Topic:  “IMPACT OF EMPLOYEE TRAINING ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION IN TOURISM INDUSTRY ON PARK HYATT SYDNEY”

1. Objective

 The objective of the topic is as follows:

• To define the concept of employee training and customer satisfaction
• To identify the employee training issue in Park Hyatt
• To establish the relationship between employee training and customer satisfaction concerning Park Hyatt
• To deliver some recommendations to Park Hyatt.

2. Research Questions

 A group of questions has been formulated during the research. These are as follows:

• What are employee training and customer satisfaction?
• What are the staff training related issues faced by Park Hyatt?
• What is the link between staff training and customer satisfaction?
• What are the recommendations for Park Hyatt?

3. Research design

 According to McDonald et al. (2015), explanatory, descriptive and exploratory designs are the three basic designs which are used in research works. Based on the research purpose and data needs, the distinction is made between the two. According to Ponelis (2015), the exploratory design is conducted for a topic which is not yet explored in studies. When cause and effects need to develop, then it is called explanatory design. The descriptive design describes the characteristics of a phenomenon or population under consideration (Willis et al. 2016). In this research, the descriptive design will be used in this specific project to know everything in a detailed way.

Justification: in this particular topic, the descriptive research design is taken into account to explore the impact of customer satisfaction and employee training in the tourism industry of Sydney. 

3.1 Research philosophy

According to Singh (2015), positivism, realism and interpretivism philosophies are the three main research philosophies that are being used in a research project. Positivism includes the collection of data analysis which is being done on the grounds of the scientific research theory. Human related works are put under the section of interpretivism (Balsvik, 2017). Realism includes all the research work naturally and meets with sociological happenings.

Justification: This research will be conducted by taking interpretivism philosophy to derive a conclusion for its impact on customer satisfaction and employee training in the tourism and travel industry of Sydney. Interpretivism philosophy put emphasis on the aims and objectives of the research.  According to Siddiqui (2019), the interpretivism philosophy allows the investigation of the impacts on the general society to infer deductions.  According to Ruggiano & Perry (2019), the use of this theory is effective as the examination of the secondary sources provided efficient evidence for the research results. The interpretivism philosophy would also help in examining the effects of the banks on the broader social scale rather than on an individual level only.

3.2 Research choice

Two types of data analysing method are used while working in a research project; one is quantitative, and the other one is qualitative data analysing method (Williams & Shepherd, 2017). According to McCusker & Gunaydin (2015), for the qualitative research method, the researchers have to take an interview in order to gather informationrelated to the research topic. On the other hand, in case of a quantitative approach, a survey is usually conducted, and short questions are being asked. In this type of research, both quantitative and qualitative methods will be used by the researcher for conducting the research.

Justification: Mix method comprising of qualitative and quantitative methods are to be used in this research study. The researcher will use the qualitative method for conducting interviews, and quantitative method will be used for conducting the survey. The conduction of survey and interviews will help in establishing the customer satisfaction and employee training and put an emphasis on travel and tour industry of Sydney. The secondary data shall be used by collecting data from various websites, journals, books, research papers and such sources.

3.3 Research method

The outline of the research has been selected in order to achieve the aims and objectives accurately.  According to Fah et al. (2016), rigorous employee training has a significant impact on customer satisfaction in the travel and tourism industry. Thus, in order to conduct thorough research on the topic, there is a need for proper planning and philosophy as well as the design and choosing the proper research ways. Nature of the research is bi-layered, which means it consists of objective and subjective opinions which would make the use of secondary research perfect for this research. According to Ruggian & Perry (2019), there are two types of data which are basically used one is primary, and the other one is secondary. Primary data collection can be through surveys and interviews which provide the basic information related to the topic. Secondary data collection is done through existed researches, books, magazines, and so on.

Justification:  Both primary and secondary sources are to be used in this project.  According to Cole & Trinh (2017), secondary sources are dependent because no direct data can be obtained from the sources. As per Lane & Gibbs (2015), the data collected from the secondary sources, it expands the scope for examining the performance of people and society. In this particular research, government websites have also been used to collect information. Thus, the use of the secondary method of data collection could help in gaining the required information from credible sources for using it to analyse. For conducting primary research, the employees working in Park Hyatt Sydney are to be selected for interviewing and surveys. 

4. Data

As per McDonald et al. (2015), data collection methods involves primary and secondary data collection methods where the data sources could be either primary (survey, interviews, focus group discussions). Also, it could be secondary sources such as (case study analysis, systemic Literature Review, company annual reports, news articles) (Lane & Gibbs, 2015). The interpretivism philosophy and qualitative research strategy would support both primary and secondary data sources and data collection method even though conclusive research design has been chosen.

4.1 Population

The population of the research is mainly on customer satisfaction and employee training in the tourism industry of Sydney, who has gone through initial training. For doing this, we have to cross through many interviews and surveys with the managers and the employees of the Park Hyatt. 40 employees have been included to do the interview process successfully.

4.2 Sampling technique

According to Palinkas et al. (2015), sampling is a technique which is used mostly in quantitative data collection for selecting information-rich cases in order to get the most effective advantage of using limited resources. There are two basic types of sampling; probability sampling and non-probability sampling techniques. Here, for this particular research, a sample size of 40 employees is to be targeted in the survey process of the Park Hyatt. Random sampling technique will be used by the researcher for selecting the employees for survey due to the cost effectiveness and convenience. On the other hand, in order to carry out the procedure of the interviewing, non-probability method of sampling is chosen as the sampling method for the study.

4.3 Analytic approach

Research study could adopt three types of research strategy, namely quantitative data analysis technique, qualitative data analysis technique and mixed methods. According to Almalki (2016), quantitative research strategy relies on numerical data and statically analysis and interpretation. The qualitative analysis relies on theoretical data and practical examples or case studies. Mixed methods as clear from its name utilise both strategies (Williams & Shepherd, 2017). Here, the research purpose makes both quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques to be the most suitable strategy. Three approaches are basically used in the project named inductive, abductive and deductive approach. On developmental theory, the deductive approach supports the work of researchers at the beginning. The inductive approach supports research work with the help of promotional happenings analysed on the research data. In this particular research, the deductive approach will be used, which implies working on established theories. Under this approach, data collection is used to explore a phenomenon, thus identifying themes and patterns. This approach neither falsified research assumptions nor verified them but rather focuses on answering specific research questions. It works on newly applied theories, whereas in abductive approach, it works on existing theories. The research setting is done on the basis of the impacts on customer satisfaction and employee training in the tourism industry of the Park Hyatt in Sydney. Similar research has been conducted by Martyn & Anderson (2018) who have been able to highlight the significance of focused training in customer satisfaction. The secondary data analysis method is implemented for analysing the collected data (Cole & Trinh, 2017). The secondary sources could be collected from journals, websites related to the research topic. According to Ruggian & Perry (2019), the observation method helps in the identification of the required data and understands what the data means in respect to the research objectives. The thematic analysis of the data is required to be conducted for increased significance to the results.  According to Fah et al. (2016), the use of keywords like the guests’ satisfaction and employee training are used abruptly in the travel industry. These keywords are required to be put to use to search to find information related to this project