A guest’s emotional responses have which two elements of interest to hospitality organizations? A) impact on perception; impact on satisfaction B) impact on per capita spend; impact on repeat business C) degree of nostalgia; degree of loyalty D) degree of arousal; degree of pleasure Hospitality Principle: Provide the service stting that guests expect. I don't want the public to see the world they live in while they're in the Park. I want them to feel they're in another world. --Walt Disney LEARNING OBJECTIVES After reading this chapter, you should understand: * Why the service setting or service environment is important. * How the service environment affects guests and employees. * Which elements of the service environment need to be managed. * How service environment factors moderate or affect the responses of guests, according to the Bitner model. * Why providing a service environment in which guests feel safe and secure is critical. * How theming the service setting pays off. KEY TERMS AND CONCEPTS Disney "show" eatertainment lean environment rich environment service environment service setting servicescape theming In the first chapter, we defined the guest experience as consisting of three component elements: the service itself, the service environment, and the service delivery system (the people and the processes that provide the service to the guest). This chapter focuses on the service environment or setting in which the guest experience takes place. For a restaurant, the environment can be a Rainforest or a Planet Hollywood where the physical structure is an integral part of the guest experience, or it can be a Denny's with simple booths. The difference between these two types of restaurants is something more than just the food. The eatertainment restaurants such as Planet Hollywood, All-Star Cafe, and Hard Rock Cafe create environments that enhance the eating experience well beyond the meals they serve. They deliver a high-quality meal, but they also add a show for their customers that differentiates their restaurant from others. Although all service organizations give some thought to the service setting, its importance to the customer experience has been most thoroughly understood by those who view and treat their customers as guests--the hospitality industry. Perhaps no one in this industry devotes more time and energy to making the service environment fit customer expectations than the Walt Disney Company. This chapter will focus on why managing the setting for the hospitality experience is so important and how benchmark organizations like Disney do it so well. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] THE DISNEY "SHOW" Disney refers to everyone and everything that interfaces with guests as "the show." Although employees and other customers are part of any guest service organization's "show" or environment in the larger sense, this chapter will focus on the physical aspects of the service setting. Without question, the setting can influence the guest's determination of the quality and value of a guest experience. Perhaps more than any other organization, Disney understands that its guests have extraordinary experiences largely because of the attention Disney pays to creating the show. Walt Disney originated the idea that a guest experience can be unified and enhanced if it is based on a theme. Disney spends endless time and effort ensuring that the environment and the cast members/employees within it--the show--are as consistently and accurately themed as possible. For some experiences offered to guests, the environment is in effect the setting for a dramatic production or play in which the guest is a participant. Occasionally the environment is so significant to the successful enjoyment of the fantasy that it should perhaps be considered as a part of the service itself. Much of Walt Disney's early success with his theme park ventures resulted from his insight that many guests would enjoy feeling like participants in a drama or play rather than simply observing. In making movies, Walt had learned to present stories that offered viewers the opportunity to experience fantasy vicariously. Why not set up parks and rides with characters and fantastic settings within which guests could move and participate as if they were in a movie? For an organization offering such a "product," the service setting is critical to success. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The Fantasy Theme To see the many Disney cartoons and movies is to see a fantasy. Walt Disney's vision for his theme parks was to take guests out of the real world and transport them into a world of make-believe. To visit a Disney theme park is to experience a series of fantasies. That's what guests want and expect. The details of the park's environment and cast are carefully themed--organized and presented around a unifying idea, often a fantasy idea--to create the feeling within the guest that every park area is an accurate representation of what the guest might reasonably expect to see if the fantasy were to come true. In the Disneyland Park Town Square, for example, Disney not only provides detailed period costumes for the cast members working there; it also sought out and purchased actual cannons used by the French army in the nineteenth century and 150 antique street lamps for Main Street, U.S.A., to ensure an authentic look. Other parts of Disneyland Park are as elaborately and authentically themed as Town Square. The Penny Arcade's nickelodeons and the hand-cranked mutascopes are authentic turn-of-the-century amusement equipment. The Carousel horses are hand-painted, hand-carved originals about 100 years old. (1) On Main Street, U.S.A., every detail of the setting "magically" conveys the guest back to the turn of the century. To create and maintain the fantasy requires that the details of the setting be consistent and authentic. Likewise, the fantasy of a five-star restaurant, or Rainforest Cafe or Bahama Breeze Restaurant, is to take guests out of the real world and serve them a memorable meal. The setting within which the meal is presented needs to be consistent with that vision, but it may serve only as a part of an eating experience. Many hospitality organizations have achieved fantasy through theming have learned the value of a setting that enhances and contributes to the total guest experience. Other hospitality organizations can learn from them. To Theme or Not to Theme? Theming is a way to add value to the guest experience. If used effectively, a theme can enhance the total experience. For a Rainforest Cafe, Dolphin Hotel, or Disney theme park, the theming contributes to maintenance of the fantasy, enhanced visual stimulation, and finding one's way around. It gives guests something to talk about after they've gone home; it reinforces their remembrance of what they've done and provides additional confirmation of the experience's value. Theming is an opportunity for the organization to add wow to the experience by providing more than guests expect. Consider a five-star restaurant. It is a kind of fantasyland. It takes guests out of the real world and serves them a memorable meal in compatible surroundings. The setting is of consistently high quality, and it enhances and contributes to the total guest experience, but the memorable part is intended to be the world-class meal and the way it is served. Contrast the fantasy created by the five-star restaurant with the fantasy created by a Rainforest Cafe, Hard Rock Cafe, Fantasea Reef restaurant, or any good ethnic restaurant you can name. These restaurants and many other organizations within and outside the hospitality industry--Disney being the prime example--have created consistency of service setting through theming. They realize that blending the sights, sounds, and even the tastes and smells of the service setting to fit in with an overall theme can enhance the guest's experience and make it more memorable. Restaurants have been themed for many years, but at such totally themed restaurants as Planet Hollywood and House of Blues, the food becomes a secondary aspect of the overall themed guest experience. The customers of yesterday lived in cabins or on farms, told stories or played games for entertainment, and shopped at the country store or via the Sears, Roebuck catalog. Today's customers have become accustomed to enriched environments in their homes, offices, entertainment sites, and automobiles. Organizing the experience around a theme is one way for hospitality organizations to meet guest expectations of an enriched service setting. Numerous other industries have followed the hospitality industry's lead in conceiving of the services they offer as experiences that take place over time in a themed setting. A Long Island nursing home has provided a 1930s-themed environment for residents, to take them in fantasy back to their youthful days (and perhaps to assure their relatives that the home is not such a bad place to be). Photographs of Clark Gable and Lana Turner and murals of 1930s New York adorn the walls. A replica of a stall at New York City's Fulton Fish Market has a tank containing live fish. Airports, hospitals, and banks have themed their interiors to represent colorful locales. (2) As the author of an article on this subject says, organizations are learning that they must "Disney-fy or Die." These varied businesses are providing themed service settings because customers want them. We have become accustomed to richer environments in all aspects of life. A themed environment is not always appropriate, and theming has its risks. By definition, theming places limits on what the organization can offer in terms of service, setting, and delivery system. Compared to an all-purpose non-themed restaurant, a themed restaurant will generally have a narrower range of menu offerings. Patrons of Lone Star Steakhouse and Saloon want and expect to find steak, ribs, chicken, barbecue, and chili on the menu, and a hot sauce on the table. Only if the market for those offerings continues to be strong, despite a more health-conscious dining public, will Lone Star continue to succeed. Few organizations are fortunate or insightful enough to develop themes with as much universal appeal as Disney's. Hooters, a Florida-based limited-menu restaurant chain whose waitresses dress in tight orange shorts and skimpy, figure-hugging t-shirts, attracts young white males, not older customers and other ethnic groups. The more specialized the theme, the more it will appeal to customers who already liked that theme anyway, but the narrower will the market be. This appeal to a relatively narrow market can succeed. No hospitality organization can be all things to all guests. Hard Rock Cafe is no place for small children, and rock fans are not the key customers whose expectations Chuck E. Cheese is trying to meet. Even organizations whose themes appeal to almost everybody--like Planet Hollywood and its movie stars--must find ways to refresh the guest experience by changing the exhibits and varying menu items. Otherwise, guests will come a few times for the novelty, then seek other experiences. People become tired even of superstars and Hollywood memorabilia. The organization must provide a service setting consistent with the guest's expectations for the overall guest experience. Theming is one approach toward that consistency. All aspects of the physical setting--layout of physical objects, lighting, colors, appointments, signs, employee uniforms, materials--must complement and support each other and give a feeling of integrated design. Control and Focus The principles used to organize the theme parks reflect Disney's cinematic heritage. The consummate storyteller, Walt Disney arranged the layout of the parks to tell stories. Describing Disneyland Park, Stephen Fjellman says, "Attractions, lands, and worlds are put together in acts and scenes. We are led step by step through Disneyland stories, whether in single attractions or in larger areas of the park. Even in the most extended presentations--those that seem most like theater--the scenes are cinematically short." (3) As is true of any good story, the theme park stories are controlled and focused; we see what the storyteller wants us to see. We are pointed by the visual cues, the positioning of the cars on the ride, the use of light and dark, and other elements of the environment to have the experience that the storyteller envisioned for us. Rides are designed to give guests the feeling of moving through a story. Fjellman says, "Rides are the most constrictive attractions. We are strapped into a conveyance and sent passively around a story. The cars or boats move past tableaux that often surround us. We face forward or look to the side. Many cars have high backs and eyerestricting sides. They spin and turn, point us to the next scene and away from anything that might spoil the illusion. They frame our view as we ride past in the dark." (4) The Architecture The same idea, having the attention of guests focused as they move through an experience or a story, is carried forward in the architectural theming of the resort hotels on the Disney property. Architect Michael Graves designed the Walt Disney World Dolphin Resort to create in guests a feeling of movement toward a central dreamscape: the huge and spectacular Rotunda Lobby. At the main entrance (Portico) to the Dolphin, one enters the Starlight Foyer with a waterfall cascading down its walls. Above, in the ceiling of the Foyer, fiberoptic stars twinkle. The various abstract visual motifs--the stars, squiggles, banana leaves--that are first seen on the outside walls of the building are carried forward in a variety of designs as one moves inside the building to give the guest the sensation of moving through a continuous experience. As the guest moves through the Foyer, the relaxing and peaceful sound of the waterfall diminishes, to blend in--as the guest continues on--with the sound of the large fountain in the Rotunda Lobby. Visual sensations complement the sounds. Along the way to the Lobby, the sound of the waterfall on the hotel's exterior carries the water theme forward. The water sounds in the entry area focus our attention on the sound so we pick it up again as we enter the Rotunda Lobby, and it focuses us on the central fountain. It is a relaxing and peaceful sound but less pronounced as one approaches the Lobby's large fountain so that the interior and exterior sounds will not be in competition. While the activity in which the guest is engaged is walking, the environmental setting turns the walk into a fantasy experience in a relaxing tropical forest. Some settings can be experienced from a single location. Most architectural structures--environments that often cost millions of dollars to create--can best be experienced by moving through them to perceive the intersecting planes, spaces, and shapes of which architecture is made. Whether you shop your way through the various plazas of Adventureland, stroll through the lobby of the Polynesian Resort, or loiter by the lagoon at the Yacht and Beach Club Resort, the architecture throughout the Walt Disney World Resort intentionally situates you in a theme and a narrative story that depend upon procession, an ability to move through it. (5) [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] The creation of a movie-type of experience in both Disneyland Park and the Magic Kingdom is most evident in the rides, but it is also an important element in the overall architecture of the park. A walk down Main Street, U.S.A., in the Magic Kingdom, for instance, opens up carefully planned and themed vistas, with Cinderella Castle always looming in the distance. The Castle appears at first to be far away, as if this symbol of childhood fantasy is only a distant memory, a part of a small middle-American town's collective memory. As guests move toward the Castle, they see it more distinctly, and they can eventually reexperience the fantasy by entering the Castle. The "Casting Center" building used for interviewing and hiring is themed in a way that introduces potential employees into the Disney culture. Applicants walk up a long incline to a reception desk. The art and architecture along the way portray important Disney images and symbols. The intent of the design is to communicate to prospective cast members some of the Disney culture and a feeling of an open invitation to join the Disney family. In the reception Lobby are statues of fifteen famous Disney characters. Even the knobs on the building's front door are designed in the shapes of Tweedle Dum and Tweedle Dee, cartoon characters from Alice in Wonderland. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Sights and Sounds Sound is often an important service-setting element. Music is a particularly potent environmental factor. A convenience store that was plagued by some teenagers hanging out at the store and bothering patrons began playing "elevator" music through its sound system. Unable to take the music, the troublemakers moved on. The basic principle, of course, is that environmental sounds should serve a purpose. In general, the sounds (most often music) should complement the experience which the organization is trying to provide to its target guests. Again in general, but with many exceptions, louder, faster music in the service setting appeals to younger guests; softer, slower music appeals to older guests. The sounds of music can also affect guest behavior. Studies have shown that bar patrons finish their drinks faster or slower depending on the tempo and subject matter of the country music on the jukebox. People tend to eat faster and drink more (and leave sooner, meaning that more tables are typically turned) if the music is fast and loud. Slow music encourages people to dine in a leisurely fashion. A study revealed that Fairfield University cafeteria diners chewed an average of 4.4 bites a minute to fast music, 3.83 bites a minute to slow music. (6) Lighting is an important feature of most service settings. Some guest experiences are best delivered in bright lights, some in dim. Glare and lights at eye level are unpleasant in any setting. If you enter a service setting and don't notice the lighting, it is probably well done. In a Rainforest Cafe, you see not the lighting but what is lit. Lights should be selected, turned on, and directed not just to avoid darkness. Like every other aspect of the setting, the lighting should be an element of a greater design with the purpose of enhancing the guest experience. At the Walt Disney World Resort careful attention is paid to the meshing of visual and auditory effects to enhance the guest's experience. Music and spoken words are carefully integrated into the design of individual rides so that the guest has a continuing, seamless experience while moving on the ride or through a park area. As the guest moves away from one room or segment area to another of the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, or It's A Small World, the sounds and visual effects merge, with no sense of overlap, to provide a smooth transition from one phase of the experience to the next. (7) The ECS The entertainment control system (ECS) at the Magic Kingdom is designed to maximize each guest's experience by managing the visual and auditory aspects of the setting. For parades covering the wide geographic area of the Magic Kingdom, the visual and musical effects could easily clash. Since the floats move and the guests stand still, Disney has found a way to accompany each float with appropriate lighting and music as it moves through the twenty-four zones of the parade route. Disney uses two different technological solutions. The first is a series of remote interface cabinets linked together through fiber optic cable to the ECS. As the different parade floats pass by the buried antennae, the ECS reads a code associated with each float and then creates appropriate lights and music, from hidden loudspeakers, near the float. Each float carries an FM wireless receiver, audio amplifier, and speaker system. Each float is designed to carry one channel of the audio signal sent by the ECS and play it through its own sound system. The result is that each guest experiences the same light-and-sound show, part of which emanates from the float and part from the hidden light and sound sources in each zone, all of these media synchronized by the ECS. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Special Effects Ours is an era of incredible special effects; properly used, they can add wow to the service environment. Although simple sights and sounds are appropriate for some service settings, others require the expertise of the special-effects team. Here are just a few of the special effects--created with lasers, mirrors, lights, gas discharges, and fiber optics--in the arsenal of Bill Novey, who created Disney's special-effects department in 1976: steam, smoke clouds, drifting fog, erupting volcano with flowing lava, lightning flashes, waterfalls, spinning galaxies, comets, rotating space stations, meteor showers, shooting stars, moons and planets, floating images (the Witch's apple in the Snow White's Adventures dark ride), crackling neon, magic pixie dust, twinkling gems, and beams from ray guns. Most hospitality organizations will not want to enhance the service setting with holograms, jellyfish fountains, and ray-gun beams, but the technology is available to create almost any effect that the hospitality manager can dream up, and pay for. (8) WHY IS THE ENVIRONMENT IMPORTANT? Hospitality managers must pay attention to the environment for several major reasons. It influences guest expectations, sets and maintains the mood, and has positive effects on employees. Some service environments, such as those in theme restaurants and parks, are such a major part of the experience that they can almost be viewed as part of the service itself. Finally, the environment serves several functional purposes. Expectations First, the environment influences the guest's expectations, even before the service is delivered. If the outside of the restaurant is dirty, guests will enter with negative expectations, if they enter at all. Objectively, the number of cigarette butts on the ground next to the front door has nothing to do with the chef's ability to prepare a high-quality meal and the staff's ability to present it, but guests do not view the environment objectively. If the restaurant doesn't care enough to clean up outside its building, the guest may conclude that it does not clean up its kitchen either and probably doesn't care about how it prepares the meal. Many guests evaluate a restaurant by using the rest room test, to see how much the restaurant cares about cleanliness. Good restaurant managers make sure that procedures are in place to keep the rest rooms clean. Guest Mood Second, the environment sets and maintains the mood after the guest begins the guest experience. Once the guest enters the Magic Kingdom, the entire focus is on establishing the fantasy and maintaining the "magic." One way to do so is to maintain the consistency between what the guest expects to see and what the guest actually sees. Guests expect the cast members in Disney costumes to stay in character, and they do. They are not allowed to speak because if they did, Mickey would probably not sound the way he does in the cartoons. Better to make guests wonder than to disappoint their expectations. If the characters were allowed to take off their heads or any other part of their costumes while in public view, they might destroy the magic of the illusion. A Disney rule requires that character costumes must be transported in black bags to ensure that no child will accidentally see a lifeless Mickey or other beloved character being hauled in the back of a van. Another component of maintaining the mood is the detailed costuming of all cast members, even those not portraying Disney characters. The quest for authenticity goes so far in Epcot that Disney has set up a Cultural Representation Program that brings students from around the world to staff the various World Showcase Pavilions. The program ensures that all on-stage positions are staffed by people who can accurately represent each country's culture and heritage. In a similar effort to use the environment to set the mood, Disney spends considerable money on ensuring that the park grounds are clean, the lawns carefully manicured, and the flowers always in bloom. The company has learned through studies of guests that people associate "clean and orderly" with "safe and high in quality." They know that everyone has been to a typical amusement park and seen the dirt and debris scattered all over the grounds. Disney wants to differentiate its parks from traditional amusement parks, and cleanliness is one way to do so. Walt Disney's wife said, "Why do you want to build an amusement park? They're so dirty." His answer: "I told her that was just the point--mine wouldn't be." (9) The real world is not always a clean place, so providing a sparkling-clean park is yet another way to enable guests to leave the outside world behind and enter the fantasy enjoyment that Disney is trying to create. Main Street, U.S.A. As the example of the Dolphin Resort suggested, even the architecture is used to enhance the mood that the theme park strives to create and maintain. Every guest at Disneyland Park or the Magic Kingdom must pass through Main Street, U.S.A., to enter the park. The Main Street buildings are constructed to enhance the feeling of being not in a huge and spectacular park but in a cozy, friendly place. The architectural technique called forced perspective led to designing the first floors of the buildings along Main Street, U.S.A., in Disneyland Park at 9/10th scale, the second floors at 7/8 and the third floors at 5/8 scale. According to David Koenig in Mouse Tales, Although the environment is designed primarily to enhance the guest's experience, it should insofar as possible be supportive of and compatible with the employee's experience as well. Employees spend a lot more time in the service setting than guests do, and a well-designed environment can promote employee satisfaction, which is highly correlated with guest satisfaction. Employee satisfaction is so important to the success of McDonald's new hotter-fresher-faster cooking technology that a large sign at the research facility developing the new technology read: CORE Customer-Oriented Restaurant Experience Crew-Oriented Restaurant Environment McDonald's knows that a crew-oriented restaurant environment will encourage the crew to provide a customer-oriented restaurant experience. Care and attention to environmental details show employees that the organization is committed to guest satisfaction and service quality. Disney employees know that anyone who spends the amount of time and energy Disney does on the details of the park, even on those details that most guests will never notice, must really care about the quality of the guest experience. The impact of this caring on the cast members is immeasurable; in ways large and small, it shows employees the commitment that the company expects from itself and from them. Setting as a Part of Service The environment may serve merely as a neutral backdrop for some guest experiences. But for others, the environment is so significant to the success of the experience that it has a fourth major importance to hospitality managers: The setting for such guest experiences should almost be considered a part of the service itself. The hospitality service setting may represent a major part of what the guest is paying for and seeking from the guest experience. No one wants to go to a fine dining restaurant and sit on plastic seats, to eat a gourmet meal served on disposable "china" by a waiter dressed in blue jeans and t-shirt who is trying to turn the table in forty-five minutes. No matter how good the meal, the quality of the food, or the presentation on the paper plates, the guest will be dissatisfied with the fine dining experience in such an environment. Not only must the meal be good; the decor, ambiance, tablecloth, attire of the servers, number and attitude of other guests, and place setting must all be consistent with what the guest expects in a fine dining experience. The quality of the environmental context within which the guest's experience occurs affects the quality of the experience itself and also the guest's opinion of the hospitality organization's overall quality. An example of the care given to environmental detail is the Main Street, U.S.A., painters at the Magic Kingdom. Their only responsibility, all year long, is to start at one end of Main Street, U.S.A., and paint all the buildings and other structures until they get to the end, and then they start all over again. They come to work, paint Main Street, U.S.A., and then go home. Each painted rail is completely stripped down to the metal and repainted five times a year. The fantasy part of the guest experience requires a clean, freshly painted park, and the guest who finds the paint chipped or soiled will define the quality of the experience in a less favorable way than the guest who finds everything freshly painted and clean. The Functional Value of the Setting Finally, the environment is important for several pragmatic, functional reasons. The guest relies on the hospitality organization to create an environment that is safe and easy to use and understand. Environmental features must be such that the guest can easily and safely enter, experience, and then leave without getting lost, hurt, or disoriented. For the modern hospitality organization, the issue of safety and security has become more important than ever before. People worry increasingly about whether they will be safe from harm or injury when they go to a restaurant, bank, or theme park or leave home for any reason. Guests must perceive that service settings have a high level of safety and security. Light, open space, smiling employees making eye contact with guests, and cleanliness make guests feel secure. Such environmental elements as well-lit parking lots and pathways, low-cut hedges that no one can hide behind, and the presence of uniformed employees are appropriate and reassuring in just about any service situation. Banks hire guards to give their customers a feeling of security as they enter and leave the bank; hotels train their employees to emphasize their presence by looking at guests, making eye contact, and speaking to them; and theme parks have vehicles cruising the well-lit parking lots to reassure guests that they are about to enter a crime-free world. Most hospitality organizations want guests to relax and enjoy the guest experience. Because guests cannot relax if they fear for their safety, managers must provide a safe and secure environment. It's as simple as that. A MODEL: HOW THE SERVICE ENVIRONMENT AFFECTS THE GUEST The hospitality manager seeking to provide an excellent and memorable experience should give as much attention to managing the setting as to the service itself and the service delivery system. The rest of this chapter will be based on Figure 3-1, which shows how environmental influences operate on the guest to determine the guest's reaction to the service setting. The combination of elements can cause the guest to want to approach the setting and remain in it or to avoid or leave the setting. As seen in Figure 3-1, which is to be read from left to right, five environmental components comprise the service setting as perceived by guests: ambient conditions; spatial use; functional congruence; signs, symbols and artifacts; and other people, including employees and other guests. (12) No guest will be aware of all environmental elements. Consciously and subconsciously, each guest selects the combination of elements that comprises, for that guest, the perceived service landscape, or servicescape, as a whole. Each guest will respond differently to the elements of that servicescape, depending on the guest's individual characteristics. The responses will not only be different, but they may be different within any or a combination of three general response types: physiological, cognitive, or emotional. Finally, the guest's overall response to the setting will cause the guest to want to approach the setting again, or to avoid it. Each element in the setting is capable of infinite variation. These infinitely variable elements can be combined in an infinite variety of ways. Thus, each guest's experience of the setting is unique. Now, let's look at the Bitner model in Figure 3-1 in more detail. Ambient Conditions Ambient conditions in the environment--the ergonomic factors such as temperature, humidity, air quality, smells, sounds, physical comfort, and light--affect the nature of the guest experience. The effect on a guest of a dark, humid, quiet tunnel with intermittent noises and cool air blowing is different from the effect of a light, airy, music-filled shopping mall. The first setting feels ominous and scary, the second warm and positive. The whole category of "dark" theme park rides and attractions, like Disney's Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Caribbean, and The Twilight Zone Tower of Terror, is designed around the concept that darkness has an element of suspense, surprise, and potential terror that light doesn't have. On the other hand, the romantic feel of dimly lit restaurants is also due to the careful management of ambient conditions. [FIGURE 3-1 OMITTED] Space The second environmental category is the use of space. It refers to how the equipment and furnishings are arranged in the hospitality service setting, the size and shape of those objects, their accessibility to the customers, and the spatial relationships among them. The nature of the guest experience is also affected by the organization's use of space. Depending on how the waiting space is designed, waiting lines can feel open and friendly or they can make a customer feel closed in and alone. How paths are laid out to get from one part of a park, whether a theme park or a community park, to another also influences the feeling of openness or closedness that the guest experiences. Closed spaces and areas with a lot of open space or green evoke different feelings. The basic decision about space is how to use it to lay out the service setting so as to enhance the guest's experience. Space must be used wisely. A restaurant with too many tables and seats or a hotel with too many rooms within its available space may both be unattractive to guests. An organization that attempts to increase the revenue-producing space within which it provides guest experiences at the expense of essential but non-revenue-producing space (for offices, kitchens, supplies, and utilities, for example) may have a memorable service environment, but its delivery system cannot reliably provide the service product required for a memorable guest experience. The space layout should also help people to know where they are. As Disney said, "Have a single entrance through which all the traffic would flow, then a hub off which the various areas were situated. That gives people a sense of orientation--they know where they are at all times. And it saves a lot of walking." (13) Logical, easy-to-follow pathways lead people in the Magic Kingdom from one attraction to another. The big circular path around the World Showcase in Epcot makes it easy for guests to go from one attraction to another in an orderly way, and the lake in the middle of everything provides a superb orientation for the guest at any point around the circle. Cinderella Castle in the Magic Kingdom, the Twilight Zone Tower of Terror in Disney/MGM Studios, and the Spaceship Earth in Epcot are other landmarks that provide constant points of orientation. Guests know where they are in the park and can see how to get to other locations. Within specific Walt Disney World Resort areas, many visual and audio aids help to orient the guest. The cast members in each location are costumed consistently. Key structures help identify where in the Magic Kingdom one is. The Carousel in Fantasyland, the Mark Twain Paddlewheeler in Frontierland, and the Enchanted Tiki Bird Room-Under New Management in Adventureland are examples of key attractions that by location, size, and sounds help guests identify where in the Magic Kingdom they are. The challenge is to ensure that the physical environment consistently reinforces the feeling of being in a particular section of the park by blocking out the sight of other areas, while providing landmarks that let guests know how to get to other park areas. The need to prevent guests from seeing anything that would make them think that they are anywhere else but in Frontierland, for example, is carefully balanced against the need to provide clear and easy guidance to other park locations. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] All service settings have this same problem. Hospitality managers must maintain the environmental feel of the setting while also providing orientation devices to help guests locate rest rooms, public phones, meeting rooms, and exits. Circus legend P.T. Barnum set up his exhibits and signage to guide customers from start to finish. It is said that just beyond the last exhibit was a door labeled "This way to the egress." Circus patrons going through the door and hoping to view a rare animal or bird found themselves passing smoothly and effortlessly into the alley outside the building. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Hospitality settings should be designed to ensure smooth flow for both guest and employee. Guests must feel they are moving smoothly and effortlessly through the service setting. Employees must have sufficient space, traffic routes, and sufficiently short distances to travel to provide timely service to guests. In a restaurant, if waiters entering and leaving the kitchen use the same door, collisions and dropped trays (which do not enhance the diner's experience) are inevitable. If the kitchen is too far from the dining area, food temperatures will suffer. If tables are too close together, servers cannot move smoothly through the room, and the guest experience suffers. Restaurants offer a nice example of how the placement of facilities within a space is related to the level and character of the guest experience provided. In a casual dining restaurant, guests accept a distance of only two to three feet between tables (plus their chairs). In an upscale restaurant, tables must be at least four feet apart. If they are closer together, guests may not be able to put a finger on just what is wrong, but the service environment will not suit their expectations. Functional Congruence Functional congruence refers to how well something with a functional purpose fits into the environment in which it serves that purpose. The functioning of the equipment, layout of the physical landscape, and entire design of the service environment must be congruent with what the guest expects to find in that environment. In a self-service environment, items and equipment necessary to the experience must be easy to use, or someone had better be available to help guests figure out how to "serve themselves." If customers must perform complicated or unfamiliar tasks, like figure out how to operate a multistep ATM or a sophisticated video game or virtual-reality machine, the instructions had better be clear. Self-service pumps at gas stations, ATM machines, and self-service restaurants require more focus on spatial design clarity and layout than would service experiences accompanied by a gas attendant, bank teller, or waiter. The functional congruence of environmental elements is given great consideration in a well-designed service environment so that whatever physical or environmental element the guest requires for maximum enjoyment of the experience is provided when needed. As the Magic Kingdom guest enters Main Street, U.S.A, stores on the right-hand side sell items useful inside the park like film, sun screen, and snacks. Disney carefully places theme park eating places where guests can find them, often just after a ride or attraction. Retail shops are located at the exit points of rides for guests wanting a souvenir of the experience they have just enjoyed. As guests leave the park, retail outlets on the right side sell souvenirs. Disney knows that most guests will be looking and walking on the right-hand side of the street, so they make sure that shops on the right sell those things that guests will be looking for at that stage of their park visit. Signs and Symbols The fourth component of the environment is the signs, symbols, and artifacts that communicate information to the guest. Carl Sewell states that signs serve one or more of only three purposes: to name the business (Nordstrom's Department Store, Ramada Inn, Shula's Steak House), to describe the product or service (Rooms for Rent, Hot Dogs, Rest Rooms), and to give direction (Entrance, Do Not Enter, Pay Here, No Smoking, Employees Only, Wrong Way, You Are Here). (14) Signs are explicit physical representations of information that the organization thinks guests might want, need, or expect to find. Signs must be easy to read, clear, and located in obvious places where they can direct and teach people how to use the service easily. Tourist cities wanting international visitors to come back again know that, to encourage returns, they must stimulate positive emotional and cognitive responses within visitors from many different countries. Taking the national origins and cultural backgrounds (called demographic moderators in Figure 3-1) into account, they go to great effort and expense to create not small signs in English (which would cause negative cognitive and emotional responses in non-English-speaking visitors) but large, easy-to-see street and directional signs with universal symbols on them to make it easy for all tourists to get where they want to go. Even such an apparently small and easy a job as making a sign must be done from the guest's point of view, rather than the organization's. For example, hotels, airports, and other tourist locations often use "You Are Here" signs to help orient customers within the service environment. If these signs are not done carefully, and from the perspective of a total stranger to the environment, they can cause more confusion than if there was no sign in the first place. Then the customer is not only still lost or disoriented but also feels stupid, and customers do not continue to patronize organizations that make them feel stupid. Signs convey their messages through the use of symbols, often language itself. Some signs contain not words but other symbols, such as representational icons that can replace any specific language. These signs, of course, are especially important in travel and tourism settings to which customers come from many different nations, cultures, and linguistic backgrounds. If the customer must remember the information on the sign, a symbol often works best. The Magic Kingdom uses Disney characters to represent sections in the parking lot. At the end of the day, people can more easily remember that the car is in the Chip 'n' Dale section than in Section 17A or Section 31D. Artifacts, as Bitner uses the term, are physical objects that represent something beyond their functional use. As such, they are a type of symbol. Disney frequently uses artifacts in creating story settings. A chair is for sitting, but a Frontierland chair that was once actually situated in a wild-west saloon is both for sitting and for transporting a guest into a fantasy world. Other People The last component of the environment is the other people in it: employees, other guests, or perhaps even Audio-Animatronics creations that guests come to think of as real people. Guests often want to see other guests. If they are alone, they wonder why; are they foolish to be there? No one likes to eat in an empty restaurant; you can eat alone at home. A positive eating experience generally requires the presence of other diners enjoying their meals. Guests of many hospitality organizations expect to see other people also enjoying the experience. Happiness and satisfaction are contagious. Many service settings would feel depressing and lonely without other people. Employees are environmentally important even before they deliver the anticipated service. A restaurant that employs well-dressed, well-groomed people will have an atmosphere very different from that of a place where everyone is wearing ragged dungarees and tank tops. Most guest-service activities have standards of dress for employees and guests. The dress and personal-appearance code for most hospitality employees and guests is structured and specific. Employees must dress in keeping with the expectations of guests, most of whom view clean, neat, appropriate attire as a mark of respect for guests. Few hospitality organizations cater to guests who want and expect unshaven, overly made-up, or haphazardly attired employees. Though society's standards of dress are more casual than they once were, that market niche is still fairly small. Guests also arrive in some service settings with expectations for each other. Although patrons of a fancy restaurant may not expect those around them to dress up to employee standards, most people are less enthusiastic about paying fine dining prices when some guests are sitting around in cut-off shorts and halter tops. An open-air lakeside restaurant would have a more relaxed dress code for both employees and guests. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Although Figure 3-1 includes other people as part of the environment, and clearly they often are, they sometimes seem almost like part of the service itself. If you go to a baseball camp, dude ranch, or on an Outward Bound team-building trip through the wilderness, other people are not just wallflowers or scenery; they are necessary to the experience, and you may even participate in or coproduce it with them. However, even though the other customers may be an important or even a necessary part of a guest experience, and in fact can sometimes make it or break it, their presence is only rarely the reason why you sought out the experience. So they are usually best thought of as part of the environment within which the service is delivered, rather than as part of the service itself, though the distinction is not always clear. The Servicescape Temperature, humidity, sounds, lights, signs, furnishings, green space, open space, other people--although no guest ever singles out or even notices all of the elements within the environment, they do combine to create an overall, unified impression of that environment. In the model seen in Figure 3-1, we use the term perceived service environment for the general perception or picture that the guest draws from the countless individual environmental factors. Bitner calls this overall perception the servicescape; it is what the individual environmental factors add up to for each guest. Because each guest perceives different environmental elements, each guest's servicescape is a little bit different. Making even more difficult what might have seemed an easy task--providing a setting within which to deliver the service--the hospitality service provider must realize that each guest's reaction to the perceived servicescape is affected or "moderated" by the guest's mood, personality, expectations, and demographic characteristics. Even if they perceive the servicescape similarly, a shy seventy-year-old female entering a wild disco bar by mistake is going to have a reaction different from that of a twenty-four-year-old male accustomed to spending most evenings there. Service experience designers and hospitality managers must realize that the guest whose perception of the servicescape has been moderated by that guest's individual differences from all other guests is going to respond to the servicescape in one, or perhaps more likely in some combination, of three ways: physiologically, emotionally, and cognitively. We shall talk about each of these in a moment. Factors That Moderate Individual Responses Not only do different guests respond differently to the same physical environment but even the same guest may respond differently from day to day or even hour to hour. Although the hospitality organization usually provides the same servicescape elements for everyone, it should always remember the uniqueness of guests. We label as moderators the individual, personal factors that cause guests to respond to the service setting in different ways. Guests bring a particular day's moods, purposes, demographic characteristics, and personality traits to a particular day's guest experience. These factors affect or moderate each guest's response to the servicescape. Some people like to be alone and object to standing in long, crowded lines. Other people love to be around crowds and view rubbing elbows and sharing gripes with people in line as part of the fun. Some customers arrive in a happy mood while others are angry or upset. Some older people have a hard time walking longer distances while most young children love it. Some parents don't like to get wet on a ride while most teens think it's great. Cultural values and beliefs also influence how guests respond to the servicescape. Some cultures find red a happy color, and others find it threatening; some find handshakes a positive gesture, and others are offended. Each culture produces an infinity of cultural nuances, and hospitality managers can only do their best to recognize the individual variations that these differences create and design an environment that will offer a guest experience of high quality and value to most people. Moderators include the individual moods that people bring to the servicescape. When people are upset or angry, they may not be able to perceive any environment as positive or fun. Every restaurant server dreads the arrival of an unhappy diner. Regardless of how good the service, fine the dinner, or exciting and pleasant the environment, the diner is likely to leave as unhappy (and unmotivated to leave a generous tip) as when that person arrived. People arriving either in a neutral mood or unfamiliar with the experience awaiting them will be most influenced by environmental cues. The wonderful smell of freshly popped popcorn or baking cinnamon buns will influence the neutral guest, and every other guest, to consider purchasing the food product. Smart retailers make sure these familiar odors are fanned out into the wandering crowd to encourage product awareness and interest. The Disney Smellitzer machine, which can produce artificial, environmentally appropriate aromas, reproduces the aroma of freshly baking chocolate-chip cookies and projects it out to the crowds walking down Main Street, U.S.A., in the Magic Kingdom. Why an artificial aroma? Disney knows that blowing air across real cookies would dry them out. The machine creates the aroma of fresh cookies without affecting cookie quality. RESPONDING TO THE SERVICESCAPE A guest can respond to a service setting in one or more of three ways: physiologically, emotionally, and cognitively. The moderating factors discussed in the previous section will affect the nature of the response. Physiological Responses The senses. A physiological response results primarily from the servicescape's effects on the guest's senses. Another look at Figure 3-1 will suggest that most physiological responses to the environment are responses to such ambient conditions as temperature, humidity, air quality, smells, sounds, and light. Information processing. A second type of physiological response to the environment is the information-processing activity of the brain. A well-known study of how much unfamiliar information a human brain could process at any one time found that the capacity was seven (plus or minus two) random pieces of information, such as random numbers. The study was done for the phone company, which wanted to know how long a telephone number people could remember. The study results led to using combinations of words and numbers (like REpublic 7-5914) to help people overcome their physiological limitations by combining a familiar word with five unfamiliar numbers. We can see variations on this method today in the word-based phone numbers used by organizations competing for our business with easy-to-remember numbers such as 1-800-I-FLY-SWA, 1-800-HOLIDAY, 1-800-HILTONS. The importance of this concept to those managing the service environment is to recognize that random information will quickly overtax the capacity of the human mind to comprehend the environment and enjoy the service experience. It doesn't take much unconnected information--a lengthy menu in an unfamiliar restaurant, for example, or a vast assortment of machines in a self-serve photocopy center--to confuse a customer, and many service operations are unfamiliar territory for their customers. Organizations must respect the information-processing limitations that we all share; customers become frustrated when confused, lost, or overwhelmed with too much information or too many options. Rich and lean environments. Environments can be made rich with information or lean. Obviously, they should be relatively lean when guests are expected to be unfamiliar with the setting, or when they have to process a lot of information, and can be rich when guests are familiar with the setting or have few choices or decisions to make. The directional or instructional parts of the environment must be kept lean enough in information content to make sure that guests can figure out what they are supposed to do; the richer or more elaborate environments can be used when guests have no responsibility for figuring anything out. Thus, a themed restaurant can be rich in detail and content because the guest only has to sit, observe, and eat. If customers must make decisions about where they are or what to do next, as in a major medical complex, the setting should be kept relatively simple and familiar. This point ties in well with the cognitive aspects of the environmental experience. Cognitive Responses Expectations and the servicescape. The cognitive impact depends on the knowledge we bring to the experience. We enter every experience with a set of expectations based on what we have seen and done before. The human tendency is to seek points of similarity between what we have done, seen, or experienced before and the new situation. These prior experiences build expectations as to what ought to be seen, which obviously influences what we actually see. If we expect to see a whole television picture on our screen, then we don't bother to look closely at the picture to see the thousands of little dots that collectively make it up. Likewise, if we enter a cafeteria similar to one we have visited before, then we have our behavior scripted to perform the tasks necessary to eat by the familiar cues in the environment (the arrow pointing to the beginning of the line, the arrangement of the trays, the rack for the silverware, and the bars upon which our tray should slide as we review the food items available). Indeed, one advantage of chain or branded restaurants is that we know what to expect because we have been there before. We know that the environment in one Morrison's is pretty much like the environment in another, and so we know immediately how to get our food selections after a quick scan of the physical facility to confirm that it is set up the same as every other Morrison's. Imagine, in contrast, the customer who has never seen a cafeteria before and has had no similar experience. Or worse, what if Morrison's managers were authorized to lay out the restaurants however they wished, as a cafeteria, a typical restaurant, or otherwise? Without any previously scripted behavior patterns to rely on, customers new to each location would be quite confused and would require employee time and assistance to navigate this unfamiliar experience. The point is that hospitality organizations should recognize the information-processing limitations of their guests and seek to introduce the environmental cues necessary to ensure that the present experience ties into some previously built and familiar guest script. The more familiar the organization can make the experience to the guest, the less confusion, frustration, and unhappiness the guest will have. As noted earlier, theming is used extensively to simplify the ability of guests to orient themselves to a location inside the Magic Kingdom. If you are in Frontierland, all the streets, decorations, cast-member costumes, and even the trash cans are themed to provide the multiple cues that help guests quickly determine where in the park they are. Nonverbal communication. Those aspects of the environmental setting that evoke a cognitive response can be viewed as a form of nonverbal communication whereby the designers of the guest experience communicate what the experience is and teach the guest how to enjoy it. If patrons see a white linen tablecloth in a restaurant, they link that information back to what they have learned previously about the relationship of white linen to restaurant type and price range. In other words, servicescape layout and content tell the guest something about what to expect from the experience. These informational cues tap into previous knowledge and form the beliefs about what the experience should be like. If diners find that the white-linen-tablecloth restaurant also has inexpensive menu prices and excellent food, they will be wowed about what a great deal the experience represents because they have been cued to expect a big bill. Conversely, if the same diners see disposable china on plastic tables and are then handed menus filled with twenty-dollar entrees, they will be upset. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Guests bring a lifetime of history to the guest experience that influences what they expect to find. Whether or not their expectations are met obviously bears on their satisfaction with the experience, so physical cues--like all other aspects of the experience--must be carefully constructed and managed to be consistent with the expected experience. Guests don't want inconsistencies--they don't expect them or like them--or negative surprises. If you are going to offer surprises, make them pleasant ones. Travelodge is a budget hotel chain. The former Travelodge Hotel in Lake Buena Vista, Florida (now a Best Western hotel) was an exceptional Travelodge. When guests walked in expecting the typical Travelodge, certainly adequate and serviceable but not outstanding, and found a very nice hotel, they were impressed. The hotel's high level of guest-satisfaction ratings was helped by the fact that guests got more than they expected based on their prior knowledge of Travelodges. Olive Garden originally placed machines making pasta in the front of their restaurants, providing a nonverbal cue to their guests that the pasta was fresh. Since people waiting for a table could watch an employee making pasta right then, the product had to be fresh, suggesting nonverbally to guests that Olive Garden cared enough to use fresh ingredients. Emotional Responses Finally, the customer may react emotionally to the servicescape. Old grads get choked up when they return for reunions at their college campuses. Children and adults alike are emotionally touched by holiday decorations. The flags flying, the breeze blowing, and the majesty of the presidential speakers have strong emotional impact on many American visitors to Disney's American Adventure. Little children have the same emotional reaction when Mickey Mouse walks by. It not only represents an individual physical act but also builds an emotional tie to the entire park experience that many children never forget. Emotional responses have two distinct elements of interest to the hospitality organization. The first is the degree of arousal, and the second is the amount or degree of pleasure/ displeasure that the experience represents. The emotional response that the hospitality organization seeks to create should have elements of arousal and pleasure to gain the emotional interest of its guests. People want to spend time and money in pleasurable environments; they avoid unpleasant environments. Those that create high levels of arousal are viewed positively unless the arousal is unpleasurable. A sudden explosion that creates loud noise, confusion, and overstimulation would be high on arousal but might be low on pleasure, except on the Fourth of July. Most customers avoid explosive settings. On the other hand, some people seek out high levels of arousal and pleasure, in such activities as sky diving, ultra-light plane flying, playing or watching contact sports, stock car racing, or deep-sea fishing. A trip on a roller coaster is a scary but not terrifying ride that yields high levels of pleasant experience combined with high levels of arousal. In activities like these, a little fear stimulates a positive experience for the customer. Arousal can also be obtained in other ways, such as the appeal to patriotism in Fourth of July celebrations or the familiar music accompanying the Main Street, U.S.A., parades. Good hospitality managers have learned to use arousal cues effectively. For example, in the morning when guests are flooding into a theme park, they might hear upbeat, up-tempo music; employees would greet guests in strong, enthusiastic voices to sustain the positive feelings and high level of energy that guests bring into the park. When guests are leaving at the end of the day, both the music and the final comments of employees should probably be sedate and restrained, to be consonant with the lower arousal level of the tired guests. The Bottom Line: Come and Stay, or Stay Away These three response factors--physiological, cognitive, and emotional--operating together lead the guest to make one of two choices--approach or avoid--about the guest experience (see far right of Figure 3-1). Leaving the service and its delivery out of the equation, the guest can decide that the experience of the service environment was, on balance, positive or negative. Servicescape perceptions can encourage the guest to stay longer and come again, or go away and stay away. Hospitality organizations must work hard to create environments that encourage the longer stays and repeat visits that result in increased revenues. The model in Figure 3-1 should help hospitality managers to choose and arrange environmental factors so as to provide servicescapes that enhance the service and its delivery and that guests, in their infinite variety, will generally respond to in a positive way Lessons Learned 1. Envision and create the service setting from the guest's point of view, not your own. 2. Make it easy for guests to go where they want to go and to know where they are. 3. Supply rich environments when and where guests have time to appreciate and enjoy them; use lean environments when and where guests are trying to figure out what they should do or where they should go. 4. Do not overload the environment with information; recognize that most people can process only small amounts of unfamiliar information at one time. 5. Know and manage the cognitive, physiological, and emotional impact of your environment on guests. 6. Manage the environment to maintain the guest's feeling of safety and security. Review Questions 1. Consider how theming a guest experience adds value or improves the quality of the guest experience. Compare two similar experiences you have had, such as one restaurant that offered a themed experience and another that did not. What differences did you note between the quality and value of the two experiences? 2. Why should managers pay attention to the environmental setting in which the guest experience occurs? 3. Reflect on the service environments of two different hospitality organizations, one that "felt good" to you and one that "felt uncomfortable." Use the factors in the model in Figure 3-1 to determine why they felt different. 4. Imagine yourself as a first-time visitor to your town or your campus. A. How hard or how easy would it be to direct yourself to the location where you are right now? B. How could you make finding this location easier for an unfamiliar visitor, using the ideas suggested in this chapter? 5. Think about the environmental and "people" factors that make you feel safe and secure in the location where you live. A. To what extent are these same factors applicable to hospitality environments? B. Have you ever been in a hospitality setting in which you did not feel safe and secure? What more could or should the organization have done to enhance your feelings of safety and security? 6. Consider the places you go as a guest or customer. A. Are these environments too rich or too lean with information, and why do you make that judgment? B. How would you change those environments to make the amount of information in those environments "just right" for achieving whatever it is you need to do when you are in that particular situation? Activities 1. The hospitality service product is largely intangible. Observe and report how one or more hospitality organizations with which you are familiar use environmental design cues to give some tangibility to this intangible service product.2. Using Figure 3-1 as your reference, go to a hospitality organization and take note of as many environmental factors as you can. Which ones seem to have been "managed" by someone? Which factors can and cannot be managed by the local manager? Which ones seem managed well and which ones do not? (14.) Sewell and Brown, 124. |
A guests emotional responses have which two elements of interest to hospitality organizations?
zusammenhängende Posts
Urheberrechte © © 2024 frojeostern Inc.
