Communication is the most important and the most used of all skills in the hospitality and tourism industry. Managers spend the largest portion of their time in verbal or written communications with their employees or outside parties. Other staff member communicate among themselves , as well as their managers, frontline employees suppliers, and so on, to give and receive the information they need to perform their jobs.
Communication has been recognized as the means by which both and people and the organization survive. When human beings lack the ability to cope with life, the source of the problem is often a lack of appropriate information. Incomplete and unorganized information place a heavy strain on the ability of people to make sense out of their existence. Their performance of a job depends on having necessary information, having the skills to do a job depends on the quality of communication during the skills acquisition period.
Applying the definition of communication to this process, the role of the transmitter is to impart information, ideas, or feeling to another person. Encoding is the process by which information is organized into symbols, such as word, picture or gestures that can be conveyed to receiver. The transmitter subsequently uses a selected form of communication such as writing, speaking, faxing, gesturing, painting or advertising to impart the ancoded message too receiver. The receiver is the person or group of person to whom the message is being sent by the trasmitter. In the communication process, it is the responsibility of the receiver receive and decode the message. Decoding is the reverse of encoding. It is the process by which the symbols that the transmitter has conveyed to the receiver are interpreted and translated into meaninfullinformation. It is only after decoding that the receiver can respond to the perceived message. It is important to note that there are certain times during the communication cation process at which communication failures can readily occur. First, if the transmitter is not carefull during the encoding process, he may incorrectly encode the information, ideas, or feelings he intends to transmit. This would result in his transmitting an inaccurate message.
The thing which usually happens are such as the message received by the last person in line differs markedly from the orginal phase. The primary reason for this discrepancy is that the massage has gone through many transmulations as it has been encoded and by each person in the line.
Communication failure can also accur if a message does not reach the receive. It may reach no one or the actual receiver of the message may not be the person for whom the message was intended. However with this form of communication, there is no way to ensure this is the case. As stated earlier, how best to reach the intended receiver is an important consideration in selecting a form of communication for a particular message. Another potential source of trouble in the communication process is noise. Noise refers to any sort of distraction or interference that prevents the accurate transmitter and reception and reception of message. Three distinct types of noise have been identified such as external noise, physiological noise and psychological noise. External noise is any distraction or interference whose source is outside of the receiver. Physiological noise is interference caused by a biological factor such as loss of sight or hearing. Psychological noise refers to forces that either cause a tranmitter to improperly encode a message or receiver to incorrectly decode a message.
The frontline employees as the most important link between a company and its customer is a crucial first step in developing and implementing effective communication systems. The frontline employees have to ensure that they are fully aware of company policies and priorities insofar as they affect the job the employees are doing, they also have to know where and how to obtain information if required. The employees also have to react positively to the unexpected. They also have be confidence that management will support their reasonable action. They should know that reasonable suggestions will be acted upon. The staff also should be fully trained to carry out all of their job responsibilities.
While communication with customers can be winning business strategy in the service sector. Repeating business can only ensure his customer keep coming back. Example of the communication process are (Transmitter - Message Receiver)
Conclusion
Effective communication system are crucial to the success of organization in the hospitality and tourism industry. Without feedback from the customer and employees, it is imposible to assess the needs of consumers.
