaction and hotels’ service quality is an important issues that researchers and managers are faced with (Marchante, et al., 2007).

 

Hospitality management factors affect emotional labour 

Researches on human resource management of China's hotels suggest that the negative impact brought by employees’ emotional labour is not only because of staff’s own lack of ability in managing emotional labour, it also has a close relationship with a company’s deficiencies in management, which is mainly expressed in the following aspects  (Lee and Sparks, 2007).

 

Lack of human-oriented management ideology

In the management of hotels in China, employees are often the lowest class in a hotel. There is no status for employees at all, nor are they respected by management of hotels (King and So, 2013). In China’s hotel services practice, employees and customers are still in unequal positions, and even some customers are insufferably arrogant, domineering (King and So, 2013). When there are conflicts, managers’ attention on customers is far beyond their concern for employees, handling of complaints always takes customers’ satisfaction as the premise, without regard to employees' feelings and emotions (King and So, 2013). In addition, hotels do not take hotels and staff as a community of interests, nor do they treat first-line employees and management personnel equally (Lee and Sparks, 2007) #p#分頁標題#e#

 

Lack of training

Emotional labour of hotels requires highly, it needs to balance passion and stability, flexibility and reliability (Sherman, 2011). Employees should not only express their enthusiasm, meticulous characteristics, but also let customers feel that they are wise and trustworthy; they should be flexible and follow certain norms (Stambler, 2011). People's emotions, are always in a constant state of change, they always change with changes of external stimulus signals, showing volatility, unexpected features (Marchante, et al., 2007).

 

For first-line employees, how to overcome their emotional volatility and bursty to make their own emotional state spontaneously reach stable, natural expressions of emotion that a hotel requires, so as to keep an appropriate degree in providing service is an important quality which can not be ignored ( Marchante, et al., 2007).

 

In a hotel’s service process, customers’ age, occupation, experience, complex and diverse cultural backgrounds may produce a variety of strange and even unreasonable demands, staff needs to provide services of a variety of moods (Lee and Sparks, 2007). Meanwhile, hotel products are complex, specific, vulnerable, making service scenario in a rapidly changing state, the content and frequency of emotional labour are unpredictable, employees need to transform different roles according to scene in a timely manner, adjusting and achieving appropriate emotion in response (Marchante, et al., 2007). Lee and Sparks (2007)  point out that the improvement of employees’ emotion regulation capacity at work requires not only time and self-adjustment, and what’s more, it needs hotel managers’ guidance and training in training and daily management, but there is less training on emotional labour in Chinese five star hotels (Lee and Sparks, 2007) 

 

Lack of appropriate corporate culture

Emotional labour situation is usually constituted by customers and staff, in hotel service, there is frequent face-to-face contact between customers and employees, as well as among employees, their emotional expression is mutually influenced and transferred anywhere (Lee and Sparks, 2007). For example, in the process of accepting service, a customer is likely to pass the dissatisfaction that he has during the former service process in the hotel to the next employee, but this time the employee is likely to send or enhance the negative mood to customers, good corporate culture is conducive to defuse the transfer of negative emotions inside a company, so that employees can try to resolve the bad feelings from the outside world to give customers excellent service as always, avoiding the continuous transmission of negative emotions ( Lee and Sparks, 2007) . However, currently, in order to better appease and retain staff, Chinese five star hotels have taken the way of material incentives, through improving employees’ benefits to encourage employees, but employees' job satisfaction and turnover rate remains high (Marchante, et al., 2007). The reason is that there is no corporate culture that staff agrees with, if employees agree with a corporate culture, they can understand the corporate culture to be based on the requirements of corporate culture to adjust their ways of expressing their emotions accordingly, it can reduce emotional problems arising from conflicts with customers (Sherman, 2011). Moreover, a harmonious and friendly working atmosphere enable employees to get more support from the organization and colleagues, which can reduce the negative impact brought by emotional labour  (Lee and Sparks, 2007).

 

Lack of communication

Hotels pay less attention to the consequences brought by employees’ emotional labour, which is bound to affect employees' psychological feelings and attitude towards work (Lee and Sparks, 2007). Sustained emotional labour is associated with great expenditure of physical and mental energy, if employees are in a long, highly intensive emotional work state, and their physical and mental energy can not be replenished or repaired in time, it will lead to generation of apathy, emotional exhaustion, and it is easy to make employees have a lack of patience (Lee and Sparks, 2007). Many of China's five -star hotels attach less importance to the impact that emotional labour brings staff, the hotels introduce specification to constrain staff, they blindly focus on employees’ performance and results, but fail to have timely and effective interviews with employees about their job performance, they lack an in-depth study on how to achieve service standards and why the staff do not meet service standards (Lee and Sparks, 2007).

 

Labour structure in hospitality (how many departments in 5 star hotel)

The characteristics of hotels determine that a hotel generally operates 24 hours a day (Ryan and Huimin, 2007). Usually the operational mechanisms of a hotel can be divided into service, security and administration (Ryan and Huimin, 2007). There is a big difference existing in work content and ways of staff from different departments, so researches on emotional labour must understand the situation hotels’ institutional establishment (Ryan and Huimin, 2007). Since the management of five star hotels in Beijing is in different ways, their institutional settings are not exactly the same, but there is not much difference in their establishment of basic departments and agencies (Wu, et al., 2013). Departments in Beijing’s five -star hotels which are responsible for service include food and beverage department, which is responsible for a hotel’s catering service; housekeeping department, which is responsible for room service; security department is responsible for policing and security (Wu, et al., 2013). Departments which provide protection include procurement department which is responsible for supplies purchasing; marketing department which is responsible for hotel marketing and publicizing; engineering department, which is responsible for maintenance and repair of a hotel’s facilities; property management department, which is responsible for property management; administrative departments, including finance department, which is responsible for the hotel's financial management, personnel administration department, which is responsible for human resource management, and so on  (Wu, et al., 2013). 

 

Job requirement of employees in 5 star hotels.

Staff of service offering department in a 5 star hotel has a direct contact with customers, they need to always maintain a positive mental state, in order to give consumers a good impression and service experience, so they need good self-management skills (Ryan and Huimin, 2007). Staff of service offering department is mostly front-line staff, they have large working pressure, they must have the ability of self-motivation, which helps them to eliminate the negative emotions brought by working pressure. Service staff should have a strong empathic ability, so as to be keen to discover the needs of consumers’, in order to better provide services to meet the needs. Service staff also needs strong communication skills, which enables them to effectively communicate with consumers to have an access to consumers’ understanding and support (Ryan and Huimin, 2007).

Employees of security department in a 5 star hotel not only need to contact with consumers, but also need to communicate with staff of various departments of the hotel, their negative emotional labour will directly affect consumers’ service experience, as well as the relationships with other staff, so they need good self-management skills (Wu, et al., 2013). Their work is very tedious and complex, involving a hotel’s facilities repairing, maintenance, maintenance of a hotel’s order, etc. (Singh and Vohra, 2009). They have large working pressure, so they should have a good self-motivated ability to avoid the impact brought by negative emotions (Wu, et al., 2013).  Staff of security department also needs strong empathic ability, so as to be keen to discover the needs of consumers’ and employees’, so as to better provide services to protect the smooth operation of a hotel (Wu, et al., 2013). Staff of security department also needs strong communication skills, which enables them to effectively communicate with consumers and staff of other departments to understand and solve existing problems (Wu, et al., 2013). 

 

Administrative staff of 5 star hotel  mainly contacts with staff of various departments, their negative emotions will directly affect the enthusiasm of staff for work, and thus indirectly affecting consumers’ service experience, so they need good self-management skills (Wu, et al., 2013). Administrative staff has enormous impact on hotels, they are responsible for a hotel’s strategic planning, management, major decisions, their working pressure is also very large, they should have self-motivated ability, which helps them to eliminate the negative emotions brought by working pressure (Ryan and Huimin, 2007). Administration staff  should have a strong empathic ability, so as to discover the needs of employees’ to better meet the needs of employees’, increasing employees’ satisfaction and reducing employees’ expression of negative emotions (Wu, et al., 2013). Administrative staff also needs strong communication skills, they should be able to effectively communicate with employees of each department, so that employees can fully understand the intentions of management and management will get understanding and support from staff (Ryan and Huimin, 2007).

 

Therefore, whether it is for staff of service offering department, security department or administrative employees, all of them must have good self-management skills, self-motivated ability, empathic ability and communication skills. This dissertation will explore the self-management ability, self-motivated ability, empathic ability and communication skills of employees of 5 star hotels in China.