Soft Skills and Interpersonal Skills for Tourism and Hospitality Industry

This chapter presents the importance of soft skills along with interpersonal skills in enhancing the workplace effectiveness in tourism and hospitality industry. It reflects upon rationale for service industry’s need for professionalism. Service industry offers some intangible action that meets a specific requirement. How a service is conducted leaves an everlasting impression on the consumer. Constant upgrading customer service as per the quick changes because of globalization is one of the challenges that the entire service sector faces. For the tourism and hospitality industry, this is a major concern as the customers seek experiential service encounters. Hence, with excellent interpersonal and soft skills, the entire service experience could be enhanced. In this light, this chapter explains the role of soft and interpersonal skills in service industry. Interpersonal skills are a part of a person’s soft skills, and as a general definition, both are used to interact with other people. Nevertheless, interpersonal skills cover a more generic version of this than soft skills do. Soft skills are the personal values that one has like empathy, consideration, etc., while interpersonal skills ascertain an individual’s ability to interact well with others. These skills comprise of effective communication skills, leadership, and teamwork skills, problem-solving capability, proactive approach, sincerity, and strong work ethics. This chapter explains the interpersonal skills that need to be developed for quality customer service, workplace interactions, and etiquettes.