Hospitality experience: Creating value by the front-desk work analysis and organizational innovation

Hospitality is a growing sector in the service field and it sustains a representative position in the tourism productive chain. Rio de Janeiro's hospitality market expects to expand itself with the creation of 6.160 new ones until 2016. That intensifies the need to improve services in order to keep competitiveness. Ergonomics is a science focused on both well-being and performance improvement. This research aims to identify how organizational ergonomics can help creating value on hospitality services. A literature review is the first step, followed by a field research. The Ergonomics Work Analysis (EWA) methodology was applied on a hotel front desk, located in Copacabana, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. The preliminary results showed how Human Resources Management and Operational Management works separately, causing difficulties to service quality management. We propose then that Ergonomics might bridge this gap, supporting organizational innovations so as to help increasing system performance and customer satisfaction.