Communication Strategy Applied by Front Office Staff

Some still think when talking to guests and do not speak English very well. In addition, the receptionist is also still convoluted in explaining something. This problem has an impact on poor service. This study aimed to analyze the type of strategic communication used by the front office staff of the Intercontinental Bali Resort. Types of strategic communication used by staff, and reasons for strategic communication used by staff. The subject of this research is the front office staff at the Intercontinental Bali Resort. This study uses a qualitative design. Data collection methods are observation, interviews, and voice recordings. The results showed five types of strategic communication implemented by the front office staff at the Intercontinental Bali Resort, namely: Paralanguage had the highest percentage of strategic communication with a percentage of around (48%). The most widely used strategy by staff is the Clarification Hole strategy with a percentage (37%). The most frequently used is an approximation in percentage (11%). Then fourth, there are (2) communication strategies used mainly by staff. There are languages with a percentage of 2% for each strategy. Paralanguage is a communication strategy used to provide more information so that guests can imagine clear things, the contact that occurs, and make the conversation more polite because it will be the first glance at this time. This is an open-access article under the CC BY-SA license. Copyright © 2021 by Author. Published by Universitas Pendidikan Ganesha.


INTRODUCTION
Communication is the process of delivering messages from communicators to achieve specific goals. Communication allows a person to convey stimuli to change one's behavior (Jayanti et al., 2019;Nisa & Sujarwo, 2020). Communication between two or more people will occur if there is a similarity of meaning (Amelia et al., 2017;Hartati et al., 2017;Sucia, 2017). Communication has five elements that are mutually dependent on each other, including the source, often called the sender, encoder, communicator, and speaker. Someone needs to contact the person they want to communicate with. Communication has an essential role in human life, from daily activities, carried out by communicating. By communicating, humans can meet their needs and achieve life goals because communicating is a basic human need (Alfathan & Saleh, 2018;Astuti & Leonard, 2015;Purwanti, 2015). Therefore, as social beings, humans want to relate to other humans. Humans want to know the environment around them, even what is happening inside them. This curiosity forces humans to communicate (Hendriana & Kadarisma, 2019;Nomleni et al., 2019;Suparni, 2016). In communicating, there are some strategies used by the communicator. The communication strategy used to make communication run well (Chan, 2021;Demirdağ, 2021;Özkan Yıldız & Yılmaz, 2021). The use of strategies in communication will help speakers express their idea clearly. Communication strategy is seen as a tool used in a negotiation that happens where interlocutors are attempting to obtain a communication's goals (Jalaludin & Ihkasan, 2014;Rafik-Galea et al., 2012). The use of communication strategies in communicating significantly will make communication runs well (Achim et al., 2021;Coffelt et al., 2019;Gisewhite & Holden, 2019). It also happens in Bali which becomes a tourist destination and it is visited by many domestic and international tourists. Balinese people might apply the communication strategies in communicating with the tourist in English for Specific Purposes for those who work in the tourism field and must be able to communicate well with the foreigners (Dwi et al., 2013;Paramita & Putra, 2020). In Bali, the total arrivals of European tourists who travel to Bali every month are increased.
The increasing number of European tourists is considered that Bali Island has the power to attract them to visit Bali. One of the tourism objects that can be recommended to tourists is Jimbaran. Jimbaran is one of the tourism objects that there in the Kuta sub-district, Badung Regency, West Kuta, Bali province. Working in the tourism sector needed foreign languages (Arrobas et al., 2020;Gössling et al., 2020;Ho, 2020). Now day tourism has become a popular global leisure activity (Avello Martínez & López Fernández, 2015;Mafimisebi et al., 2021). In the hotel industry, a foreign language is needed to interact with guests in all sorts of foreign countries. In this case, the English language as an international language is very important to interact between all sorts of countries. The main department that mastered English is a Front Office. The front office is one of the departments of a hotel that should give the first and last impression to the guest when they arrive and leave the hotel. In global leisure, Bali has many Hotels which handle those visitors, one of them is Intercontinental Bali Resort which can be recommended for tourists. One of the hotels is Intercontinental Bali Resort. In the hotel, the front office is one of the important elements which serve guests firstly. Therefore, front office staff needs good language skills in English for Specific Purpose speaking for English because they have to attract tourist attention and give them a good first impression of the hotel service. In reality that I found most of the receptionists in Intercontinental Bali Resort still nervous when talking with the guest, the second receptionist didn't have better language to change unpolite language, and the last is the receptionist was still convoluted in explaining something.
Language is an instrument of communication in many fields such as business, economy, social, tourism sector, technology ECT (Akay & Kim, 2020;Mauliate et al., 2019;Rose et al., 2020). Based on the explanation before the researcher can conclude that language is important the use of language will make people be able to express their ideas or share information and they can get information from others. On the other side, we also communicate to express our emotions by using words and gestures (Iannuccilli et al., 2021;Morgan et al., 2021;Tao et al., 2022). Communication is usually conducted by more than one person to build an understanding of each other. It usually involves two or more people, who in this case, interact with each other (Klemp, 2019; Reilly & Hynan, 2014;Wildan et al., 2019). Communication can be defined as the process of assigning and conveying meaning in an attempt to create shared understanding or information (Brown et al., 2021;Johansson et al., 2020). The ability to speak efficiently is needed to reach successful communication. However, being competent in speaking is not easy and takes a long time to develop. Knowledge of vocabulary and grammar is not the only factor to be competent in speaking but also how to negotiate with others effectively and to adapt to a different context and social rules (Mahdi, 2018;Perez et al., 2013;Uysal & Yavuz, 2015;Zarei & Afshar, 2014). The findings of previous research stated that in communicating, one must master the language used so that messages can be appropriately conveyed (Chung et al., 2017;Pratiwi et al., 2017). Other studies also state that it is essential to master English to be able to communicate with foreigners (Ho, 2020;Permai et al., 2021;Rose et al., 2020). It can be concluded that mastery of English and communication skills are essential to be learned by someone. For these reasons, the authors are interested in identifying the interaction and communication strategies used by the front office staff at the Intercontinental Bali Resort. In addition, this study also collects data about the majority of the use of these communication strategies and the reasons the front office staff uses them. This study aims to analyze the types of communication strategies used by the front office staff of Intercontinental Bali Resort, the types of communication strategies used by the staff, and the reasons for the communication strategies used by the staff.

METHOD
This study was descriptive qualitative research. It was chosen because this study describes the situation of phenomena, in which the procedure, types of communication strategies used by front office staff in Intercontinental Bali Resort, and the reasons in applied communication strategies. This study was conducted in InterContinental Bali Resort at Uluwatu Street No 45, Jimbaran, Kuta sub-district, Badung regency, Indonesia. The object of this study was the communication strategies used by the front office staff of InterContinental Bali Resort in communicating with tourists who visited that hotel. In this study, the researcher used three techniques in collecting data. Namely observation, and interview. In the observation technique, the researcher observed and recorded the conversation between the staff and the guest, then the researcher analyzed what kinds of strategies they used in conversation. The last is the interview. In the interview section, the researcher gives some questions to the staff about the techniques when they cannot understand the guest's meaning. Data analysis is about the process of transforming data to find useful information, suggesting conclusions, and supporting decision-making. It was also about the process of answering the research questions by the data found field. In this study, the data analysis used is descriptive qualitative. Data analysis involved three concurrent flows of activities, namely, data reduction, data display, and conclusion drawing/verification (Miles & Huberman, 2007).

Result
This study was conducted in InterContinental Bali Resort at Uluwatu Street No 45, Jimbaran, Kuta subdistrict, Badung regency, Indonesia. The subjects of this study were eight front office staff of Intercontinental Bali Resort and the researcher found one data in one day. The researcher conducted observation and interviews to achieve the goals of the study. There was one month eight days of observations done by the researcher. The researcher used a long time to took the data because we knew that the pandemic was still running. At least the researcher used eight meetings to get the data. Based on the transcriptions of data, there were 39 communication strategies used by the staff. There were seven types of communication strategies that could be classified. The communication strategies were approximation, circumlocution, language switching, paralanguages, and modification device. In this section, five strategies used by the staff will be explained briefly. Approximation deals with telling the tourists about difficult words or sentences by giving other words which have a similar meaning. During the researcher did research for eight meetings. The researcher just found four approximations three times, such as: In the third observation, the researcher expressed approximation strategy to make short conversation with the guest but the guest didn't understand what the staff meant. So, the researcher used a similar meaning or used approximation strategy to make the guest can more understand what the staff said In the Seventh, the approximation occurred two times which was used, staff. The researcher said that when in this hotel just there a bigger room. But the guest didn't understand. So, the staff gives a clearer meaning such; all our superior the size like that one but you want to upgrade to bigger or biggest. Then the guest understands what the staff means.
Circumlocution deals with telling a word by giving a description, example, or explanation about that word. During the researcher recording the conversation, the researcher only found the circumlocution strategy that the staff used to give clearer meaning to the guest at one time. In the Sixth observation, circumlocution occurred two times which were done by staff. From the Sixth observation, we can see the circumlocution done by the staff. The strategy was used when the guest asked about the location of Indian food and also about the room. In the third type of communication strategy, the researcher also found several times that the staff used language switching many times to have a purpose, introduce the Balinese language or Indonesia language with the guest on date: In the fourth observation, the guest switched or added the greeting sentence which used "good afternoon, om swastiastu". So, it makes the guest knows how the Balinese greeting that Balinese people used when meeting somewhere. Paralinguistic is about the facial expression and gestures which happened during a communication. From the explanation in chapter two, paralinguistic is a communication strategy that uses mime, gestures, and facial expressions to make clearer meaning. The utterances of paralinguistic had been compiled from staff in every meeting. Based on the analysis, the paralinguistic strategy was used 22 times by the staff. Based on the explanation in chapter two, there are two kinds of modification devices; the first one is Comprehension check: a use of expressions such as." Do you understand?" to check the partner's understanding. The second is a Clarification request: a request for clarification by explaining or asking "Do you mean this?" or correctly repeating the partner's statement. During did research the researcher found 11 clarifications in the findings with the different dates and in here the researcher didn't find a comprehension check in the conversation. Based on the table above, those are the frequency that the researcher found in the conversation during the eight meetings. Based on the results of data analysis, the frequency of communication found in conversations during eight meetings is Approximation (5), Circumlocution (1), Language switching (1), Paralanguage (22), and Modification device (17). Circumlocution -To explain more about the unknown word so the guests will understand the meaning.

Communication Strategies Used by the Staff The Reason for Using Communication Strategy
-To make the guests understand the message when the staff does not know about the vocabulary. 3 Paralinguistic -To give clearer information so the guests can imagine about the thing being asked -To emphasize the utterances -To make the conversation more polite because it will be the first look when the communication happened. 4 Language Switching -To avoid hesitation when communicating with the guest.
-To make the communication run well when the staff forgets about some terms. 5 Clarification request -To make sure that the guests got what he/she wanted. So there would not be misunderstandings that could distract the deal. -To clarify that the staff had the same understanding as to the guests.
-To make sure about the guest's booking.
From the reason above, it could be concluded that there were two reasons why the staff used those communication strategies in communicating with the guests. The first reason was giving and getting clear information. So, the communication will run effectively. Some conditions will be very dangerous because there will be misunderstandings happened between the staff and guests.

Discussion
Communication is the process by which an idea is transferred from a source to one or more recipients to change their behavior (Brown et al., 2021;Johansson et al., 2020;Klemp, 2019). So it can be interpreted that communication is an essential element in an organization because communication is essential to increasing organizational productivity (Kochigina et al., 2021;Seitz & Choo, 2021;Thelen & Formanchuk, 2022). It is inseparable from the fluency of information within the organization. Communication is essential in the management of an organization, as it combines management functions (Cooper et al., 2021;Thelen & Formanchuk, 2022). Communication is primarily concerned with getting work done and helping the organization achieve its goals. The communication strategies found in the conversations during the eight meetings were Approximation, Circumlocution, Language switching, Paralanguage, and Modification device. First, Prediction (Approximation) is systematically estimating something that is most likely to happen. Prediction does not have to give a definite answer to what will happen but tries to find an answer close to what will happen. The reason the staff uses this strategy is so that tourists understand all the explanations given. Different words with the same meaning will help guests understand and make communication clearer (Khalil, 2018;Kim, 2015;Mafimisebi et al., 2021). Second, go round and round. This strategy explains more about the unknown word so that guests will understand its meaning and make guests understand the message when the staff does not know about the vocabulary. Poor communication makes the communicant bored when interacting (Ievansyah & Sadono, 2018;Nomleni et al., 2019).
Third, Paralinguistics is a nonverbal aspect of the speech process (verbal communication). This aspect includes speech tone, voice volume, and pitch height used in a conversation (Taufik & Rahman, 2021;Winoto et al., 2017bWinoto et al., , 2017a. Paralinguistics can show the true meaning of a speech. Staff use this strategy to provide more precise information so guests can imagine what is being asked, emphasize speech, and make the conversation more polite because it will be the first appearance when communication occurs. Fourth, Language Change. The staff uses this strategy to avoid hesitation when communicating with guests and make communication work well when the staff forgets some things: fifth, Request for clarification. The staff uses this strategy to ensure that the guest gets what he or she wants. So there will be no misunderstandings that can interfere with the agreement, make it clear that the staff has the same understanding as the guests, and make sure about guest bookings (Abdien, 2019;Ho, 2020;Mafimisebi et al., 2021). Communication strategy could be useful for the staff when they communicated with tourists or guests. This study can give inspiration and advice to use communication strategies to the staff, especially those who work in front office service. The result of this study can be used as a reference to the English Education Department of Undiksha when further researchers are conducting the study about communication strategies. For this department, the result of the study can be used as additional materials in English for front office class to increase the knowledge about communication in this job.