The role of hospital hospitality management in implementing hospitality practices in hospitals: A study about a Portuguese private health care group

• Autor(a) principal: Matias, Sara Sofia Carvalho
• Data de Publicação: 2022
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/27460
• topic: Hospital hospitality management; Hospitality management; Hospitality; Hospitality in hospitals; Hospital architecture; Gestão hoteleira hospitalar; Gestão hoteleira; Hospitalidade; Hospitalidade nos hospitais; Arquitetura hospitalar

Hospital and hospitality are two words with the same etymological root and, during Classical Antiquity, hotels and hospitals shared the same physical space. With evolution, they became two distinct institutions, but there is still something that brings them together – both provide a service for people who, for different reasons, have to stay away from home for a certain period of time. During the 1970s, some private hospitals felt the need to improve the quality of service provided by their non-clinical areas, and, thus, the creation of Hospital Hospitality Management departments emerged, responsible for implementing hospitality practices in hospitals by adapting conventional hotel services to the hospital reality. The present dissertation focuses on a Portuguese private health group, and its main goal is to understand the role of this Hospital Hospitality department in the implementation of hospitality practices in the respective hospitals. In order to analyse this issue, a qualitative study was carried out through the conduction of three interviews with hospital hospitality managers. The results obtained show the importance of the investment in these services, since they allow the hospital service to become more human, focused on the customers’ individual needs, and also through the creation of more welcoming spaces capable of mitigating the cold environment of the hospitals, which translates both in the satisfaction of their customers and in the professionals from the group.