/ Pergamon

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Tourism Management, Vol. 17, No. 3, pp. 191-201, 1996 Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd

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Total quality management in hospitality: an application of the EFQM model C6sar Camis6n Jaume l University, Department of Business Management and Marketing, Campus Riu Sec, 12071 Castelldn, Spain

The importance of total quality management (TQM) in the tourist industry has risen to an extraordinary level because of the change in preferences of tourists' behaviour and the growth of competitiveness of new tourist destinations. The application of existing, well-tested ideas on quality improvement is an important issue to tourist enterprises. This paper researches, first, the process of cultural change in Valencian hospitality organizations originated by these environment transformations. Among the available models of TQM, we selected the model proposed by the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), as support for the European Quality Award, to make a cross-analysis of the views of quality from the standpoint of management and external customers in Valencia's hotel industry. This study presents empirical evidence on the extent to which the EFQM quality model might assist Valencian hoteliers to know and to close the gap between perceptions of quality and self-assessed ratings of quality performance. Copyright © 1996 Elsevier Science Ltd

Kcywords: total quality managemen t , service quality, quality grading systems, European Quality Award, Valenc im hospitality industry

Quality is shaped at present as a fundamental strategy for the support and improvement of com- petitiveness. Even though the germ of most tech- niques and methods of total quality management (TQM) is located in the industry, and especially in the automobile industry, many other sectors are introducing similar practices. The general applicabil- ity of TQM ideas, systems and procedures has generated its spreading into an increasing number of service companies, tourist companies amongst them. Consequently, research focused on TQM imple- mentation in tourist firms has grown in an important way. i ~,

The available literature and wide empirical evi- dence show the crucial role that the application of ideas on and well-tested approaches to quality im- provement plays in the successful diffusion of TQM in the tourist business and, specifically, in hotel services. Two factors seem particularly decisive: • The introduction of a TQM system requires large-

scale changes, both of the management tools used

and those concerning the organizational struc- tures, attitudes and behaviour of all the members of the organization. The size of the transforma- tion necessary reveals that the lasting organiza- tional change in total quality implies a change in the culture of the organization, which should necessarily be brought in by the management.

• Changing the organizational structure towards total quality means providing all the members of an organization with a shared values system, and implementing a powerful and commonly accepted method for keeping this alive by means of con- tinuous practice, centred on top management action and socialization work, amongst which training and recycling play an essential role.

To insert the system of values into the organization cultural fabric and transform its members' ways of perceiving, thinking and acting, requires a method of implementation. The method, conceived as the set of systems and procedures that keep up the daily practice of the essential values of total quality in the

191

Total quality management in hospitality: C Cam&On

I LEADERSHIP i0 % j ..

I I 5 8% 9% R

PROCESSES 50 % 14 % r

PNOPI~ ON ~_ . ~ CIISTOMER ~ [ IsMP ~ ON

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Figure 1 The total quality management model of the EFQM

entire organization, varies broadly, since each com- pany has its own version adapted to its culture and competitive strategy.

Nonetheless, there is a series of broad ideas, based on a relevant number of successful experi- ences, that enables us to contrast them empirically. Amongst these, one might mention methods such as those of Crosby, 7 Deming, ~ or Juran and Gryna, 9 as well as the approaches that stem from the different quality prizes which were started to encourage the implementation of total quality plans in companies. These plans are used with increasing frequency as tools for evaluating and improving the quality system of a company. The first award was estab- lished in 1951 in Japan. It was called 'Deming' as a tribute to the main who, with his teachings about quality, played a decisive role in the Japanese economic recovery. In 1987, the 'Malcolm Baldrige' award was created in the USA. This initiative was followed in Europe in 1991, when the European Foundation for Quality Management (EFQM), together with the European Organization for Quali- ty (EOQ) and the European Commission, created the 'European Quality Award' in order to improve the quality and reliability of products and services. It takes two forms: • The 'European Quality Award', which rewards

the company that is the maximum exponent of TQM in Western Europe;

• The 'European Quality Prize', which rewards a certain number of companies that show the excellence of their quality management as a basic process of continuous improvement.

The European quality model allows strengths and weaknesses to be distinguished clearly, focusing on the relationship among personnel, processes and results. Processes are the means through which a company guides and liberates its staff's aptitudes with the aim of getting results. Therefore, processes and people are the 'agents' that provide 'results'.

The model that serves as a basis for the European Quality Award, represented in Figure 1, forms a management system that emphasizes maintaining leadership for achieving quality, formulating a policy and strategy to follow, developing the appropriate personnel and resources management and guiding the design of all the processes in the company towards customers, in order to attain excellence in results: customer satisfaction, personnel satisfaction, a positive social impact and some economic results that allow the achievement of a competitive advan- tage. Each of the nine elements that appear in the model matches the criteria used by the EFQM to evaluate the level of excellence of a company, and the percentage is the weight given to the element in question in the self-evaluation (on a total of 1.000 points). J0

The diffusion of these ideas and methods of tested efficacy in the tourist firm have been scarce. The example of the Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company can give us an important lesson in this respect. Even though the reputation of this chain has always rested on taking care of the high-quality consumer, the recession at the end of the 1980s led to this firm's taking a further step along the path to total quality, in order to cut costs and reduce the variability of the service. The commitment of its management (which spends around a quarter of its time on matters connected with quality) and the staff (on the basis of empowerment systems) led to the Ritz-Carlton being awarded the qualification of best company in the hotel business in 1991 by the three big 'hotel- rating' concerns, and to winning the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award in 1992.11

In the European tourist business, we believe that the model supporting the European Quality Award is a valuable contribution to improving total quality in tourist services organizations. Embracing the dynamic of using it would enable comparative analysis and benchmarking with competing Euro- pean companies in the future (when a wider data- base is available).

Valencian tourist company: an analysis of its challenges according to the EFQM model This stocktaking of lessons learnt has led to an interest in research designed to find out whether tourist businesses in the Valencian community have proper and suitable TQM plans implemented, with sufficient consistency to be compared with competi- tive European or worldwide tourist firms.

The specific choice of the Valencian hotel industry as the subject for empirical analysis was not only due to our experience and knowledge of this field, but also to the intensity of the quality problems which this reveals. Several studies t~-'4 on the evolution of the tourist sector during the 1980s and early 1990s have revealed a series of factors directly responsible

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for the deterioration of the traditional competitive advantage of the Valencian community's tourism product.

The main problem of Valencian hotel firms is related to the first criterion in the European model for quality: leadership. Management and business- men showed little interest in undertaking quality improvement, also ignoring their fundamental role to inspire and guide in the necessary cultural change towards total quality. Their lack of conviction con- cerning total quality as a main method for con- tinuous company improvement has become evident in their absence of commitment, important mistakes in recognition of efforts and achievements of indi- viduals and groups, no provision of necessary re- sources, little participation with customers and sup- pliers in improvement projects, and their almost non-existent involvement in promoting quality in their environment.

Diagnosis of the problems has also confirmed the intensity of the challenges raised at the strategic level, the second criterion in the European model: policy and strategy. On the one hand, external strategic analysis places Valencian hotel companies in the context of the tourist industry in the Medi te r ranean area, which, as the millennium approaches is facing up to a number of changes which could seriously detract from its traditional competitive advantages. Most of these challenges are connected with the changes observed in tourists" behaviour, combined with the heightening of efforts to appropriate tourist flows. One of the most impor- tant of these is the upswing of tourist destinations far from the world's main demographic and economic centres (Western Europe and North America). Although the main recipient countries (United States, France, Spain and Italy) still continue to draw the largest number of visitors, the spectrum of aiternative tourist products can be seen to be broadening, with the appearance of new destinations such as China or Santo Domingo (in general, Far Eastern and Central American/Caribbean areas) which have risen to extraordinary levels (such as the Western Pacific's 9.4% of the yearly average be- tween 1990 and 1993). This change in travellers' preferences on their holiday trips accompanies the saturation found as a whole on the European conti- nent as recipient and the downward trend of trips to places in Africa, Eastern Europe and the Near East. ~Ihis fact reflects another important change in be- haviour: the deviation of tourist flows to regions and/or tourist resorts which offer greater real or apparent safety for travellers.

Another key factor in the change in tourists' behaviour, connected with the customer satisfaction criterion, has been the swing in their preferences, more and more towards tourist products with a better quality/price ratio. Is 22 This trend has often been misunderstood as meaning that tourists were

Fotal quality management in hospitality: (" Camis6n

beginning to want more luxurious installations with high prices, as a result of confusing the concept of quality with 'the most ostentatious' or 'the most luxurious" in tourist guidelines. This fallacy should be set to rights, since quality does not necessarily mean luxury or sophistication, if the client does not request this. 7 If a Ritz hotel complies with all the specifications of the Ritz product as this is deter- mined on the basis of its customers" needs and requirements, then this is a quality hotel; if a moun- tain hostel complies with all the specifications that the users demand of such premises, then this is quality accommodat ion , whatever the 'official" category in both cases. Luxury or lack of this comes to mean in practice particular specifications such as fur rugs or oilcloth tablecloths, original pictures by top artists or cheap reproductions, but not necessari- ly a higher quality level.

Internal strategic analysis explains as well some other origins of the quality problems in the Valen- clan hotel industry. Strategic formal management systems are unusual and, when existing, there is little incorporation of total quality principles into policies and strategy. [t is infrequent to find a formal quality system that sets objectives, action plans and periodic audits and improvement procedures. TQM wdue in encouraging constant improvement means scaling management decisions on an extended horizon, an attitude that is not commonly found in the tourist industry, largely through its problems of seasonality.

Personnel management is another key factor in the quality dimension. Competitive adwmtage in the hotel business is closely connected with its organiza- tional ability, including quality in human resources. Service quality bears a positive relation to resources availability, a firm's training and recycling policy, and the retention of its valuable staff in an effort to decrease the typical high turnover rate in the hotel industry. Credibility in the message of quality to be transmitted to the whole organization will depend upon a sensible choice in these criteria. The typical Valencian hotel firm is characterized precisely by the opposite: the staff are predominantly temporary, being the seasonal labour force expanded by work- ers with no specific experience in the hotel business; there is a minimum effort at training and recycling and only slightly participative human resources man- agement systems that generate little involvement of the worker in the company and hinder any TQM project. Therefore , the absence of either systems for measuring staff needs, expectations and level of satisfaction, or programmes designed to increase this satisfaction should not cause surprise; in the same way, external studies researching staff's perceptions of their company report serious conflicts.

Resources management is not characterized by the continuous search for improvement through the optimization of financial, material, infi~rmative and technological resources in support of company poli-

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Total quality management in hospitality: C CamisOn

cy and strategy. Under a total quality approach, the hotel firm should focus its material resources on the improvement of its infrastructure for quality; in- stead, there is a minimum effort at maintenance and modernization of installations which, together with many hotels being old, leads to obsolete and poorly maintained hotel plant requiring high investment to fulfil both technical norms set by current legislation and market requirements. In the same way, tech- nological resources should be assigned to generate advantages in differentiation or costs; and the in- formation system should provide quick, suitable and safe data for the continuous improvement process, whereas, in reality, Valencian hotel firms suffer from notorious technological delay. Examples of this are the high number of non-computerized hotels, the concentration of computing in applications generat- ing little value or the delay in the introduction of computerized reservation systems. The concept of 'strategic computing' as a competitive advantage has not been applied and may accentuate problems of lack of competitiveness, particularly as contrasted with hotel chains working fruitfully for decades with these innovations. 23

Another basic criterion in the European model is process management. Critical processes (or generat- ing added-value activities) must be identified, re- vised and optimized in order to better a business in a continuous way. For this to occur, innovation and creativity are essential elements. These administra- tive guidelines are unusual in the Valencian hotel industry. Service requirements in each key process for success in guest satisfaction do not stem, as they should, from any identification of customers' (exter- nal and internal) needs, but from traditional proce- dures, the logic of which few stop to think about. Process management is rarely aimed at auditing and control of such critical processes, and opportunities to address potentially improvable areas are missed. Even less common are the encouragement of in- novation initiatives and creativity in process im- provement that either enable conformity with speci- fications or, by means of redesign of processes, increase standards to fulfil customers' needs.

Lack of market orientation of Valencian hotel companies results in poorness or non-existence of customer satisfaction measuring systems. Attributes of the product that add value for the customer and improve his or her satisfaction are unknown, which gives no guide to agents for improvement projects.

The social impact of tourism is a controversial issue. Its positive contributions to employment crea- tion and its multiplicative effect upon the economy are countered by adverse effects on the environ- ment, natural resources and the town-planning situa- tion that usually place the tourist business on the critical wave of certain social movements. In this sense, Valencian hotel companies have almost com- pletely failed to make any commitments towards

their environment and incorporate these as new quality attributes.

Economic results reveal that labour productivity is notably lower than the European average. Organiza- tional efficiency (measured as workers' average per room) seems higher, but hides an insufficient supply of staff, an important cause of the low service quality.

These problems and challenges were outlined in the diagnosis of the situation and perspectives of tourism in the Valencian community, defined in the White Book of Tourism in the Valencian Community (1990). Consequently, programmes and action plans to try and reach the objective of the Generalitat Valenciana tourist policy were proposed. This fun- damental objective would be specified in Valencian tourist product redefinition. It would be given dif- ferentiating characteristics from those supplied by competing destinations, improving the positioning of existing demand segments, taking up new market niches and adapting them to present and potential demands; and would be responsible for the com- munication of a suitable tourist image for the Valen- cian community, enabling and emphasizing optimum conditions for diffusion and placing of tourist pro- ducts. Responsibility for planning and implementing Generalitat Valenciana tourist policy rested, until 1991, on both the Valencian Tourist Institute (VTI) and the Conselleria d'Industria, Comer~ i Turisme and, since 1992, the VTI assumed all the competen- cies. They had to design action programmes attempting to increase Valencian tourist product quality, diversification supply, betterment of promo- tion and marketing/commercialization systems and enable effective coordination among different gov- ernments and sector agents.

In 1991, the Tourist Government Office of Gener- alitat Valenciana designed a Quality Improvement Plan for the tourist industry. Its fundamental objec- tive was to encourage a culture of quality in the sector, trying to get all implicated agents' commit- ment: businessmen, employees, customers and gov- ernment. This work would join the infrastructures of modernization and training effort. Quality improve- ment of the tourist offer was considered a dynamic objective since it implies a process of continuous adaptation to changing market features; because of that, the plan was not thought of as closed but was conceived as a plan open to unforeseen and timely changes. The message to consolidate would be: Valencian tourism is a synonym for quality of ser- vice.

Plan objectives were concentrated on two points. The first was creation and promotion amongst all the agents in the sector of interest in quality as the essential element of competitiveness, thinking about it as a cornerstone in the strategic plan of a tourist company. The second was the introduction into the tourist businesses of tools, techniques and quality improvement systems, since only by means of the

194

introduction and use of demonstrated efficacy could TQM benefits be realized.

The proposed strategy rested on four basic main- stays: quality sensitizing and communication, im- plantation of tools and techniques of quality man- agement, training in respect of quality and plan monitoring and animation.

Two phases could be distinguished in this policy: • A first stage, initiated with the 1990s sensitizing

campaign whose slogan was 'Things well done with a smile', was directed at improving the quality of the service provided and recommend- ing pleasant dealings with new visitors and tour- ists. This phase was specified in 1991 programmes and stressed sector mobilization towards the im- portance of quality. It defined two programmes:

(a) Quali ty di f fus ion p rogramme . This aimed to create a favourable opinion amongst business- men and professionals concerning the importance of and need for quality in tourist firms, both in terms of the customer service perspective and the company's own profitability, and to provide the necessary means to achieve optimum manage- ment in this field. Its main fruit was a set of seminars and conferences on that issue through- out the Valencian community.

(b) Quali ty managemen t p rogramme . The pur- pose of this was to improve quality in manage- ment and service provided in hotels by means of studies and diagnosis of quality management in companies.

• A second stage, undertaken in 1992 and 1993 by the Valencian Tourist Institute, extended its ac- tion setting and offered, in the same way, sub- sidies for elaborating Quality Improvement Plans that had necessarily been preceded by a quality audit.

Beneficiaries of these quality management program- mes were hotel establishments, tourist camps, res- toration businesses and travel agencies. Subsidies could amount to 100% of the audit costs and 50% of the plan costs, bearing in mind limits set every year for maximum levels.

During the 1991-93 period, 209 companies of the Valencian community benefited from this assistance. Of this, 93% was for carrying out quality audits and the remaining 7% was for elaborating improvement plans. The scheme received Ptas 79 million support from the government, 77% of it assigned to audits. These figures show the interest raised by the quality topic among a wide group/body of Valencian tourist companies. Nonetheless, they also reveal the minor- ity character of improvement plans since interest was mainly focused on auditing. Data on applications for 1994, still to be finalized, confirm this trend: 113 audit projects (26.5% of them are hotel establish- ments) as opposed to 29 improvement plans (65.5% relating to hotels).

Total quality management in hospitality: C Camis6n

This brief summary of the policy carried out enables us to draw two important conclusions:

• These actions had a notable impact on the Valen- cian tourist industry, starting an increasing man- agerial awakening to both the competitive value of quality and to external quality audits carried out by consulting firms.

• Nonetheless, it is time to reflect on the actual impact these quality auditing and improvement policies has on Valencian tourist companies, and to wonder whether this effort is big enough to instil into them a real quality culture, beyond isolated actions and timely investments. To date, most attention has been directed to practical issues of how to improve quality rather than to understanding its essential nature and how to assure it.

In this sense, systematic planning of models and procedures for implementing total quality manage- ment is lacking in Valencian tourist companies, as well as in the improvement plans implemented under the Public Tourist Administration. This un- avoidable task is much more complex than the mere definition and measurement (whether periodic or non-periodic) of a set of standards, that, in any event, forms a stage in the overall quality process, s

Being aware of these malfunctions, the Valencian Tourist Institute initiated in 1995 a strategic change with the starting of a 'Program to encourage the implantation of total quality management in the Valencian tourist firm'. Its objective is the result of reflection on the inadequacies of previous plans: raising the quality of management and service pro- vided by tourist establishments by means of putting into effect systems and procedures of demonstrated efficacy for TQM.

Implementation of this programme is established in two phases. The first is addressed at sensitizing and training tourist firms" managers through a course on 'Total Quality in the Tourist Firm', based on self-evaluation study cases and application of the EFQM model for TQM. Companies that show in- terest and aptitude during this stage enter, at no additional cost, a second phase, in which they are assisted by experts to develop self-assessmeni fol- lowing the criteria of the European model of TQM. The objective is to place the enterprise on the threshold of the real implementation of a TQM system.

Objectives and methodology of the empirical study* As a previous step to the implementation of this * The results of this empirical analysis are partially based on I K0ster and S Cruz, The Valencian Hospitality Enterprise and the European Quali O' Award, Research Paper, Faculty of Economics and Business Sciences, University of Valencia, 1994.

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Total quality management in hospitality: C Camis6n programme, an empirical study was carried out on the Valencian hotel business. Its main aim was to analyse the existing gap between the perception of their quality by their customers and the self- evaluation by their management on their companies' quality performance on the basis of the European quality model. A further aim was to make an attempt to stimulate processes of self-evaluation in the group examined as to their own quality, to bring up doubts and areas for possible improvements.

The study was carried out through two 'partially independent ' empirical investigations, since they re- sponded to one and the same model of self- evaluation of total quality and reflected the same reality, total quality of the Valencian hotel business, even though this stems from dissimilar approaches: management and external customers.

The first step in the evaluation process was to design the questionnaire to obtain accurate data. Bearing in mind the aims of the research work, it was necessary to design two different question- naires, one for the management of the business in question and another for the external customers of the said hotels.

To determine the relevant variables to be studied, each of the nine criteria of the European TQ M model was divided into sections. Each section was evaluated through one or several questions, which were scored from 0 to 100% on a basis of two combined factors: the degree of excellence of the method adopted and the degree of implantation of the method (Table 1). The qualification of each section was the arithmetic mean of the questions in it. The evaluation of each criterion was the arithme- tic mean of the qualifications of its sections. Scoring on each criterion was done by weighting its assess- ment (in %) by the respective factor the model gives to it and thereby getting the total evaluation in points. The overall evaluation is the addition of the points in each criterion.

All in all, the document for the managers' self- evaluation had 33 items to be assessed, whilst the one for the customers only had 23, as the items 'Policy and strategy' and 'Economic results' were not included since they were considered not to be measurable, appreciable or known by the customers of the respective hotel business. In any event, the tangible and intangible items that the prior research showed to be important were includedfl 4-27

Before starting real work on self-assessment, man- agers of the hotels to be evaluated were trained in a two-day seminar. During this, they were trained in the E u r o p e a n T Q M model fundamenta ls and methodology, and an overall self-evaluation case was studied. Each hotel was assigned a tutor expert in TQM from a three-person team that helped the managers during the complete self-assessment pro- cess in the resolution of methodological doubts.

The final sample of companies examined consisted

of 38 hotels, which were studied on the basis of two segmentation criteria: the type of accommodation business (differentiating between urban, inland and seaside hotels) and the 'official' quality of the estab- lishment (from one to five stars).

The consumer representative sample was selected at random and was made up of 250 persons who were customers of at least one hotel located in the Valencian community. There was no discrimination as to age, sex or level of income. It was sufficient for the people interviewed to have been in any hotel from the sample being studied. The personal inter- view was used as a work tool, by means of a closed structured questionnaire. The samples chosen were asked about their perception of the structuring and management of quality at the hotels at which they stayed. The questionnaire gave information on a maximum of three different hotels at which each customer interviewed had stayed. The field work was carried out during the months of July and August 1994.

Quality of the Valencian hotel business: customers vs management The results of the research (Tables 2 and 3) first reveal serious disagreements in the evaluation of the total quality of the Valencian hotel business by its customers and management. In general, the evalua- tions by the customers of the total quality of the hotels studied are less favourable than the quality assessed by the management.

The most acute differences were found in the criteria of customer satisfaction and staff satisfac- tion, showing an assessment by the management of their performance in quality quite above the quality perceived by customers. This fact could indicate the business's ignorance as regards the problems of attitude, aptitude and integration in the organization of its own human resources. This point is particularly serious, since the research has shown the importance in customer satisfaction of training, motivation, par- ticipation and satisfaction of staff. 2s The lowest qualification was given to resources, both by man- agement and by customers. It can be seen that the hotels analysed had a problem with the resources available, which affects the level of equipment and the range of services offered.

The management 's overvaluation of quality can also be appreciated if we compare the overall repre- sentative mark of the organization's total quality (540.75 points) with the standards of excellence of the companies that won the European Quality Award in earlier years. If we compare the self- assessments in each of the nine criteria with the distribution of marks obtained by the organizations which entered for the EFQM in 1992 (Table 4), we observe Valencian hotel management placed them- selves in the category agents, except for resources,

196

Total quality management in hospitality: C ('amisdn

"Fable 1 Scoring system of enablers and results in the EFQM model

Approach/results Score (% ~ Deployment/scope

Enablers The assessor scores each part of the enablers criteria on the basis of the combinat ion of two factors: 1. Fhe degree of excellence of your approach, 2. The degree of deployment of your approach. Anecdotal or non-value adding I) Somc evidence of soundly based approaches and prevent ion-based 25 systems. Subjective to occasional review. Some areas of integration into normal operation Evidcncc of soundly based systematic approaches and prevent ion-based 5(I systems. Subject to regular review with respect to business cffcctiveness. Integration into normal operat ions and planning well established ( ' lear evidcncc of soundly based systematic approaches and prevention- 75 based systems. Clear evidence of ref inement and improved business cflectivencss through review cycles. Good integration of approach inlo normal opcrations and planning (7lear evidcncc of soundly based systematic approaches and prevention- l(ll) Applied to full potential in all based systems. Clear evidence of ref inement and improved business relevant areas and aetivitics cftcctivencss through review cycles. Approach has become totally integrated into normal working patterns. Could be used a role model for other organizations For both 'Approach ' and "Deployment ' , the assessor may choose one of five levels 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% ;,is presented in the chart, or interpolate between thcsc values.

Results The assessor scores each of the results criteria on the basis of the combinat ion of two factors: I. The degree of excellence of your results. 2. The scope of your results. Anecdotal I)

Some results show positive trends. Some favourable comparisons with 25 own targets

Many results show positive trends over at least 3 years. Favourable 50 comparisons with own targets in many areas. Some comparisons with external organizations. Some results are caused by approach Most results show strongly positive trends over at least 3 years. 75 Favourable comparisons with own targets in many areas. Favourable comparisons with external organizations in many areas. Many results are caused by approach Strongly positive t rends in all areas over at least 5 years. Excellent lt)l) colnparisons with own targets and external organizations in most areas. 'Best in Class" in many areas of activity. Results are clearly caused by approach. Positive indication that leading position will be mainta ined

Linle effective usage

Applied to about onc-quar tcr of the potential when considering all relevant arcas and activitics Applied to about hall the potential when considering all relevant areas and activities

Applied to about three-quarters of the potential when considering all relevant areas and activities

Results address few rclcvant areas and activities Results address some relevant areas and aetivites Results address many relevant areas and activities

Results address most relevant areas and activities

Results address ;`ill relevant areas and facets of the organization

For both 'Rcsults ' and 'Scope' , the assessor may choose one of five levels 0%, 25%, 50%, 75%, or 100% as presented in thc chart, or interpolate between these values.

Source: EFQM (1994).

normally within the top 25% of European com- panies. In results, the social impact and economic results also receive high marks, although the most outstanding factor is this group's conviction that its staff's satisfaction level is on a par with the 10% of excellent companies in Europe, and even that cus- tomer satisfaction has no comparison with any candi- date for said year.

A more segmented analysis of the sample enables the opinions to be adjusted and to obtain four relevant conclusions:

Urban hotels emerge as the accommodat ion busi- ness with greater standards of excellence, from the standpoints of both customers and manage- ment. The widest gap can be observed in coastal hotels, in which customers' dissatisfaction is evident in all criteria. These. appear to be the hotels least adapted to their customers' needs and require- ments, They are particularly critical in resources, revealing their awareness of the obsolescence of installations and the broad margin of improve-

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Table 4 Assessment distribution of applicant enterprises for European Quality Award (1992)

% mark Criteria 0-10 11-20 21-30 31-40 41-50 51-60 61-70 71-80 81-90

Leadership 0 (I 5 30 20 20 25 0 0 Pol. and strat. 0 5 10 25 20 15 10 5 10 Pers. manag. 0 0 5 25 20 15 25 10 (I Resources 5 0 5 15 25 15 20 15 0 Processes 0 0 5 25 35 1(~ 10 15 (I Client satisf. 0 5 15 20 20 111 10 20 0 Persn. satisl. 0 10 20 25 0 2(! 15 10 11 Social impact 0 5 10 30 15 25 5 10 0 Econ. results 0 0 5 25 30 1(I 10 211 0

Source: European Foundation for Quality Management (1994).

ment in equipment. They are also the ones with a management team that is the least critical and ready to recognize areas that can be improved, probably, as their own customers point out, be- cause their leadership potential and commitment towards total quality is low.

• A clear negative relationship between economic profitability (stated by the company) and the gap perceived in self-assessment of quality-quality performance appears.

• Customers' perception of the social impact of the hotels means a negative valuation of their integra- tion into the environment. This aspect requires special attention, since the level of social de- mands on companies is growing considerably and will be reflected in the scale of attributes which make up the consumer's purchase decision stan- dards. Specially worrying is the evaluation made of the coastal hotels, which are severely criticized and held responsible for the lack of efficiency that Valencia's anarchic tourist development has caused along its whole seaboard. In the case of inhmd hotels, this constitutes an invitation to take heed of the scale of values of its objective market, which is highly concerned with environmental impact and conservation of heritage.

The analysis according to the 'official' category of the establishment shows some significant facts:

• There is a sustained growth in all the agents' criteria, both in the quality perceived by the customer and the quality recognized by manage- ment, as the number of stars increases, which should be attributed to higher quality in human resources management and to better provision of assets. Therefore , as the 'official' quality goes up, so does the agreement between the quality per- ceived by both customer and management.

• This parallel progress is less accentuated in the results, and particularly in customer satisfaction. It should be deduced from this data that the 'official" category could be a good indicator of design quality, but is not necessarily so for the quality of conformity and the quality of service,

which undergo certain stagnation, because of an important gap between the specifications achieved in the rendering of the service and the customer's perception of quality of the service rendered. This conclusion is important for the debate now in progress as to the equivalence of the different systems for hotel quality categorization.>'~° One- and two-star hotels form a high-risk group, owing to their lack of knowledge of the quality demanded by the market and to their ignorance of important non-quality areas which must surely lie at the origins of the unsatisfactory economic results achieved by these hotels. An inverse relation between quality of economic results and the gap can be observed, although this trend breaks in four-star hotels. A possible ex- planation of this may lie in the financial repercus- sions of the specially intense 'pincer effect' suf- fered by this group, caused by hotels with greater quality of design and, possibly, greater quality of conformity and service (mainly five-star hotels), and hotels with design quality adapted to the needs and requirements of their customers and more competitive prices (mostly three-star hotels).

Conc lus ions TQM is seen to be an essential management technol- ogy for laying the foundations of competitiveness for tourist concerns and their search for excellence at the present time, characterized by an urgent need to confront the universalization of the economy and a hostile and turbulent environment in which competi- tiveness requires more and more management capacity.

Nevertheless, empirical research developed on the EFQM model of TQM as a support for the Euro- pean Quality Award and on the two 'partially depen- dent ' stages of the methodology we constructed reveals great backwardness in Valencia's hotel in- dustry on the road towards total quality, which is particularly acute in the coastal accommodation

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Total quality management in hospitality: C Camis6n

sector of low 'official' quality (one to three stars). On the one hand, the research allowed us to

discover the existence of serious distancing between the quality perceived by the customer and the quali- ty recognized by management, mainly in customer satisfaction and personnel satisfaction criteria. The management of the Valencian tourist business con- sider they have already implemented reliable and suitable TQM programmes which will enable them to catch up with the European companies considered as excellent, or even surpass them in some criteria. These views seem to be on an exercise in self- indulgence rather than constituting critical self- evaluation work. There is a worrying lack of con- sciousness by the hotel management concerning the improvement possibilities still hidden in their orga- nizations that may impede their actions for con- tinuous betterment.

To surpass the significant gap between the diverg- ing perceptions of tourists and hotel managers, the Valencian hotel industry must assign ideas of well- tested efficacy to improving quality, the EFQM model among them. Bringing the manager per- spective close to the consumer perspective demands the implementation of a management style orien- tated to the market, and the introduction of an organizational change to total quality management. Valencian hotel managers must emphasize their role as leaders in this cultural change, and intensify their efforts to infuse their industry with a value system designed in favour of the client (which will require an obsession with customer satisfaction) and the protagonists in this process (care of front-line per- sonnel, client-supplier focus, commitment and empowerment, and training at all levels).

Research, therefore, strengthens the importance of quality self-evaluation by the hotel industry. Regular and systematic revision by companies of activities and results may lead to a wide range of advantages, amongst them: • measuring the degree of matching of customers

needs and expectations, and comparing the re- suits with perceived quality;

• acting as a basis for the strategic process, identify- ing improvement activities;

• controlling competitiveness in quality with the help of benchmarking exercises.

On the other hand, the study has provided evidence of the scant value of the 'official' qualification sys- tems for hotels, owing to their concentration on the physical standards made material in the quality of design, and to the fact that they ignore service standards. The slowing down of the conformity quality growth as the 'official' quality (a good indica- tor of design quality) goes up should lead to reflec- tion by hotel management, since it implies an impor- tant loss of profitability. We know that costs increase with quality of design, and that this greater invest-

merit is only economically justifiable when it gener- ates company income differentiating this from its competitors; and, conversely, costs go down as the conformity of quality rises. Consequently, Valencian hotel companies with the highest official qualifica- tions could be undervaluing the business opportuni- ties the greater design quality of their establishments offers, as their conformity and service quality are not on a par with the design specifications in which the needs and requirements of their customers are framed. Both these phenomena involve higher costs or losses of income which detract from their operat- ing accounts.

The development of new systems of qualification, able to evaluate the total quality of a hotel business, is coming forward as a. promising area for research and is of undoubted usefulness, owing to its con- tribution to eliminating information asymmetry.

Acknowledgement This study benefited from a grant from the Spanish Education and Science Ministry (ref PB93-0692, DGICYT).

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