Exercises in tourism empowerment practice

Purpose – The paper's purpose is to provide background and practical exercises for management to gain a perspective on the nature of true employee empowerment. Design/methodology/approach – After a brief overview of the nature of empowerment, a series to training exercises offers insight into how employee empowerment in the tourism industry can create deeper investment in the corporate mission and greater customer service. The exercises also examine approaches for management to avoid. Findings – Employee empowerment results from recognizing the employee's ability to be organization's eyes and ears. Originality/value – This discussion and set of exercises provides management with the opportunity to test their instincts against realistic situations of employee empowerment in the context of service failure.