Published Paper Details:

Abstract Customer service has always been the hallmark of the Tourism and Hospitality Industry since last decade in Rwanda and the industry was among the top priorities to contribute to the development of the country, however due to COVID-19 pandemic spread all over the world since December 2019, many service sectors has been injured by the pandemic where some were partial or fully closed, including tourism and hospitality industry. In February 2022, the pandemic slowed down and the government allowed most of the closed businesses to resume again, it has been long waiting time for customers and employees to meet again in service environment. The purpose of this study is to analyze service failure recovery strategies by food and beverage employees in Rwanda after COVID-19 Pandemic. One hundred and fifty (150) food and beverage professionals were selected randomly from different establishments in different touristic areas of Rwanda such as Kigali, Musanze, Rubavu, Karongi, Kayonza and Huye. With the use of Google forms, forty four (44) questionnaires containing twenty most likely service failures in F&B establishments with their possible recovery actions were given to respondents to determine which best action to recover each service failure. The results demonstrated that some actions are mostly used by respondents to recover service failures after the pandemic (table 4) and others are less recommended. The study suggests that F&B establishments should establish complaint procedures that are unproblematic and free from bureaucracy as possible; to invest time, money and effort in handling customer complaints properly, to give more comprehensive trainings to their human resources in dealing with complaining guests. The study concludes that the main service failures are linked staff professionalism, managers are advised to initiate day to day awareness and on job empowerment to their staff for minimizing or removing all those failures so that Tourism and Hospitality Industry might catch the good level than before the Pandemic.