Student 316974

Managing Quality in Hospitality,

Tourism and Events

Student: 316974

Report for the Quality Managers of Airbnb

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Contents:

Executive Summary………………………………………………………………………………….…3

The concept of Quality Management………………………………………………………….4

Airbnb History…………………………………………………………………………………………….6

Airbnb experiencing problems in 2019-2020.……………….…………………………….6

Quality managers at Airbnb…………………………………..………………………….………..7

Techniques for effective quality management…………………………………………….8

Dimensions of Service Quality at Airbnb……………………………………………………..9

Recommendations / Conclusion…………………………………………………………………11

Reference list……………………………………………………………………………………………..12

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Executive Summary

An organisation or a company has goals and projects for their future, a long
term strategic plan which can be implemented and updated for a shorter or a
longer period and, in this regard, monitoring, implementing and developing a
strong Quality Management will lead to a strong knowledge of the market and
its key factors to lead to success.

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1. The concept of Quality Management

Quality management represents the operation of inspecting all activities,

duties and projects required to preserve the aimed level of supremacy,
including the dedication to follow and improve the quality standards. By
improving, means that there should be implemented plans and strategies for
quality enhancement. This philosophy is a fairly new implemented
phenomenon, which has its origins younger than one hundred years.

The term of Quality Management is generalized as a long term goal constituted

with a multitude of short term targets and initiatives.

Every company that wants to improve their services and quality should pay a
vast attention to its stakeholders, and, as known from the history and
statistics, the first key stakeholders are customers and they represent the
primordial key to success. The customers high level of satisfaction, leads to the
success of the company. The Quality Management business ideology consider
that all stakeholders should and have to work together in order to improve the
quality.

From the concept, can be exposed four main important segments: quality
improvement, quality control, quality planning and quality assurance. Quality
management has seven principles:

I. Customer focus

This principle is the first and considered the most important one because every
organisation or company must dedicate towards relation with clients or
customers, to achieve their satisfaction and expectations.

II. Leadership

An exceptional leadership will lead to success by creating strong relations in

the team, implementing new strategies to be followed, monitoring targets and
objectives, asses’ situations, and exploit their potential.

III. Engagement of people

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Involving staff and giving them power to create values, and, also motivating
them and developing their skills, is another important principle of the concept.

IV. Process approach

This principle refers to the company or organisation performance which

depends structurally by accomplish effectiveness and efficiency. This includes
reducing costs by continuously monitor the actives.

V. Continuous improvement

Every company is meant to focus of their continuous improvement and, by

doing this, the performance will improve.

VI. Evidence based decision making

Decisions that are made, based on research, analysis and feedback, are one of
the best strategies, according to the studies, because they are based on a
better understanding of the market.

VII. Relationship management

This principle reveals the undeniable importance of creating and maintaining

the relations between key parties such as retailers and suppliers.

The Quality Management gurus can be identified as: ``Dr. W. Edwards

Deming, Dr. Joseph Juran, Philip Crosby, Armand V. Feigenbaum, Dr. H. James
Harrington, Dr. Kaoru Ishikawa, Dr. Walter A. Shewhart, Shigeo Shingo,
Frederick Taylor, and Dr. Genichi Taguchi—have made a significant impact on
the world through their contributions to improving not only businesses, but all
organizations including state and national governments, military organizations,
educational institutions, healthcare organizations, and many other
establishments and organizations.``

https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Pr-Sa/Quality-
Gurus.html#ixzz65p2HoGmb

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2. Airbnb History

Airbnb was founded in August of 2008 in San Francisco in California. Since

that time, Airbnb, Inc. has evolved into the world’s leading community-driven
hospitality company (Airbnb Newsroom, 2019).

Airbnb is one of the world’s largest marketplaces for unique, authentic

places to stay and things to do, offering over 7 million accommodations and
40,000 handcrafted activities, all powered by local hosts. An economic
empowerment engine, Airbnb has helped millions of hospitality entrepreneurs
monetize their spaces and their passions while keeping the financial benefits of
tourism in their own communities. With more than half a billion guest arrivals
to date, and accessible in 62 languages across 220+ countries and regions,
Airbnb promotes people-to-people connection, community and trust around
the world.

https://news.airbnb.com/about-us/

2.1 Airbnb experiencing problems in 2019 - 2020

Airbnb in 2019 has received appalling ratings on a review website like Trust
pilot with regards to their provision of bookings and customer service.
Trustpilot rated Airbnb.com 1.3/10 while Airbnb.co.uk was rated 2.3/10
(Trustpilot, 2019)

According to Trustpilot, Airbnb is receiving very poor reviews regarding

their service quality and the Competition and Markets Authority stated that
Airbnb is using tactics “to trick the customers” with fake discounts and short
fake availability in order to force the customers to book quicker.

In 2020, according to Trustpilot, Airbnb, has an overall rating of 1.6/10, which

is a substantial decrease from 2019, even is just 0.2%, happened in just 3
months.

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``Airbnb is a $30+ billion company with 150 million users in over 65,000 cities.
For something that size, problems are bound to pop up: discrimination, illegal
listings, hosts using spy cams, unnecessary fees, etc. Admittedly, some of the
news is sensationalist. ``

https://www.google.com/search?
rlz=1C1CHBF_enGB844GB844&ei=tSJiXv7kLI6EhbIP3eeXqAM&q=airbnb+busin
ess+problems&oq=airbnb+bad+company

``The vast majority of Airbnb rentals go smoothly, but do you know what to do
when they don’t? What happens if your host cancels your booking two days
before you arrive, or the spacious bedroom shown in a listing turns out to be
the size of a closet?

Airbnb problems like these don’t have to ruin your trip. Below we explain how
to resolve seven common Airbnb issues, from lost keys to illegal listings.

An important note: These problems aren’t unique to Airbnb, which is one of

countless vacation rental sites on the web. However, each site has its own
unique policies, so we recommend reading the terms and conditions carefully
if you encounter any of the following problems when booking a rental through
a different company. ``

https://www.smartertravel.com/7-airbnb-problems-solve/

2.2 Quality managers at Airbnb

Quality managers have in their job description, as the first point, to improve
reliability and quality standards. Airbnb Quality Managers should think about
reconstructing a plan for the future of the company in order to gain trust back
and satisfy the clients. Being a member of the Trustpilot, Airbnb has a lot of
bad reviews and most of them are related to customer service. Another duty of
the Quality Manager Job can be identified as maintaining the company quality
standards, and, in Airbnb case, quality standards are at this point in 2019
under the normality. “The responsibilities and duties section is the most
important part of the job description. Here you should outline the functions

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this position will perform on a regular basis, how the job functions within the
organization and who the employee reports to. Examples of Quality Manager
responsibilities: Improve reliability of new product development processes;
Maintain company quality standards; Review products, processes and systems
on an on-going basis to determine where improvements can be made; Oversee
the product manufacturing process to ensure quality; Actively participate in
production meetings with the manufacturing team.” Indeed.co.uk 2019.

Customer service is one of the problems that Airbnb Quality Managers have
to deal with. The majority of bad reviews revealed that is a discrepancy
between promised service and the final result that is impacting the client.
Quality management guarantees that an organization, product or service is
consistent and from this results that Quality Managers of Airbnb do not have a
reliable plan to remain consistent and reliable.

Airbnb Quality managers should take decisions in order to sustain the service
and comply with the market asking to deliver quality for its customers and
regain trust for profitability of the company.

2.3 Techniques for effective quality management

In order to change, improve or implement a good service and raise the

standards of quality in an organization or company, can be implemented one
of the two technics: KPI Key Performance Indicators or Benchmarking. The
Benchmarking technique is “a measurement of the quality of an organization's
policies, products, programs, strategies, etc., and their comparison with
standard measurements, or similar measurements of its peers.
The objectives of benchmarking are (1) to determine what and where
improvements are called for, (2) to analyse how other organizations achieve
their high performance levels, and (3) to use this information to improve
performance.”http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/benchmarking.ht
ml.

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From the definition and objectives of Benchmarking is clearly revealed that

this technique can be the first technique that should be considered in order to
identify the exact issues and gaps and to resolve and fill the needs.

As from the reports in the history of companies, sometimes, in a radical and

urgent situation, they are considering applying at both techniques, one to
succeed another for a good result.

The KPI Key Performance Indicators definition is: “Key performance

indicators (KPIs) are business metrics used by corporate executives and other
managers to track and analyse factors deemed crucial to the success of an
organization. Effective KPIs focus on the business processes and functions that
senior management sees as most important for measuring progress toward
meeting strategic goals and performance targets…. Furthermore, different
business units and departments are typically measured against their own KPIs,
resulting in a mix of performance indicators throughout an organization --
some at the corporate level and others geared toward specific operations.”
“Key performance indicators shine a light on how well a business is doing.
Without KPIs, it would be difficult for a company's leaders to evaluate that in a
meaningful way, and to then make operational changes to address
performance problems. Keeping employees focused on business initiatives and
tasks that are central to organizational success could also be challenging
without designated KPIs to reinforce the importance and value of those
activities.” https://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/key-
performance-indicators-KPIs.

2.4 Dimensions of Service Quality at Airbnb

“Delivering quality service is one of the major challenges facing hospitality

sector. It is an essential condition for success in the emerging keenly
competitive and global hospitality markets. Quality is the key to achieving
customer satisfaction. Quality is a dynamic state associated with products,
services, people and environments that meets or exceeds expectations. Quality
is also rapidly embracing the nature or degree of impact an organization has of
its stakeholders, environment and society. Your customers of your business are

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based on the product or service you deliver and on the day-to-day contact they
have with your staff.” (Munro and Jones 1993)

A closer look at Quality service at Airbnb strongly reveals that the company
does not meet the requirements and fails at all five of them: Reliability;
Responsiveness; Assurance; Empathy; Tangibles. At Airbnb reliability is the first
point with a low percentage because, at some points, as shown in the reviews
from Trustpilot, they are failing the promised service. Bookings for hotels, for
example, represent a big problem because clients are making their bookings at
a certain hotel but they end up in another hotel due to lack of rooms or hotel
cancelation. Another example is the cancelation of flights or changing the flight
company or changing the hours that can affect the transfer. Most of the bad
reviews are based on lack of communication with the staff over the phone
bookings which recordings are kept for just 30 days, claiming that the primary
advert for the service is much cheaper than the price that customers have to
pay at the end.

At responsiveness objective, Airbnb has also bad reviews because of their

deficit in enthusiasm to help clients and provide rapid and efficient service. As
an example for this deficit can be the long time to response to customers
issues, which, most of those problems, are not from customers fault. One
customer had recently been charged twice for his booking and after a long
period of wait has been told that he will recover his money back in a twelve
weeks time.

The next objective is assurance, which is also a factor to be taken in

consideration where Airbnb is failing. Assurance in Quality Management
represents the proficiency and kindness of the employees in order to win trust.

Empathy is another key factor where a company or organisation should pay

a lot of attention on their clients to carry out individualised attention and
understanding their needs and treat them according to them.

Tangibles objective refers to the presentation of the company with all its
assets. Website presentation is the first image that actual and potential clients
are having the first impact. In the last period most of the bookings are made
via internet, which is cost effective for both sides, for clients that are spending
less time to find the best solution for their needs and for the company because
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is cheaper to invest in a good and reliable website that to have employees and
a lot of branches. “Customers buy goods and services to meet specific needs.
Needs are often deeply rooted in people’s unconscious minds and may
concern long-term existence and identify issues. When people feel a need,
they are motivated to take action to fulfil it. In many instances, purchase of a
good or service may be seen as offering the best solution to meeting a
particular need. Subsequently, consumers may compare what they received
against what they expected, especially if it cost them money, time, effort that
could have been devoted to obtaining an alternative solution. Customer
expectations embrace several elements, including desired service, adequate
service, predicted service and a zone of tolerance that falls between the
desired and adequate service levels” The SERVQUAL Parasuraman et al (1985).

3. Recommendations / Conclusion

Airbnb is a big company that still has trust and should rethink the approach
for the clients and for its Quality Management issues. The potential in the
market is enormous and key stakeholders must be satisfied for the future of
the brand.

At this stage, in 2020, Airbnb must implement strategies such as KPI and
Benchmarking at the same time to reboot the engine that some years ago was
working at its best potential with very good results.

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Reference list:

https://www.referenceforbusiness.com/management/Pr-Sa/Quality-
Gurus.html#ixzz65p2HoGmb

Airbbb.com

The SERVQUAL Parasuraman et al (1985)

Munro and Jones 1993

Airbnb. co .uk

https://searchbusinessanalytics.techtarget.com/definition/key-performance-
indicators-KPIs.

http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/benchmarking.html.

Indeed.co.uk 2019.

https://news.airbnb.com/about-us/

https://www.smartertravel.com/7-airbnb-problems-solve/

https://www.google.com/search?
rlz=1C1CHBF_enGB844GB844&ei=tSJiXv7kLI6EhbIP3eeXqAM&q=airbnb+busi
ness+problems&oq=airbnb+bad+company

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