The Combined Application of Quality Function Deployment and Pareto Analysis for Hotel Services Improvement

Introduction

For several years, Quality Function Deployment (QFD) has been at the leading edge of research and development in many fields (Barnett and Raja, 1995; Chiou and Tong, 2001; Han et al., 2001; Pitman et al., 1996; Pramod et al., 2007; Walker, 2002; Wang, 2007). QFD evolved as a way to incorporate knowledge about the needs and desires of end-user customers into all stages of the design, manufacture, delivery and support of products and services (Einspruch, 1996; Griffin and. Hauser, 1993; Kathawala and Motwani, 1994; Knights, 2001; Maddux et al., 1991; Tan et al., 1998). Many world-class organisations have successfully used QFD (Barnett and Presley, 1998; Dijkstra and van der Bij, 2002).

Usually, in order to achieve significant results, organisations that are implementing QFD should have operational quality systems in place (Foster, 2006; Unal and Dean, 1991). QFD is then introduced to support the quality improvement drive that results in significant improvement in performance. If the leadership of the organisation is dedicated, visionary, with clear strategic intent, having a strong focus on the development of competencies within the organisation, then a total change in organisation culture and significant investment in information technology will create a successful and profitable organisation.