Higher Diploma

Hospitality Management

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This Hospitality Management program, is a 1 year Higher Diploma program examined by ICM.

Published on 12-Nov-2024

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Hospitality management refers to several separate operations including food and beverage, travel, accommodation, event management, etc, that ensure the best possible guest experience.

This ICM Advanced Diploma in Hospitality Management program teaches a broad range of hospitality skills combined with managerial skills and sound knowledge of the industry that are required to successfully coordinate hospitality operations.

Entry Requirements

KCSE C- minus and above
ICM Diploma in Hospitality Management

Objectives of Hospitality Management

The course aims to provide students with an understanding of the managerial, decision-making and leadership aspects of the hospitality industry as well as soft skills such as the spirit of service, social etiquette, personal responsibility, commitment, and teamwork.

What you will study

The Nature of Services
- The growing importance of services
- Services: what makes them special?
- A closer look at services
- The role of service classifications
Defining the Service Concept
- Why do we need a service concept?
- How to define the service concept
- Implementing the service concept
- The service concept as a guiding framework: an overview of its main ingredients
- Why not all service concepts are alike
Servitisation: Or Why Services Management is Relevant for Manufacturing Environments
- From goods to services
- Why servitisation?
- Making the transition
Relationship Marketing
- Relationship marketing: new words to an old tune?
- Linking customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and profitability
- Lifetime value: the link with profitability
- How to increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty
- Setting objectives in service marketing
Promoting Services
- What is so different about promoting services?
- The basic building blocks of promotion
- Designing a marketing communications strategy for services
- Drawing up a promotion plan
Pricing Services
- Developing a framework for pricing decisions
- Pricing objectives
- Pricing strategies
- How to increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty
- Pricing structure
- Pricing levels and tactics
Customer Satisfaction and Complaint Management
- Service quality and customer satisfaction
- A service satisfaction framework
- Measuring customer satisfaction
- Complaint management
Service Guarantees and Service-level Agreements
- Service guarantees
- Service-level agreements
- Internal service guarantees and service-level agreements
The Role of Human Resource Practices in Service Organisations
- The nature of services
- Human resource management for services
Competencies and Service Organisations
- Designing competency-based HR practices
- Linking customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and profitability
- Competencies for service organisations
Collaboration: Integrating Work and Learning
- The benefits of collaboration in the workplace
- The broader relevance of collaboration to services
- The role of collaboration in learning
- Collaboration as the central theme
- Establishing collaborative relationships
The Role of Empowerment in Service Organisations
- The relevance of empowerment for service environments
- Empowerment: the employee and the supervisor
- Empowerment: the organisation
Role Stress Among Front-line Employees
- Relevance of role stress for the service encounter
- Linking customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and profitability
- Role stress defined
- Handling role stress for front-line employees
Service Process Design and Management
- Process choice
- Process design
- Process monitoring
- Process evaluation
- Process re-engineering
Capacity Management
- Capacity and capacity management
- Capacity planning
- Scheduling capacity
- Managing the demand side
- The psychology and managerial consequences of waiting
Facilities Management
- The nature of facilities management in services
- The nature of facilities management in services
- Location
- How to increase customer satisfaction and customer loyalty
- Designing the servicescape
IT Developments and their Impact on Services
- The network era – where do we stand?
- The impact of IT developments on service encounters
- Action strategies for the new media
Performance Measurement Systems in Service Firms
- Designing performance measurement systems for services
- Implementing an integrated performance measurement system
Managing Innovation in a Service Environment
- Innovations as spiral processes: the value-constellation approach
- Innovation portfolio management
- Organising the innovation portfolio: the make-or-buy decision
- The operational management of innovation
Managing Services across National Boundaries
- Why internationalise?
- Drivers towards internationalisation
- Culture and cultural differences
- Internationalisation strategies
Defining a Service Strategy
- The nature of strategic management
- The challenges of strategic management for services
What is Customer Service?
- Importance of customer service
- Understanding customer satisfaction
- Excellent customer service
- Five needs of every customer
- Internal and external customers
- Customer attributes
- Cost of losing a customer
Challenges of Customer Service
- Elements of success
- Barriers to excellent customer service
- Power of perceptions
- Understanding expectations
- Levels of expectations
- Scope of influence
- Reputation management
- Techniques for exceeding customer expectations
- Keys to credibility
- Importance of values
- Ethics in customer service
- Current status of customer service
- New trends in customer service
Problem Solving
- Role of problem solving in customer service
- Creativity and problem solving
- Problems as opportunities
- Confronting conflict
- Problem solving process
- Problem solving strategies
- Development of negotiation skills
- Professional approaches to apologising and conveying bad news
- Barriers to problem solving and decision making
- Importance of follow up
- Management and Strategy
  Strategy and Formulating a Plan for Success
Why a strategy?
- Planning
- Importance of infrastructure
- Culture
- High touch and low touch customers
- Consumption behaviour
- Segmenting the market
- Developing a strategy
Empowerment
- What is empowerment?
- Importance of mission and purpose statement
- Empowerment = opportunity
- Steps to empowering customer service providers
- Co-production of customer service
- Why co-production works
- Design of systems
Communications in Customer Service
- Building customer intelligence
- Methods of communication
- Listening
- Voice inflection as a customer service tool
- Telephones and customer service
- Words to use/avoid
- Power phrases
- Power of eye contact
- Appeal to the senses
- Communication and technology
Managing Difficult Customers (Coping with Challenging Customers)
- Who are challenging customers?
- Why they are challenging
- Creating challenging customers
- Characteristics of challenging customers
- Respect
- Empathy
- Responsibility check
- What to do when you are wrong
- Benefits from dealing with challenging customers
Motivation and Leadership
- Needs and wants
- Motivating factors
- Understanding morale
- Self-concept and motivation
- Improving self-concept
- Power of self motivation
- Teamwork
- Motivating others
Leadership in Customer Service
- Leadership defined
- Knowing yourself
- Formal and informal leaders
- Coach or counsellor
- Characteristics of excellent leaders
- Leadership and goals
- Creating a customer service culture
- Benefit of job aids
- Leadership without position
- The boss as a customer
Customer Retention and Measurement of Satisfaction
- What is customer retention?
- Value of existing customers
- Churn
- Developing and improving the customer retention programme
- Measurement of satisfaction
- Sources of information
- Benefits of measuring your effectiveness
- Determining your effectiveness
- Surveys and reality
- Evaluating your own performance
- Business benefits from measuring satisfaction
Technology and Customer Service
- Today’s changing marketplace
- The customer of the twenty-first century
- Embracing new technologies
- Call centres
- The internet
- Enhancing service experiences and building customer loyalty
Excellence in Customer Service
- Excellence as the goal
- Getting started
- Rewards of excellent customer service