UNAIR NEWS – Hotels are one of businesses that provide service as its core. Hotel service satisfaction is measured from its excellent service given to guests. To achieve service excellence, an understanding on total quality management is needed as a hotelier. Therefore, the fourth semester students of Hospitality Management D-3 program Universitas Airlangga carried out a visit and had a class at Artotel Hotel Surabaya on Friday, May 3, 2019.
Before starting the class, Mr. Eggy Rigata as Artotel’s General Manager explained about Artotel’s history. The word Artotel is a combination of Art and hotel, even its employees are called artist. Artotel has a uniqueness as a wall in each room is decorated with Indonesian paintings’ replicas and they are different in each room.
Furthermore, a hotel lobby is generally used as a waiting lounge for guests until the rooms are ready for the guests, but Artotel has other uniqueness. Besides being used as a waiting lounge, the lobby is also a gallery of paintings where all paintings are for sale. This uniqueness offered by Artotel certainly differ them from other hotels and becomes the main attraction for guests to stay in a hotel with full of artistic properties.
Besides explaining about the history of Artotel, Mr. Eggy also motivated the students, that they are expected to have one goal they try to achieve.
“I always have one goal every time I wake up, so everything I do is well-planned to achieve it,” said Eddy motivating the students.
“I started my career as pool cleaner. But I always want to continue learning, until one day I was offered to help in the kitchen. I agreed to it. Because of my desire to learn, I got a lot of hospitality knowledge that I did not get when I was in school, until I made it to this position as General Manager at Artotel, “said Mr. Eggy during service excellence class.
Total Quality Management material was presented by the Human Resource Manager, Ms. Hannah Tarantulita. She explained that in Artotel, the artists are given freedom of expression, including for their clothes, Artotel does not require artists to wear formal uniforms, using shirts with jeans is permissible. The Artotel artist also gave some quizzes during class with gift vouchers as rewards for the active students. In addition to getting lecture, students also had a coffee break and a room tour where students were welcome to see the room and given explanation on facilities available at Artotel.
The purpose of the lecture at Artotel is to improve understanding on the material as it was given directly by the general manager, students are also expected to gain experience from the speakers. All students also got a certificate from Artotel. Dian Yulie Reindrawati S.Sos., MM, Ph.D as coordinator of Hospitality Management D-3 program said that the activity was an effort to link and match in the industry so students understand what is expected by industry.
Author: Umi Farichah Bascha, SE, MM
