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Information Technology and Managing Guest Satisfaction in the Hotel Industry

In the future, the hotel industry will be faced with challenges stemming from the information era in which information and communication technology are changing the way people live and work. This will impact not only on the relations between management and the production and service staff, but also on the relations between employees and guests. The production and service process will be created, carried out and redesigned through the interaction of service providers and well-informed guests, who have increasingly higher expectations regarding the tangible and intangible elements of the hotel product. Business will increasingly be based on knowledge, with the guest/customer becoming the focal point of hotel industry operations. Given the intensive use of information technology in the hotel industry, the guest will be able to gather all the information s/he requires from a number of sources, as well as by running checks on the hotelier. The amount of information available, as the intangible part of the exchange, will increase according to the significance of the guest. With information technology making it possible for the guest to follow up on the promises of service providers and to learn about the experiences of previous customers in relation to individual service providers, the importance of the guest will continue to grow in this new altered environment. On the one hand, the Internet and other advancements of information technology are making it possible for guests who were not happy with service quality to connect into a community of dissatisfied guests. On the other hand, future service providers will be expected to have in-depth knowledge of the guests and to shape services according to their wishes and needs. This will demand an entirely new approach to managing guest satisfaction, and it will be up to the hotel industry management to learn how to build relations of trust with a view to enhancing guest satisfaction.

information technology; management; guest satisfaction

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