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.