Red Carpet Service--Linking Rural Communities to Travelers and Tourists

Authors

• Cheryl Burkhart-Kriesel, University of NebraskaFollow
• Connie Francis, University of NebraskaFollow

Volume

45

Issue

6

Abstract

As rural communities develop their tourism potential they often overlook one basic aspect, hospitality training for front-line staff. This article describes a train-the-trainer program, Red Carpet Service, designed to help front-line employees increase tourism awareness, discover traveler tools, and practice customer service skills. It is based on a service-profit chain model that outlines the relationship between internal service quality and business profitability. The article highlights program evaluation results from post-then-pre surveys and mystery shopper interviews as well as community development roles for Extension faculty and suggests tourism as way for communities to begin working together at a regional level.

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 License.

Recommended Citation

Burkhart-Kriesel, C., & Francis, C. (2007). Red Carpet Service--Linking Rural Communities to Travelers and Tourists. Journal of Extension, 45(6), Article 9. https://commons.joe.org/joe/vol45/iss6/9