Benchmarks in Hospitality and Tourism

I have chosen to read the book: Benchmarks in Hospitality and Tourism written by Sungsoo Pyo, professor in the department of Tourism and Management at Kyonggi University in Seoul, Korea.

I chose this book mainly because our company case, Kustaavin Kipinä,is a business within the hospitality and tourism industry.

The theme of the book is tourism and hospitality management, which is a  unfamiliar field for me, therefore the reading process got a bit dull, as the linguistic in the literature was in some extent new for me.

The book contains of various practical articles that are of good use for practitioners that work within the hospitality industry; like hotel management, environmental systems, and destination practices. I also recommend the book for students that are interested in the book topics. The book concentrates on topics like; benchmarking, quality management, customer satisfaction, customer retention and so on.

As mentioned earlier, the book goes deep into the hospitality industry, and illustrates it by providing example cases. It provides in-depth-knowledge and practical applications. The book also explains in a very clear way the principles of benchmarking. Benchmarking is the search of for the industry best practices that will lead to superior performance (Camp, 1989).  Benchmarking is one of the learning processes.  It is a process of comparing one’s business processes to the bests in the industry.  It is usually quality, time and cost that measured.  This book also looks at satisfaction barometers, indicator development, and networking with benchmarking partners. The literature also explores the strengths and weaknesses of different benchmarking ways. 

Overall, this book is a good basis for getting to know different benchmarking techniques that can improve tourism businesses anywhere. Therefore, I think I´ll have much use of this book throughout our project in Kunstenniemi.

Alexandra