LESSON 2: GUESTOLOGY

INTRODUCTION
Many establishment and organization are doing to improve the level of quality
service through the performance of the employees. Others develop their system.
Some also embed the concept of corporate culture and environment in their setups.
All of these are deemed effective, but sometimes, what we often forget is that the
center of the service concept is our guest. This would be the focus of our study- the
concept of Guestology.
For us to understand what it means to be a guest, we should now understand
what hospitality is as our guest is an outcome of the hospitality that we give. Service
executed immaculately is different from hospitality. Service providers today are
focusing on making things right rather than making people feel great. Service is the
sequence of acts, tasks, and procedures which are done with consistency. It is the
mechanics, the logistics, and how-tos of any process. Service, as a commodity, is
expected to be built-in with any product. We expect our meals to be served in less
than 12 minutes and our reservations finished immediately. What makes the
difference is hospitality. Hospitality is the positive emotional response elicited from
our guests. Service is a skill, while hospitality is about anticipating the needs and
wants of our guests, expressed and unexpressed. Service can be given
methodically, while hospitality is dynamic. We forget good service; we remember
hospitality. This is the reason that the end user of such process is called a guest,
because we are honored that they come to us, they come with us.

LEARNING OBJECTIVES
At the end of this lesson, the students should be able to:
LO: 1. Define what guestology is and what a guestologist is;
LO: 2 Determine the predictors of customer expectation;
LO: 3 Identify the different types of customers; and
LO: 4 Determines who defines value and quality.

LESSON PROPER
 GUESTOLOGY

Dickson (2010) defines guestology as the scientific study of the behaviors,

needs, and expectations of people in a service environment, and how to use that
knowledge to optimally manage a service organization.
 The concept that Bruce Laval, the father of guestology, introduced has now
become a science that deals with understanding the guest.
  Guestology entails studying the totality of the guest experience, from their
expectations down to the results and feedback.
 Klein (2014) mentioned in her study that guestology involves knowing the
guests or clients and their needs and wants, perceptions, and expectations.
Her approach toward guestology entails involving every person with whom the
service provider has in the workplace.
 Any establishments would want to realize that what it actually needs is to find
a way to quantify the answer of answering the questions, rather than to
assume.

The Disney’s Guestology Compass

Starting with the Help Desk, team focused on providing excellent customer
service. A guest service compass based on Disney’s “Guestology Compass.” The
compass includes three individual areas plus an area for implementation to put all
three areas together.

1. The first area is “guestology,” or knowing who our clients are, and what
their needs, wants, perceptions, and expectations are. Knowing who our
clients are is easy: it boils down to every person with whom we come into
contact on campus: they include students, employees, alumni, community
 visitors, etc. Knowing exactly what their needs, wants, perceptions, and
expectations are is trickier
2. The second area of the compass was to develop our standards of service.
We developed these standards to guide our interactions with our clients,
which include several different detailed ways to deliver a good experience,
such as eye contact, greeting and welcoming clients, body language,
appearance, and genuine thanks and appreciation for the opportunity to
serve each individual. These guidelines were taught to the Help Desk
students at their two-day training before the school year. All Help Desk
staff and Client Services staff are required to adhere to this guideline for
service:
 Make eye contact and smile! Start and end every client
contact and communication with direct eye contact and a
sincere smile.
 Greet and welcome each and every client. Extend the
appropriate greeting to every client with whom you come into
contact.
 Seek out client contact. It is the responsibility of every staff
member to seek out clients who need help or assistance.
 Provide immediate service recovery. It is the responsibility of
every staff member to attempt, to the best of their abilities, to
immediately resolve a client service failure before it becomes
a client service problem. Always find the answer for the client
and/or find another staff member who can help the client.
 Display appropriate Body Language at all times. It is the
responsibility of every staff member to display approachable
body language when visible to clients.
 Display appropriate, professional appearance guidelines at
all times. It is the responsibility of every staff member to be
within the dress and appearance guidelines at all times when
visible to clients.
 Preserve the “magical” guest experience. Always focus on
the positive, rather than the rules or regulations. Talking
about personal or job-related problems in front of our guests
is unacceptable. Use appropriate words and language in all
conversations, even personal ones - swearing in front of the
client reflects badly on us.
 Thank each and every client. Extend every client a sincere
thank you at the conclusion of every transaction. Extend
every client a thank you or similar expression of appreciation
as he/she leaves your area.
3. The third area of the compass was to consider the delivery methods
systems for our service. This includes our staff, our settings, and our
 processes. Staff includes the full time employees as well as the students
we employ or take on as interns. The term “settings” refers to any venue or
method where we come in contact with clients, including our phone line,
our physical Help Desk, our website. Our processes include every task or
procedure we employ to provide service, from how we answer the phone,
to how we gather information, enter tickets, troubleshoot, respond to
clients, and much more.
4. The final area of the compass is the integration of the other three areas. It
is always harder to put it all together, but the great news about our efforts
is that we realize we have ongoing opportunities to review and improve. If
we find that a particular process isn’t working, we will evaluate and revise.
If our website needs a change to be more client friendly, we will make the
modifications. Ultimately it is the willingness to evaluate and make
changes that leads to the service we desire to provide to our campus.

 Customer Expectations

 For customer satisfaction and customer service to be achieved, a complete

and proper understanding of customer expectations is very important. Unless
the establishment already knows what the customers want, what they expect,
and who they are, it will be very difficult to match up to the expectations.

 A guest who will dine in a restaurant for the first time will have a different
expectation than a guest who has been in the restaurant for the first time will
have a different expectation than a guest who has been in the restaurant for a
couple of times.

 The expectation of a frequent flier for business purposes may also have a
different expectation with that of a family on a trip to another country.
 Companies should make it a practice to always inquire from their customers
whether they have met their expectations and put all of this data into their
internal research.

 It is important that we note of their likes, dislikes, needs, wants and profile as
these would be the baseline of our entire operations.

 The reality right now is that customer expectations are continuously changing,
and unless companies are attuned to them, they will fall short of these
expectations, leading to customer dissatisfactions and attrition.
 Planning for customer satisfaction is really important in this case as this will
be the platform for the design of the experience. This is the role of the
guestologist.

 It is very important that everything is in place when the guest’s senses first
come in contact with anything about your establishment, so the role of the
guestologist is very critical.

 Much more in the Philippine culture, where there are different sets of beliefs
and ideals. There are also different sets of expectations. A conference set in
Hong Kong would have all its meals in cocktail style; however, if you have
Filipino guests, this cannot be acceptable because a typical acceptable meal
for them would entail a proper table setup with plush seating and ambiance.
So, different expectations would determine what kind of planning and design
you would want to.

 Food attendants or waiters should literally “wait” for their guest when dining in
a restaurant. Anticipating guest needs is one of the primary responsibilities of
a waiter and that he/she should be good at it. It requires full attention so that
whenever a guest needs something, he/she could immediately handle the
concern and attend to the guest’s request. But it does not mean that the
waiter should be in close vicinity of the guest that the guest could actually see
and notice that the waiter is on “tiger look” at him/her. A guest need ample
space so that he/she could get the privacy that he/she wants. He/she need a
cozy environment that he/she could enjoy and spend it with people he/she
would want to be with. So, imagine if the waiter exaggeratingly anticipated the
needs to the highest level, the guest would be disappointed and it would ruin
the experience. The effort was too much. Thus, the management team needs
to constantly strategize and take into full account the expectations needed to
run this ever-changing and demanding industry.

 Depending on the service desired, most of our guests have general

similarities when it comes to their expectations. Their usual
expectations would be that the establishment be clean and the staff
be courteous, responsive, reliable, and friendly.
 These expectations usually go up if the establishment’s level of
service also goes up.
 Unfortunately, not all high-end or luxury establishments have
maintained this kind of service. Ekiz et al. (2012) noted in their article
that even in luxury hotels, there are still basic problems that are
actually unresolved, and with social media around, guests have easy
access to flaunt these problems which sets a springboard for other
problems.
Basic problems that are actually unresolved are the following:

1. Rooms – with concerns extending from small sized rooms to rooms with no
modern technology.
2. Arrogant and/or clueless staff – with comments ranging from staff being
rude and no answers to questions posed.
3. Failure to respond - mainly covering staff’s failure to respond to guest
complaints.
4. Poor delivery - covering complaints such as late service or wrong room
service and long process for check-ins/outs.
5. Cleanliness – with criticism on soiled linen, carpet, stains, and hair trapped in
bathtubs.
6. Amenities and utilities – with problems associated to the lack of inadequacy
of toiletries and items in minibar.
7. Billing – with guests grumbling about having them charged extra for parking,
internet, gym, and the like.

 Issues like these are typically simple to resolve but management should allot
time and enforce policies in monitoring these problems and ensure that
guest’s service is really a top priority.

 Customers / Guests / Clients

Customers, otherwise known as guests and clients, in the hospitality and

tourism business play a significant role in the operations. To understand their
behavior and to strategize the efforts of the company, it is important to identify and
match each need to each type of customer.

The Corporate Finance Institute (2015) had identified five basic types of
customers that a hospitality and tourism enterprise should be aware of.
1. loyal customers,
2. impulse customers,
3. discount customers,
4. need-based customers, and
5. wandering customers.

The loyal customers are actually the most important segment to please and
should be one of the priorities in mind of a specific company. Usually, this type of
customers represents no more than twenty percent (20%) of the customer base but
actually drives majority of the sales revenues. Because of this, it is important to note
that a loyal customer values a product heavily. Furthermore, they are more likely to
be the bearers of positive word of mouth (WOM) and likely to recommend the
company’s service products. Therefore, during the planning phase, even in the
decision-making process, these customers must be given heavy emphasis.

Impulse customers, are the best type to do suggestive selling. They are also
second to loyal customers when it comes to attractiveness in the market. As the
name implies, these customers do not have a shopping list in mind and do shopping
instinctively. Moreover, this kind of customers are receptive to recommendations on
products. Similar to loyal customers, it is also important to involve these customers
because what they say also matters in generating more service.

Discount customer are contributory to a company’s cash flow because the

products which are seldom purchased at full price are actually availed by these
customers as best markdowns.

Need-based customers are customers buy for a specific reason and

occasion, and because of this, it may be difficult to convince them to upsell. It is also
important to note that these customers are adept in avoiding any attempt for
upselling and that they will immediately leave after they are done getting what they
need. These customers are also easily drawn to other businesses, much more if the
price is cheaper and the alternative product can also serve its purpose. It is therefore
important to carefully initiate personal interaction with this segment in order to
develop a lasting relationship with them. It has also been observed that there is a
possibility to convert this segment to loyal customers. If a company can prove that
the service that it delivers could pose as a “need” for this segment, along with proper
positive personal interactions, it is expected that this segment will be loyal in the long
run.

The last type of customers is the wandering customer. These customers

generate the largest amount of traffic as they no specific need or desire in mind but
yield the smallest percentage in sales revenue. This type of customers enjoys social
interactions while shopping. Thus, spending a lot of time trying to please this
segment can draw away the other segment. Although, generating a small
percentage to revenue, it is important to note that this segment still provides
insightful information about the products and can therefore contribute to the
feedback mechanism of the company.

 Quality and value

 In the previous chapter, quality was defined individually. Here, we will view
quality as tied together to the concept of value and how it affects the guest
service staff relationship.
 The measure of quality for the guest is actually based on the difference
between their expectation and their experience (or as netizens quote it in
present memes, “reality”). By reality, it means what the guest have experience
in actual sense.
  For example, the quality that the guest experienced matches what he/she
expected. Then we can say that he/she has experience typical or normal
quality-positive as he/she was satisfied with the service provided.

 This is experienced when a persons is craving for chicken meal, for example,
in a fast-food outlet, and he/she feels that what he/she paid is fit for the
service provided or the product given, then we can say the he/she
experienced a negative quality.

 When evaluating quality, one needs to realize that quality can be high or low
regardless of how it costs the company.

 A porridge house in Manila that serves unlimited porridge to its customers

which are students, delivers high quality service as perceived by the students
who do not pay more than ₱50.00. While there are also first class restaurant
the buy fresh and expensive ingredients just to ensure the high quality of
service they consistently give.

Value, in relation to quality, would entail the study of costs.

 To measure the value derived from a guest experience, we need to
match if the costs incurred total of equal to the quality of the
experience.
 For example, a guest would be reserving for a spa session and would
be allotting time and paying for the service. This reservation of time,
effort, and money should equal the quality of the service provided so
as to say that the transaction has high value. Therefore, the time,
effort, and money should be studied very closely by the planner of
service experience so as to have a meaningful guest experience.

 The Customer and the Definition of Value

Since the tourism and hospitality industry is a guest centered or customer-

centered industry, ultimately, it is the customer who defines value. For example, a
sanitation inspector can say if a resort establishment violates or adhere to certain
law, but this will only be an add-on toward achieving value. Why? It is because the
guests does no see it. For the guests, the quote “To see it to believe,” works so
much. The output will be the ultimate measure whether a service design has been
crafted excellently. If the guests are dissatisfied or not happy with the outcome, it
does not matter if they have followed correctly the process. This is evident if, for
example, a guest would want to have a manicure or pedicure, and if a smudge
occurred while applying nail polish, the ultimate measure of the guest is your final
output, and he/she would be dissatisfied; or in a flight, for example, the airline
company promised a seamless transaction, but there are existed long queues,
expect a lot of complaints from the guests