A Systematic Review of the Literature on Operations Management in Servuction Systems: A Case Study in the Hospitality Sector

The hospitality industry is characterized by being dynamic and changing, facing challenges such as skilled labor shortages, rising operating costs, competition, fluctuating demand, and rising customer expectations. Factors that directly impact the quality, productivity and profitability of services. Various studies have shown that having trained personnel and resource management contribute significantly to improving the quality of service. In this sense, the implementation of continuous improvement methodologies such as Lean Management, Theory of Constraints and Six Sigma, show positive results in the reduction of waiting times, in the optimization of processes, increase in revenue and in customer loyalty. However, the implementation of these is still limited or disjointed in many cases, lacking a unified framework that allows evaluating their effectiveness in the Latin American context and evidencing a gap in applied research at the local level. In response to this need, this work aims to synthesize and analyze the existing literature on the management of operations in the hotel sector in the hotel sector in the last 10 years (2014-2024) by applying the PRISMA 2020 methodology (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analysis). In order to identify how these modern management methodologies have solved problems, what benefits they have generated in the management of operations in companies in the sector. This will lead to the proposal of a roadmap that integrates these methodologies in the context of the hotel sector of Cartagena de Indias – Colombia.