Total Quality,Human Resource Management and Tourism

The tourism industry has many of the features of a classic service. These contribute significantly to the complexity of managing quality in such environments. While Total Quality Management (TQM) has been hailed as a philosophy which supports a key objective of continuously meeting customer requirements, there is debate over how the realization of this philosophy sits alongside what might be regarded as ‘best practice’ human resource management (HRM). The ‘people’ aspects are a main consideration in tourism management. This paper aims to provide a more detailed understanding of the linkages and interactions between TQM, HRM and tourism, by reviewing appropriate literature in these areas and through analysis of reported cases.