Time to Deliver Real Results in Tourism

The anticipated merger of ATTTO, the Hospitality Standards Institute (HSI) and the Retail Institute is a timely opportunity for these ITOs to step back and take a good hard look at why they are not making more progress in raising service standards within the visitor industry.

It has been abundantly clear for a number of years now that just focusing on the customer service development of frontline staff is not the way to improve visitor service and experience levels across the industry according to Chris Bell Managing Director of Customer Experiences a company that specialises in the development of quality customer experiences.

Do I need to remind the industry again of the pre Rugby World Cup financial disaster that was the Kia Ora Mai Essential Service Skills program a heavily subsidised front-line training program that attracted very little participation from the industry contributing little to the improvement of service standards as a result.

It was clear from the lack of involvement from businesses with the Kia Ora Mai program that they understand from experience that this approach to service development does not produce results and ends up being a cost rather than an investment.

Working with the right development strategies we believe these 3 ITOs  will have a unique opportunity to have a significant impact on  the overall visitor experience. However this will not happen unless they get up to speed with 21st century methodologies around this area of business and industry service development.

Two major benefits of a quality visitor experience are repeat visit and today’s most powerful form of advertising word of mouth. 
It is clear that we are not currently fully capitalising on these benefits and that will have a significant impact on industry growth.

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Chris Bell is managing director of Customer Experiences, a company that specialises in helping businesses improve the way in which they interact with customers and clients. – chris@customerexperiences.co.nz; www.customerexperiences.co.nz 027 2792360