Empowering Front Office Professionals with Understanding of Guests' Personality Psychology

Abstract

Purpose: To become a successful front office professional, a person needs to be comfortable with interacting with strangers and dealing with various hotel-guests issues. To do so effectively, a front office manager needs to understand and apply appropriate findings of psychology. Personality psychology is a branch of psychology that studies personality and individual differences. For years, practitioners of applied psychology have tried to help companies identify personality types of customers and teach them how to handle each of these. By understanding the personality styles of guests, front office managers can easily accommodate the needs of each type. This conceptual paper analyses some of the findings of personality psychology which have direct implications for front office managers and professionals. Design/methodology/approach: The types of personality and the principles discussed in the paper are arrived at through review of related literature and by interacting with the successful hospitality professionals and practitioners of applied psychology. Findings: Along with the notable Big Five model of the personality, the paper enlists the characteristic of various sub-categories of the guests after broadly classifying them into various heads in relation to their planning, booking, pricing, lodging and complaining habits and discusses their implications for front office professionals. Value: The knowledge and understanding of various personality types of guests would guide the front office professionals to plan their strategy to deal effectively with different types of guests in all of their job functions.