Customer service strategies that hotel managers are using to restore services to pre COVID-19
Abstract
This study focused on the hospitality sector of the tourism industry, one of the most important but vulnerable economic sectors. Many countries issued strict public health measures after
reports of the rapid spread and infections of COVID-19 in mid-March 2020 including lock
downs, in-country travel restrictions and termination of international arrivals which led to a
setback in the sector of tourism. However, after a period of one year, countries like Uganda
were able to have vaccination against the virus and the country had to be opened so that
business runs as it was before the lockdown. The purpose of this study therefore is to assess
the customer service strategies that hotel managers are using to restore services to pre- Covid-19 standards. The COVID-19 pandemic greatly affected the hotel industry of Uganda where
by the greatest challenges faced by the three hotels studied were outdoor services and as well as spar services. These led to reduction in occupancy and pressure arose on the expenditure
rates of the hotels, leading to laying off of employees. The customer service challenges faced after full opening of hotels were mainly occupancy drops (10.4%) and least was staff
shortage (8.2%). This influenced the strategies that hotel managers used to recover the
damage from COVID-19. The common strategies used in guiding hotel recovery after
COVID-19 were; ensuring adequate air circulation (100%), maintaining cleanliness and
hygiene (96.7%), social distancing (93.3%), higher food standards (93.3%) and improving the hotel staff awareness (90%). Having applied these strategies, the greatest achievement has
been increase in customer loyalty (60.7%), customer retention (58.6%) and improvement in
hotel staff awareness (55.2%).The hotel managers should research and introduce strategies
that reduce susceptibility or spread of the infectious diseases like COVID-19 and Ebola
disease, for example use of automated serving tables to reduce interactions with waiters. The hotels should introduce subsidized holiday packages for the customers in order to increase on the customer occupancy and always follow up on the customers after their visit for feedback and establishment of relationships. The hotel managements should put in place alternative
sources of energy like solar, wind energy and bioenergy so as to reduce expenses on energy. They should offer regular training to the workers so as to add on their quality of service,
which would reduce on the number of workers required to deliver.