HGE401 Hotels and the Guest Experience

Task Summary

The portfolio is an organised collection of five (5) tasks designed to represent your efforts and academic achievements in the subject over a period from Weeks Two (2) to Seven (7). The main purpose of this portfolio is for you to review and reflect upon what you have learned in those weeks and to communicate your knowledge and reflections in a series of tasks related to weekly topics. The portfolio should show a progressive development in understanding and applying concepts and theories to build a framework that can be utilised to design, manage, and co-create hotel guest experiences.

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Context

The mature stage of the hospitality industry, characterised by higher guest expectations, increased competition, and standardised offerings, has accentuated the importance of staging and managing personalised, high quality guest experiences. Through these high-quality guest experiences, hotels can create and sustain business success. Hoteliers are now required to utilise key customer experience concepts and create innovative strategies in the design and management of hotel experiences.

This assessment represents a collection of tasks that, viewed holistically, allows you to develop a guest experience framework for the design, management, and co-creation of hotel guest experiences.

Each task is conceived to build on knowledge and skills week-by-week and provides several benefits:

• ●  It provides an opportunity to acquire academic, professional, and personal growth at this

early stage of your course in a fun and manageable manner.

• ●  The sequence of tasks builds on the knowledge and skills acquired each week and allows

you to familiarise and master skills necessary for successful completion of the unit and the

course, such as research skills and critical thinking

• ●  It provides an opportunity to familiarise and utilise different forms of communication in

completing these tasks, such as written and visual.

• ●  The tasks provide a platform to use your own previous experiences, as well as engage with

academic material and industry practices that are relevant in the contemporary hotel

industry

• ●  The portfolio is also an opportunity for you to receive ongoing feedback from your learning

facilitator, identify areas of improvement and assess your achievements.

Task Instructions

This progressive assessment portfolio will enable you to review and consolidate weekly topics by applying the acquired knowledge in a series of five (5) tasks. The individual tasks allow you to develop a combined guest experience framework utilised to design and manage hotel guest experiences.

The assignment requires you to submit a portfolio of five (5) tasks in two (2) submissions. In the first, non-graded submission (Week 4) you will be required to present the first three tasks. Your Learning Facilitator will provide feedback that must be incorporated in the second submission, which will include all the five tasks of the portfolio. Each task focuses on different but related aspects of the hotel guest experience framework. It is important to highlight the relationships across the five tasks in your final submission. Submit the assignment through SafeAssign.

Submission 1 (Non-graded):

In your first submission, you are required to submit your first three tasks based on topics two (2), three (3) and four (4) by the end of Week Four (4).

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These tasks introduce you to the key concepts and theories relevant to hotel guest experiences. The tasks will allow you to reflect on the role that hoteliers have, and the competencies, skills, behaviours, and attitudes required to design, manage, and co-create memorable hotel guest experiences.
You will be provided feedback on the three tasks submitted and are expected to address this feedback in Submission 2.

Task 1 – Being a host (400 words)

Lashley (2000) argues that hospitality is present across different domains, such as the domestic/private, cultural/social and commercial. Hospitableness encompasses all these domains. This task allows you to examine and reflect on the role of hosts in commercial accommodation. You are required to:

• provide a definition based on a minimum of two references within the literature provided in class of hospitableness, and
• discuss the characteristics of a “good host” and provide a critical analysis of their role in the commercial domain of hospitality.

Task 2 – Hospitality Intelligence (500 words)

Many competencies, skills, attitudes and behaviours are required to design, manage and co-create memorable hotel experiences. Through the completion of a series of online tests (links are provided separately by your lecturer) take this opportunity to reflect on the importance of hospitality intelligence in providing positive guest experiences.

You are required to provide a screenshot of your test results and address the following points:

• Examine your results and identify areas of strength and areas of improvement across the

hospitality intelligence competencies examined in class.

• Identify potential avenues to enhance your strengths or work on your weaknesses
• Provide a reflection with examples of how you have used hospitality intelligence in your

past and current hospitality experience (either as a guest or as a host and across multiple domains), as well as how you are planning to use these competencies in the future.

There is no unified definition of customer or guest experience. Definitions provide varied ideas as to what makes a positive guest experience. This task requires you to explore and critically analyse several customer/guest experience definitions found in academic literature. You are required to:

• identify at least 5 customer/guest experience definitions
• identify similarities and differences across the definitions
• create a matrix that incorporates the above (200 words). A template will be provided in

class. For online students a template will be provided in your assessment folder.

• provide a synthesised statement (200 words) that reflects your analysis of the definitions.

Task 3 – The guest experience definitions matrix (400 words)

Submission 2 (Graded):

In your second submission, you are required to resubmit your adjusted (after feedback) first three tasks, as well as two additional tasks by end of week 7. In this submission, you will utilise the concepts examined in the first three submissions and apply them to an industry case study. These tasks will also require you to examine and utilise key communicative tools utilised in the industry for the design and

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management of guest experiences (such as customer personas, mood boards and infographics) to analyse a case study.
*Important
You are expected to address feedback provided to you in Submission 1.

The five tasks must be bound together in one submission and must show cohesion and linkage. You will be required to apply key concepts and theory explored in the first three tasks in the analysis and interpretation of the case study (Tasks 4 and 5) and thus demonstrate understanding of the main theories and concepts of the unit.

Complete the following tasks as part of your final submission:

• Write an Introduction (100 words)
• Include Tasks 1, 2 and 3 - Adjusted after feedback of learning portfolio milestone.
• Complete Task 4 and 5 (listed below)
• Write a Conclusion (200 words) summarising the main concepts and theories as you have

applied them to the case study. Make sure you include concepts and theories from your

Submission 1 (e.g., hospitableness, hospitality competencies, emotional intelligence, and the

guest experience).

You will be provided with an industry case study to apply theories and concepts discussed in Tasks 1, 2, and 3, as well as apply theories learned in Topics 5, 6 and 7. The case study provides an opportunity to evaluate the application of key guest experience concepts covered in class in a real- life industry context. In this task, you will be required to:

• Apply the theatrical metaphor proposed by Pine and Gilmore (1999), and Hemmington (2007) to analyse the guest experience narrated in the case study.

o Somequestionstohelpguideyouinthistaskmaybe:

• ­  Whoarethemainactorsinstagingtheexperienceoftheguests?
• ­  Whatisthestage?
• ­  Wheredoestheexperiencetakeplace?
• ­  Whatrolesdostaffplayintheexperience?

• Create the guest persona of the case study main protagonists (visual).
• Create a mood board representing the servicescape described in detail in the case study (visual).

Task 4 – Case study analysis Part 1 (300 words and visuals).

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Through the same case study used in Task Four (4), this task will allow you to apply the key concepts learned in Tasks 1, 2, and 3 to analyse all the controllable (human interaction and physical environment) and uncontrollable factors (trip-related factors and personal characteristics) that determine a hotel guest experience. You will be required to:

• Discuss how the Walls et al. (2011) model of hotel guest experience can be applied to the case study. Particular attention should be given to explain the role of employees in determining the guest experience, using examples from the case study to argue your points (500 words).
• Identify and examine the value co-creation strategies presented in the case study by creating an infographic (visual) that visualises these.

The infographic should have a word count of maximum 100 words, and at least 8 visual elements. Examples will be provided in class.

Task 5 – Case study analysis Part 2 (600 words + visuals)

Referencing

You are expected to refer, in text, to a minimum of ten (10) academic sources, plus others as required in order to show competency in the assessment. Up to three of these can be academic textbooks, with a minimum of seven (7) academic journal articles. Blogs and other unverifiable sources will not count as academic references but can still be used to support your writing.

All referencing must be in accordance with the Academic Writing Guide: APA on SharePoint.
It is essential that you use appropriate APA style for citing and referencing research. Please see more information on referencing here in the Academic Writing Guide found via the Academic Skills website.

Submission Instructions: Upload your submission via the Assessment 1 link in Blackboard.
Please note: To upload multiple files, once your first item has been uploaded, click ‘Browse Your Computer’ to attach your extra documents. When all files are uploaded, click Final Submit