Quality systems and certification of Icelandic restaurants

• Main Author: Sylvía Rut Þorsteinsdóttir 1982-
• Other Authors: Háskólinn í Reykjavík
• Format: Thesis
• Language: English
• Published: 2017
• Subjects: Verkefnastjórnun; Gæðaeftirlit; Veitingastaðir; Tækni- og verkfræðideild; Meistaraprófsritgerðir; MPM; Project management; Quality control; Restaurants; School of Science and Engineering; Iceland
• Online Access: http://hdl.handle.net/1946/28992

The main objective of this thesis is to get a clearer picture of why relatively few Icelandic restaurants are implementing Vakinn quality system and getting quality certification from the Icelandic Tourist Board. The official quality and environmental system within the Icelandic Tourism is called Vakinn. Tourism providers certified by Vakinn are mainly hotels, guesthouses, and activity companies. The restaurants on the list almost all have in common that they are a part of a hotel or another activity. Results are based on benchmarking similar studies and topics. The author also conducted seven interviews in total. The aim was to find out if the authors initial thoughts about why relatively few Icelandic restaurants have a quality system and certification were correct; Icelandic restaurants are too busy and do not give themselves time to go through the work needed to get certified. The results show that the hypothesis was right, but it also revealed that restaurants in Iceland are not very familiar with Vakinn. Which leads the author to think that there are opportunities here for the Icelandic Tourist Board to introduce their work with Vakinn even better to Icelandic restaurants and get the restaurants more involved in quality tourism in Iceland. Keywords: restaurants, quality system, quality management, quality standards, quality certification