Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on Hotel Front-Office Employees' Performance

Abstract

Human performance in hospitality organizations is affected by various elements; one of these elements is employees training. One method of preparing employees to business world complexity could be incorporating simulation training into their training. Simulation training is defined as a micro world where employees can participate through experiments, testing strategies, and doing their best for achieving a better understanding of the aspects of the real world. This paper aims to investigate the effects of using simulation training on hotel front-office employees' performance by using data gathered from five-star hotels. The study employed a self-administered questionnaire consisted of 30 items. The items are divided into seven groups. These groups are categorized for seven variables: knowledge application (KA), employees experience (EE), teamwork (TW), employees interest (EI), problem-solving (PS), decision making (DM) and job performance (JP). The second section asked employees for profiling information (e.g., gender and age). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and structural equation modeling (SEM) was applied to test a hypothesized model. Findings reflected that simulation training has positive effects on employee performance in five-star hotels.

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IAJFTH Volume
4 , No.1 2018
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Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on
Hotel Front-Office Employees’ Performance
Nirmeen M. Elmohandes Tamer M. Abbas Neveen M. Mansour
Abstract
Human performance in hospitality organizations is affected by various
elements; one of these elements is employees training. One method of
preparing employees to business world complexity could be incorporating
simulation training into their training. Simulation training is defined as a
micro world where employees can participate through experiments, testing
strategies, and doing their best for achieving the better understanding of the
aspects of the real world. This paper aims to investigate the effects of using
simulation training on hotel frontoffice employees’ performance through
using data gathered from fivestar hotels. The study employed a self
administered questionnaire consisted of 30 items. The items are divided into
seven groups. These groups are categorized for seven variables: knowledge
application (KA), employees experience (EE), teamwork (TW), employees
interest (EI), problemsolving (PS), decision making (DM) and job
performance (JP). The second section asked employees for profiling
information (e.g., gender and age). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and
structural equation modeling (SEM) were applied to test a hypothesized
model. Findings reflected that simulation training has positive effects on
employee performance in fivestar hotels.
Keywords Simulation training, types of simulation training, pros and
cons of simulation training, employee job performance.
Introduction
The hospitality industry is highly labor intensive with the performance of its
human resource being a significant and determining factor in its
sustainability. Consequently, this reliance on human resources for its proper
functioning and growth, demands both effective and efficient workforce
practices in order to employees to perform at optimum levels, thereby
enabling the industry to remain viable in a rapidly changing, and fiercely
competitive, global environment (Ogbeide and Harrington, 2011). Many
hotels have become increasingly aware that mismanagement of resources can
lead to their demise; they have focused on cost minimization while

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simultaneously maintaining quality and gaining competitive advantage
(Birdir, 2002).
Developing highlevel competencies among hotel employees is a challenging
task. Employees must improve a wide range of higher order thinking,
problem solving, and cognitive skills to be effective at their work. The
universal economy is changing swiftly; the ability to be skillful, flexible, and
adaptable is a requirement to be successful. However, the various methods
and tools generally used for training business skills at hospitality
establishments become insufficient to cope with the complexity of
organizations and unsteady conditions of today’s market. Consequently, it is
an inevitable necessity to use other training types to be able to fulfill the
market requirements (Baker and O’Neil, 2002; Lehtinen, 2002; Siewiorik,
2012).
One method of preparing employees to business world complexity could be
incorporating simulation training into their training. The simulation
environments could help trainee practice leading, managing unexpected
situations, and solving problems. Preceding studies have pointed that for the
purpose of training ‘real life’ company operations complex training
environments are required (Zack, 1998; Sterman, 2001; Siewiorik 2012).
Many authors revealed that simulation training could submerge a trainee in a
simulated environment where he or she can practice tasks and increase
understanding, and useful experience. Moreover, trainees perform some
functions as creating a production strategy, defending an investment plan to
aboard of directors, and resolving unexpected events in the business context
(Vescoukis et al., 2009).
Literature Review
Simulation Training
Several authors (Hays and Singer, 1989; Gröbler, 2004; Kanner, 2007;
Anderson and Lawton, 2009) made a distinction between simulation and
simulators. a simulator is a complex device that provides a highly realistic
simulation of the operational situation and provides a situation adequate for
practicing and maintaining previously acquired skills. Whereas, simulation is
the act of immersing the trainee in the simulator. Romme (2003, p. 53)
defined simulation training as “simulation is a micro world in which people
can participate by running experiments, testing different strategies, and
building a better understanding of the aspects of the real world". Therefore,
micro world can compress time, space, enable experimenting, and training
when the consequences of some decisions and actions can be seen only over
time. It is also worthwhile to focus on the definition of Gilgeous and D’Cruz

Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on
Hotel Front-Office Employees’ Performance
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(1996, p. 34) for simulation training where defined as “an activity carried out
by cooperating or competing decisionmakers trying to achieve within the
rules, their objectives”.
According to Clarke (2009, p. 448) “trainees learn by managing a simulated
firm, most often with a competitive industry or environment. Trainees make
decisions usually, but not exclusively by allocating resources. The
simulations can focus on the firm’s internal mechanisms/dynamics, its
interaction with its environment, or both. In some training, decisions focus on
a particular business function or analysis or span many business functional
areas”. Whereas, Day and Reibstein (1997, p.33) defined simulation training
as, “a facsimile of reality” which is intended to display what would transpire
if the assumed conditions were to occur in reality. Simulation training offered
a more effective way in understanding issues than the extrapolation of trend
lines, forecasting and brainstorming.
Simulation training can remove the gap between frontoffice employees and
the real world by providing experience with complex problems, make the
content more understandable, and provide information about employees’
problemsolving strategies (Gredler, 2004). Fripp (1997) referred to what
extent the simulation provided different advantages and emphasized the
following advantages: (1) motivation, users reported that simulation training
is stimulating and enjoyable, a clear prerequisite of learning which cause
motivation; (2) teamwork, simulation training is a base for developing team
working skills; (3) riskfree environment, this advantage appeared through
the ability to take business decisions which would not be possible in reality
for fear of failure; (4) variety, simulation training provided a type of training
which complements with other methods of training such as: case studies or
lectures; and (5) experiential training, simulation training allowed people to
see the consequences of their decisions in experiential environment.
Types of Simulation Training
Chilcott (1996) discussed that there are two types of simulation: (1) role
playing simulation training, this type focuses on “learning by doing” which
provides employees an opportunity to train through a reallife situation, they
solve problems and make decisions. It allows them to know the results of
these actions and the impact regarding applying in the real world; and (2)
system dynamics simulation training, which based upon model that
numerically describe the situation. Chilcott stated also that system dynamics
simulation training is not as important as role playing simulation training.

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On the other hand, Hall (2011) explained that simulation training included
five forms as follows: (1) Total enterprise simulation, this simulation
involves most business functions (marketing, finance, and operations) and are
often described under the blanket category of "total enterprise" simulations;
(2) Functional simulation, focuses on a specified functional areas such as
sales, marketing, and operations; (3) Concept simulation, focuses on specific
business issues and concepts, and this might be the launch of a new product
(Product Launch simulation), the operation of a simple factory unit or basic
statistical concepts; (4) Planning simulation, involves the preparation of a
business plan. For example, longrange market diversification plan or the
development of an annual budget; and (5) Process simulation, involves the
practical use of mathematical techniques such as statistical forecasting,
inventory planning, analysis of sales performance.
Simulation training allows employees to study the problem aspects
effectively. Previous studies identified three main types of simulation: based
training roleplay, noncomputer based, and computer simulation. Each is
different in composition and utility. In a roleplaying training, it is divided
into interactive and non interactive. On one hand, interactive means each
participant plays a role of a character in a situation following specified rules
and interacting with other role players. Noninteractive, on the other hand, in
the case of presentations where participants adopt a character role. Regarding
to noncomputerbased, the key elements entail interaction within a
predetermined context, often involving forms of competition, cooperation,
conflict or collusion with a set of rules. Finally, computerbased simulation
aims to replicate system characteristics using simple object representations
(Feinstein et al., 2002; Lean et al., 2006).
The Study Hypotheses
John et al. (2012) mentioned that simulation training generally had some
factors: knowledge application, employees experience, teamwork, employees
interest, problem solving, job performance, and decision making.
Avramenko (2012) agreed with Adobor and Daneshfar (2006) that simulation
training realism impacted directly on knowledge enhancement and
knowledge application confirmed the work. Whereas, Tan and Laswad
(2008) maintained that a positive relationship between simulation training
and knowledge enhancement and knowledge application which leads to
ability enhancement. Therefore, this study hypothesizes that:
Hypothesis 1: knowledge application of simulation training has a positive
impact on employees’ job performance.

Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on
Hotel Front-Office Employees’ Performance
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Simulation training engaged and motivated rather than other training methods
which increase employees' work experience through gaining complex skills
(Garris et al., 2002; Salas et al., 2009). The absence of real risk in simulation
training increases employees' confidence level in a less stressful ,but still
motivating environment (Alinier, 2003). Thus, this study hypothesizes that:
Hypothesis 2: Employees experience of simulation training has a positive
impact on employees’ job performance.
Anderson (2003) stated that employee’s cohesion and independence affected
by their expectation of using simulation. While, Iqbal et al., (2014) noted that
although simulation training is costly ,but it payback more than its costs for
employees’ interest and organization interest. Iqbal added also that the
simulation training design should be extracted from employees and
organization needs to get better results. Hence, this study hypothesizes that:
Hypothesis 3: Employees interest of simulation training has a positive
impact on employees job performance.
Simulation training helped in developing necessary interpersonal and
communication skills by creating teamwork as a base of training
development (Edelheim and Ueda, 2007). Simulation team members
enhanced the skills, knowledge and abilities while working in teams (Froebel
and Marchington, 2005). In addition, it required employees interdependent in
the task and share responsibility for the outcomes. Teams enabled employee
to cooperate, enhance individual skills and provide constructive feedback
without any conflict between individuals (Jones et al., 2007). Therefore, this
study hypothesizes that:
Hypothesis 4: Teamwork of simulation training has a positive impact on
employees job performance.
Simulation training is one of the best training methods which allows
employees to gain the feature of strategic decision and behavioral skills
(Tompson and Dass, 2000). In addition, Machuca (2000) and Zantow et al.
(2005) highlighted that it is valuable tool which creates employees’ master
complex decision making skills. Hence, this study hypothesizes that:
Hypothesis 5: Decision making of simulation training has a positive impact
on employees job performance.
Astleitner (2002) explained that critical thinking increases when employee
train through simulation. For instance; Problem analyzing, reflecting on
judgments, and evaluating results are key elements of both critical thinking
and simulation. Furthermore, simulation training provides a discussion

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environment for strategies and techniques for individual and problemsolving
improvement. Through simulation training, employees can gain the skill of
solve one problem with various strategies which leads to higher quality
solution (Li et al., 2007). Therefore, this study hypothesizes that:
Hypothesis 6: problem solving skills of simulation training has a positive
impact on employees’ job performance.
The given hypotheses are expressed in the proposed research model shown in
Figure (1) as follow:
Fig. 1: The proposed research model

Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on
Hotel Front-Office Employees’ Performance
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Methodology
Testing hypotheses against the proposed model has been applied using
surveying approach. Data were collected via a selfadministrated
questionnaire. Frontoffice employees in fivestar hotels in Greater Cairo
were the target population for this research. In terms of research sample, in
this study, convenience sampling technique was used to select the employees
who participated in questionnaire . Eleven fivestar hotels out of thirtythree
hotels was selected for this study (Egyptian Hotel Association, 2013). 280
questionnaires distributed, two hundred and seven (n 207) valid
questionnaires were completed and returned, thus achieving a response rate
of 73.92 percent.
Survey Instrument
The final version of the questionnaire was divided into two sections. In the
first section, employees were asked to rate 30 items on a fivepoint Likert
type scale: ‘strongly disagree’; ‘disagree’; ‘neither agree nor disagree’;
‘agree’; and ‘strongly agree’. The 30 items are categorized for seven
variables: knowledge application (7 items), employees experience (4 items),
teamwork (4 items), employees interest (3 items), problemsolving (3 items),
decision making (4 items) and job performance (5 items). The second section
asked employees for profiling information (e.g., gender and age). Table 1:
illustrates a descriptive analysis of simulation trainingperformance scale (30item).
Table
1
:
A descriptive analysis of simulation training

performance scale (30

item)
Construct
Item’s
label Items Mean
Standard
deviation Rank
Knowledge
application
KA1
Simulation training is helpful in
applying concepts that are taught
in my discipline.
3.79 1.029 6
KA2
Simulation is effective in
creating a training context that
makes me willing to open my
mind.
3.76 .924 7
KA3
Simulation training is effective
in getting me to apply what I
learned in training.
3.82 .888 5
KA4
Simulation makes training more
enjoyable. 3.89 .888 2

Elmohandes, N. Abbas , T. Mansour, N.
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(Continued)
Table 1 (Cont.) : A descriptive analysis of simulation trainingperformance scale
(30item)
Construct Item’s
label Items Mean Standard
deviation Rank
KA5 Simulation makes the material in my
training easier to understand. 3.96 .913 1
KA6
Simulation provides an educational
experience where I can learn about
interfunctional coordination
3.88 .879 3
KA7
Simulation training enables
employees to experience
competition within a marketplace.
3.86 .907 4
Employees’
experience
EE1
Simulation training provides an
opportunity for me to apply theory
in realworld situations.
3.86 .947
2
EE2 Simulation training helps to improve
my work performance. 3.85 .946 3
EE3
Simulation training provides me
with the experience of running my
work effectively.
3.85 .953 4
EE4
Simulation training helps me to
analyze the strategic decisions
effectively.
3.97 .900 1
Team work
TW1 Simulation training allows me to
work within a group. 3.95 .860 1
TW2 Simulation training forces me to
manage my time wisely. 3.91 .906 2
TW3
Simulation training is an effective
tool that helps me to organize my
efforts to take the decisions.
3.90 .854 4
TW4 Simulation training effectively
improves my teambuilding skills. 3.91 .922 3
Employees’
interest
EI1 I feel simulation training is exciting. 3.95 .910 1
EI2
Simulation training provides more
fun than participating in traditional
lecture.
3.87 .933 3
EI3 Overall, simulation games are
effective training tools. 3.91 .885 2
Problem-
solving
PS1
Using simulations provides me an
opportunity to improve my problem
solving skills.
3.98 .833 1
PS2 Simulations present problems which
I have to solve. 3.94 .857 2

Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on
Hotel Front-Office Employees’ Performance
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(Continued)
Table 1 (Cont.) : A descriptive analysis of simulation trainingperformance scale
(30item)
Data Analysis
For data analysis, Renner and powellTaylor (2003) discussed some steps for
analyzing the data that were adopted in this study as follows: (1) getting to
know your data, focus the analysis; (2) categorizing information; (3)
Construct
Item’s
label Items Mean
Standard
deviation Rank
PS3
The simulation helped me learn
about my opinions on problem
solving.
3.92 .900 3
Decision
making
DM1
Simulations help me learn a
bout
management decision making. 3.95 .893 2
DM2
Simulations provide an
opportunity to analyze the
outcome of my decisions.
3.88 .938 4
DM3
Using simulations develops my
decisionmaking skills. 3.96 .852 1
DM4
Simulation training provides me
with decisionmaking
experience.
3.92 .900 3
Job
performance
JP1
Simulation training helps me to
understands duties and
responsibilities of the work and
complete the task with the level
of proficiency required.
3.89 .855 5
JP2
Simulation training helps me to
follow the established
procedures in order to
accomplish my work as
scheduled.
3.92 .897 4
JP3
Simulation training helps me to
be selfdirected, efficient, and
creative in my work.
4.01 .815 2
JP4
Simulation training helps me to
fulfill my job responsibility
accurately and efficiently.
3.98 .887 3
JP5
Simulation training promotes the
cooperation with my supervisors,
peers and others.
4.04 .869 1

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identifying patterns and connections within and between categories and
interpretation or bringing altogether.
For the descriptive analysis, SPSS version 22 was used to analyze the
employees’ simulation trainingperformance scale (30 items) descriptively.
Furthermore, the MannWhitney U test was used in this study to compare the
scores of employees’ gender in fivestar hotels. The KruskalWallis test was
used in this study to compare the results among age, education, and years of
experience in the tested hotels to determine if there is a significant difference
among them. Moreover, AMOS version 23 was used for data analysis. A
twostep approach for structural equation modeling (SEM): In the first step,
confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was used to test the measurement model.
In the second step, maximum likelihood was used to estimate the structural
model and to explore the causal relationship among all variables. Composite
reliability (CR) and Cronbach’s α for each latent variable will be used to test
the construct reliability, and average variance extracted (AVE) will be used
to test the construct convergent and discriminant validity (Hair et al., 2010).
Results
Table 2: presents the profile of the sample of frontoffice employees in the
investigated hotels. Particularly, 207 employees were selected from fivestar
hotels. The majority of employees’ position in hotels was receptionist and
those employees composed of 54.6% females and 45.4% males. Almost half
of employees’ age is less than 30 years old with achieved percentage 48.3%.
The majority is held a university degree. With regarding to experience in the
hotel industry, almost half of employees 50.2 % had experience from 1 up to
5 years. Further, the large category of employees attended less than five times
simulation training.

Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on
Hotel Front-Office Employees’ Performance
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Table 2: Profile of respondents (N=207)
Variables Frequency
percentage
Gender
Female 113 54.6
Male 94 45.4
Age
Less than 30 100 48.3
30 up to 40 86 41.5
41 up to 50 19 9.2
51 or older 2 1.0
Education
Secondary school 5 2.4
University degree 137 66.2
Postgraduate (MBA, MSc,
PhD)
Others
64
1
30.9
.5
Years of experience
Less than 1 year 35 16.9
From 1 up to 5 104 50.2
6 up to 10 years 49 23.7
11 up to 15 years 16 7.7
16 or more
3 1.4
Experience in current hotel
Less than 5 years 128 61.8
5 up to 10 years 66 31.9
11 up to 15 years 22 5.3
16 or more 2.0 1.0

Elmohandes, N. Abbas , T. Mansour, N.
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(Continued)
Table 2 (Cont.): Profile of respondents (N=207)
Structural Equation Modelling
Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA)
In the current research, testing the scales reliability of the data collected from
the frontoffice employees applied through Confirmatory factor analysis
(CFA). CFA was used to measure the structure fit of the hypothesized model
for fivestar hotels (see Figure 2). Composite reliability and Cronbach’s α
over the value of 0.7 were used to ensure the best reliability level (Hair et al.,
2010). The lowest composite reliability and Cronbach’s α is .90 which
exceeds the minimum acceptable value and reflects a good level of reliability.
At the same context, to ensure good convergent validity, all values of average
variance extracted (AVE) of scales should exceed the value of 0.5 (Hair et
al., 2010) as presented in Table 3. Additionally, ensuring the best
discriminant validity required that the AVE value of each scale being greater
than the squared correlation for each pair of scales as shown in Table 4.
Variables Frequency percentage
Times of attending simulation
training
Less than 5 times 95 45.9
From 5 up to 10 70 33.8
From 11 up to 15 31 15.0
16 times or more 11 5.3
Current position
Receptionist 73 35.5
Reservation 41 19.8
Guest relation 32 15.5
Concierge 30 14.5
Telephone operator 31 15

Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on
Hotel Front-Office Employees’ Performance
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Table 3
: Factor loadings, validity analysis, and reliability test of the measurement
models
Latent/ Measured variable
Factor loading
CR
AVE
α
KA
.940
.690
.938
KA1
1.00
KA2
.96
KA3
.91
KA4
.92
KA5
.92
KA6
.86
KA7
.81
EE
.918
.737
.917
EE1
1.00
EE2
1.12
EE3
1.09
EE4
.97
TW
.918
.736
.917
TW1
1.00
TW2
1.10
TW3
1.03
TW4
1.08
EI
.
917
.788
.919
EI1
1.00
EI2
.96
EI3
.87
PS
.906
.763
.905
PS1
1.00
PS2
1.09
PS3
1.07
DM
.914
.727
.914
DM1
1.00
DM2
1.11
DM3
.96
DM4
1.01
JP
.920
.699
.919
JP1
1.00
JP2
1.14
JP3
1.07
JP4
1.21
JP
5
1.11
Note: All factor loadings were significant at ≤ .001; CR = Composite reliability; α= Alpha
reliability

Elmohandes, N. Abbas , T. Mansour, N.
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63
Table 4:
Discriminant validity of the measurement model
Construct
KA
EE
TW
EI
PS
DM
JP
KA
.690
EE
.60
.737
TW
.47
.60
.736
EI
.37
.40
.42
.788
PS
.42
.38
.40
.67
.763
D
M
.39
.44
.44
.51
.67
.727
JP
.37
.46
.42
.46
.54
.57
.699
Note: The bold values along the diagonal line are the AVE values for the
constructs, and the other values are the squared correlations for each pair of
constructs; KA= Knowledge application; EE= Employees experience; TW=
Teamwork; EI= Employee's interest; PS= Problem solving; DM= Decision
making.
Structural Models and Hypotheses Testing
Standardized path coefficients (ß) and the significance of the hypothesized
relationships were utilized to test the proposed hypotheses in a causal
diagrammatic form (see Figure 2). The results in Table 5 reflect no
relationship between knowledge application and job performance, rejected
H1 (ß= 0.033, p < 0.001). The findings reveal relationship between
employees’ experience and service job performance, supported H2 (ß= 0.238,
p < 0.001). Moreover, the findings reveal relationship between teamwork and
job performance, supported H3 (ß= 0.055, p < 0.001). The findings state
relationship between employees’ interest and service job performance,
supported H4 (ß= 0.089, p < 0.001). The findings reveal relationship between
problemsolving and job performance, supported H5 (ß= .218, p < 0.001).
The results also show relationship between decision making and job
performance, supported H6 (ß= .346, p < 0.001).

Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on
Hotel Front-Office Employees’ Performance
ـــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــــ
64
Table 5: Summary of the structural models estimates
Hypotheses
Path
ß
t

value
Results
H1
KA JP

.033

.474
Rejected
H2
EE
JP
.238
3.007
Supported
H3
TW JP
.055
.778
support
ed
H4
EI JP
.089
1.166
Supported
H5
PS JP
.218
2.411
Supported
H6
DM JP
.346
4.443
Supported
Note: KA= Knowledge application; EE= Employees experience; TW= Teamwork; EI=
Employee's interest; PS= Problem solving; DM= Decision making; ß = Standardized path
coefficient; *Absolute t-value > 1.96, p< 0.05; **Absolute t-value > 3.29, p< 0.001.

Elmohandes, N. Abbas , T. Mansour, N.
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Variance Analysis
The current study showed no statistical difference between employees’
gender and simulation training impact on job performance. Further, the
results also showed that there is no statistical difference between employees’
age, education, experience, working in current hotel and current position and
simulation training impact on job performance. On the other hand, this study
showed statistical difference between times of attending simulation training
and job performance.
Discussion and Implications
The current study reflected the effects of simulation training on employees’
job performance by skill which gained in training. the study tested whether
knowledge application skills which gained through simulation training have
impacts on employees’ job performance in Egyptian fivestar hotels. Previous
studies (Adobor and Daneshfar, 2006; Tan and Laswad, 2008; Avramenko,
2012) highlighted the simulation training that improves some employees’
skills (i.e., KA, EE, TW, EI, PS, and, DM) which influence on their job
performance. Inconsistent with these studies, this study showed a negative
impact from Knowledge Application factor on employees’ job performance.
A possible interpretation for this negative relationship lacks of managerial
support for enhancing this point during training, a poor fit of content
becoming a barrier for employees to apply their knowledge, the delivery
methods of knowledge is very essential for firm’s employees to confirm that
they are able enough to apply it, knowledge management is the systematic
management of an organization's knowledge assets for the purpose of
creating value and meeting tactical and strategic requirements; it consists of
the initiatives, processes, strategies, and systems that sustain and enhance the
storage, assessment, sharing, refinement, and creation of knowledge.
Sometimes, employees have some restrictions and discomfiture during their
manager attendance.
In terms of other employees’ skills (i.e., EE, TW, EI, PS, and, DM), it is
growing consensus that simulation training has a positive influence on
employees’ skills. Consequently, these improved skills have a positive
impact on employees’ job performance. Consistent with prior studies
(Machuca, 2000; Astleitner, 2002; Garris et al., 2002; Anderson, 2003;
Froebel and Marchington, 2005; Zantow et al., 2005; Jager, 2007; Salas et
al., 2009; Van Der Zee and Slomp, 2009; Pasin and Giroux, 2011; Iqbal,
2014), the current study revealed that Employee's Experience has been
increased within hotels because the received encouragement and motivation
via simulation training that enables employees to tackle problems that
confronted them at the workplace easily.

Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on
Hotel Front-Office Employees’ Performance
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66
A Teamwork skill also has been risen because of teams enabled employees to
cooperate, enhance their skills and provide constructive feedback without any
conflict between team members, sharing the sense of responsibility, and
giving staff the opportunity to know each other which lead to team synergy
and team cohesion. Hotel Employee's Interest has been positively affected
due to the staff’s sense of riskfree environment and they don’t expect any
punishments if they failed “because it is just a game”. Tendencies to
employees’ critical thinking and Problem-Solving have been highly
encouraged via simulation training. Problem analyzing, reflecting on
judgments, and evaluating results are key elements of both critical thinking
and simulation. Furthermore, simulation training provides a discussion
environment for strategies and techniques for individual and problemsolving
improvement. Through simulation training, employees can gain the skill of
solve one problem with various strategies which leads to higher quality
solution. For growing employees’ Decision Making skills, employees have
an open discussion with their teammates, sharing ideas, and getting
meaningful feedback and identifying the risk of each decision they made to
avoid risks in the next time.
One example of simulation training application in the investigated sample is
Hilton chain. Employees form teams and create virtual or traditional
simulation training environment where they must respond and decide
regarding guest  related issues, problems and scenarios in a given time frame
(e.g., answering the telephone, checking guests in and out, and general guest
interaction in the front desk scenario). The level and speed as well as the
appropriateness of their response directly affect the simulated guest’s
satisfaction while it also influences on their skill related to knowledge,
problemsolving, decision making, teamwork, experience and make them feel
interested to attend more sessions in this training.
Based on the theoretical and practical part, this study reflected the following
recommendations that suggested promoting simulation training applying in
hotels aiming to grow up employees' effort and performance at workplace.
First, fivestar hotels should adopt the notion of simulation training due to
this kind of training has myriad benefits for both levels individually and
organizationally. For employee level, employees' skills will increase via
holding training sessions that aim to pose real situations or problems and
attempt to tackle these problems to avoid the risk of temporary problem
solving and decisions making which may lead to material and moral losses
(e.g., customer dissatisfaction, bad image, negative WOM). For organization

Elmohandes, N. Abbas , T. Mansour, N.
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67
level, organizations endeavor to possess unique employees in terms of their
mental and intellectual abilities.
Second, managers, especially in the fivestar hotels, should pay attention for
the content of modules that associated with simulation training sessions, the
steps of applying these modules and answer employees' questions aiming
utilize each employee skills in problemanalyzing, problemsolving and
decisions making. Providing a fit content and covering all aspects of problem
or issue for employees is required to help them apply their knowledge
striving to solve problem and make best decisions.
Third, improving employees' skills in feed backing stage during session
requires from trainer and manager to do constructive criticism, this will
motivate them and prevent mistakes repetition next sessions. It will also
remove their sense of foresting. Managers who attend the session should
enhance employees with comfort ability and freedom to present their
opinions.
Fourth, removing the sense of jealousy between employees is the trainer
responsibility by persuading them that all team members are responsible for
decision, respect all teams because the positive energy pushes out all negative
energy and stopped comparing between each other.
Fifth, using a diverse simulation training types is required. The majority of
Hotel leaders prefer to use computerbased, noncomputerized, and role
playing. However, few hotel chains use fixed type of simulation training
because of uncontrollable circumstances (e.g., lack resources). This study
recommended hotels to use all types of simulation to achieve integration and
idealism, and to save time and costs.
Finally, it is not necessary to arrange simulation training only when the
managers of hotel cannot overcome on a specific real problem you can
arrange it for employees' skills using refreshment and make them more
active. Preparing simulation training sessions periodically will be useful
because each hotel hires new employees who may be not exposed for such
this training in other hotel. As the results of the current study showed; the
more employees attend simulation the more increase in his performance.
Limitations and Future Research
Identification of hotel in Greater Cairo that applies simulation training was
the major barrier in the current study that is why we made pilot study before
beginning this study. The current study investigated and focused on the
effects of using simulation training on hotel frontoffice employees’
performance in Cairo fivestar hotels. Hence, further researches could sample
other destinations in Egypt such as Sharm ElSheikh and Hurghada.

Investigating the Effects of Using Simulation Training on
Hotel Front-Office Employees’ Performance
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68
Moreover, the current study focused only on frontoffice department. So,
further studies could focus on other departments in hotel especially on food
and beverage and housekeeping. Further studies also could use other
statistical methods, which may lead to better understanding of simulation
influences.
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