Mapping Service Quality in Hospitality Industry: A Case through SERVQUAL

 

Dr. Ramesh Kumar Chaturvedi*

Assistant Professor, Department of Rural Management, Babasaheb Bhimrao Ambedkar University,

(A Central Government University), Lucknow UP

 

ABSTRACT:

This article focuses on developing an appropriate research framework to assess service quality and customer satisfaction in hospitality industry. The required data were collected through a questionnaire from customers at 4-star hotel in North India. The study is conducted in case study format and data is collected from hotel guests through self administered questionnaire while check-in and check-out.

The result of this study illustrates that service quality can significantly influence the satisfaction level of hotel guests. It is found that guest’s expectations are consistently not met when measured on redesigned five dimensions SERVQUAL at candidate hotel. Tangibility and Empathy are mainly underperforming dimensions where managerial focus must increase. Relatively candidate hotel performed well on Responsiveness dimension.

The data analysis, if generalized, shows that 4-star hotels need to communicate more efficiently with their customers to create realistic expectations, be highly empathetic to issues and concerns of guest and provide better and more tailored services to them.

This article can offer important insight to managers of hospitality industry for planning their marketing communication, understanding the dynamics and importance of periodicity in assessing customer expectations and training need analysis of hotel staff.

 

 

 

INTRODUCTION:

Hospitality is the relationship between guest and host, or the act or practice of being hospitable. Hospitality is also known as the act of generously providing care and kindness to whoever is in need. Dictionary meaning of Hospitality is ‘the friendly reception and treatment of guests or strangers’. Specifically, this includes the welcome, reception and entertainment of guests, visitors, or strangers in a warm, friendly and generous way.

 

The word hospitality is derived from the Latin word “hospes”, meaning “guest, visitor, or one who provides lodging for a guest or visitor.” In India, hospitality is based on the principle Atithi Devo Bhava, meaning "the guest is God." Hotels are one part of hospitality industry, which has evolved from the very modest beginning of families and landowners who opened their homes to travelers.

 

Overwhelming customer demand for quality products and service has in recent years become increasingly evident to professionals in the tourism and hotel industry. Customer satisfaction represents a modern approach for quality in enterprises and organizations and serves the development of a truly customer-focused management and culture.

 

IMPORTANCE AND RELEVANCE OF STUDY:

Indian hotel industry is under spotlight for many reasons such as India being one of the world’s fastest growing economies is attracting plenty of global business travelers who need hotel stay. Further huge surge has taken place in domestic tourism that underpins the rising demand for hotels. According to estimates of UNWTO (2015) tourism worldwide has seen consistent growth over the years; International tourism have increased from 527 million globally in 1995 to 1133 million in 2014 at same time International tourism receipts touched US$ 1245 billion globally in 2014, this is an increase of 3.7% in real terms. Another reason is changing lifestyle as well as social values in India making hotel stay preferred over staying with relatives. Since Indian social, cultural and economic environment is changing rapidly; consumers’ preferences and expectation are bound to undergo change. Changing environment demands to study time and again consumers’ liking and preferences for products and services to remain abreast of their current pulse. It is need of the hour to investigate what customer expect, think and feel about the quality of services rendered to them which could provide deep insight to hotel management in alluring customers and improving patronage. It is found in a recent study conducted in India that high service quality is primary antecedent of superior performance of hotels (Debasish and Dey, 2015). Since hospitality industry is growing and lots of new room inventory is being added this research focuses studying expectation and perception of hotel customers in India. Not many studies in Indian context are available and there is scope for more research in this area. The findings are intended to help hotel management to understand what guest expects and where they stand in terms of services rendered to them in contemporary socio-cultural environment.

 

REVIEW OF CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND SERVICE QUALITY IN HOSPITALITY:

Study conducted by Cronin and Taylor (1992) in service sectors such as banking, pest control, dry cleaning, and fast food; found that customer satisfaction has a significant effect on purchase intentions. Kasper (1988) and McQuitty et al (2000) argues that customer satisfaction is not constant and undergoes systematic change over period of time, rather it can change, and change in satisfaction can alter brand choice.) claim, “the most obvious implication is that systematic variations in customer satisfaction can help explain changes in product choice, based on an initial degree of satisfaction and its rate of change. Such explanatory power provides a powerful tool for those interested in employing customer satisfaction as a predictor of profit, choice, repurchase behavior, or market share”.

 

 

Alpert (1971) termed those service attributes which directly influence consumer choice as ‘determinant’ attributes. He explains that intangibility, inseparability, variability, and perishbility of services serves as criteria for consumers’ perceptions of satisfaction, this usually include the contextual cues that they used to evaluate the services before rendered. Wuest et. al. (1996) explains perception of hotel attributes as “the degree to which travelers find various services and facilities important in promoting their satisfaction with hotel stays.” Various studies have identified different attributes as criteria to measure the customer satisfaction in hospitality industry. Gržinić(2017) reinforced the fact that measuring the quality of service especially in Hospitality industry is difficult due to unclear and poorly defined parameters of service quality. He has expressed certain attributes such as Availability, Guarantee, Communication, Expertise, Kindness, Good manners, Flaw (undefined parameter of service), Duration, Performance, Engagement, Humanity and Responsibility that could form    basis for measuring quality of services and semi services. Based on these arguments most of the travellers would consider the following hotel attributes when making a hotel choice decision: cleanliness, location, room rate, security, service quality, and the reputation of the hotel or chain.  Cleanliness of accommodation, safety and security, accommodation value for money, and courtesy and helpfulness of staff were the vital attributes in hotel choice selection. Wilensky and Buttle (1988) claim that personal service, physical attractiveness, opportunities for relaxation, standard of services, appealing image, and value for money were significantly evaluated by travellers. The study of Rivers et al (1991) shows that convenience of location and overall service received the highest importance in evaluating service quality of Hotels.

 

Groonroos (1983) concluded that service quality as an important determinant of image. Hotel image is an important factor to maintain a relatively high score rating among loyal customers. Getty and Thomson (1994) studied relationships between quality of lodging, satisfaction, and effect on customers’ intentions to recommend the lodging to prospects; findings suggest that customers’ intentions to recommend to others are function of their perception of both their satisfaction and service quality perception out of their lodging experience. They further elaborated in their findings that perceive satisfaction with housekeeping is more important than satisfaction with reception, food, beverage, and price while developing loyalty or recommending to others.

 

Dickie (2003) stated that slight increment of five percent in customer loyalty and retention results in a 25 to 95 per cent increase in profits and future revenue. There is more evidence in recent literatures that shows a positive relationship between superior experience, customer satisfaction and customer loyalty (Ladhari, 2008; Malhotra et al., 2005; Zehir et al., 2011; Ko, 2013).

 

There are ample evidence in literature that satisfaction and service quality are related and discrepancy in expected and perceived service level reflects quality and value of service (Cronin and Taylor, 1992; Lewis, 1993, p. 4-12; Zeithaml et al, 2006, p. 106-107). Recently Tabaku and Cerri (2016) reaffirmed about the positive effect of service quality on customer satisfaction. Several research on service quality has critically evaluated the applicability of SERVQUAL in hospitality industry (such as Juwaheer, 2004; Ekinci et al., 2003; Tsang and Qu, 2000; Mei et al., 1999); their deliberations reflect lack of universal applicability of SERVQUAL in hospitality industry. They express that measuring service quality in hotels (starred differently), motels, resorts etc. serving different segments needs scales having dimensions specifically tailored to them. Researches on service quality across different parts of world proposed various scales measure service quality of hotels. LODGSERV a variant of SERVQUAL was proposed by Knutson et al. (1990) whose dimensions were named on original SERVQUAL yet items differed, this scale was found to be consistent when administered (Patton et al., 1994) in different parts of world like Japanese, Chinese , Taiwan, Hong Kong, Australia and UK. Saleh and Ryan (1992) proposed five dimension scale measuring service quality whose dimensions were different from original SERVQUAL; the dimension proposed were ‘conviviality’, ‘‘tangibles’’, ‘‘reassurance’’, ‘‘avoid sarcasm’’ and ‘‘empathy’’. Webster and Hung (1994) proposed and field tested an extension of original SERVQUAL and claimed new scale with eight dimensions is more effective in measuring service quality in hospitality industry. Akan (1995) through a study in Turkey proposed a seven dimension scale and Mei et al. (1999) recommended, based on study conducted in Australia, HOLSERV a three dimension based scale to measure service quality of hotels.  Akbaba (2006) also studied service quality among business travellers in a mid tier hotel in turkey. He like other researchers also based his study on SERVQUAL dimensions  and subsequently identified fresh dimensions as ‘tangibles’, ‘adequacy in service supply’, ‘understanding and caring’, ‘assurance’, and ‘convenience’. He concluded that ‘tangibles’ is strongest dimension among all five dimensions of SERVQUAL and this scale needs to be fine tuned to suit the requirements for studying service quality in hotel industry .  FazliÊ S., FazloviÊ S. (2014) has also modified the five dimensions of SERVQUAL to three dimensions that are ‘reliability’, ‘assurance and empathy’, ‘tangibility’.

Chaturvedi (2016) has concluded based on empirical study that there exists gap in perception of service provider (that creates expectations) and customers in regard of services rendered validating the operational setup of SERVQAL which focuses on estimating gap between expectation and perception. Caruana et al. (2000) has found ‘perception’ component in SERVQUAL is relatively of more importance than ‘expectation’ raising new debate in efficiency of the scale. The gap in expected and perceived level of service on five dimensions of SERVQAL is good measure of service quality where ‘Reliability’ the outcome dimension is relatively more important indicator than ‘Tangibility, Empathy, Assurance, Responsiveness’ which are process dimensions (Laroche et al., 2004, p. 363, Zeithaml et al., 2006, p. 106-107).

 

In spite of criticism none of the researches could fully negate the applicability of SERVQUAL and it is still the most popular way of measuring service quality. However from the literature above it is implied that application of SERVQUAL must be done with care and underlying indicators of the dimensions must be chosen and redesigned carefully to suit hotel setup and cultural environment of study. 

 

The extant literature presents relationship between service quality and satisfaction in cause and effect manner where service quality has causation effect on satisfaction that means a high service quality is precedent of customer satisfaction.  (Oliver, 1993; Anderson and Sullivan, 1993; Fornell et al 1996; Spreng et. al., 1996) The interaction is such that service quality determines satisfaction while being confound in it as one of the element of satisfaction along with other elements such as product quality(for products) and price (Parasuraman et al., 1985, 88 ; Gronroos, 1984; Wilson et al., 2008).

 

With acceptance that satisfaction is instrumental in deciding patronage and positive word of mouth, it is pressing need for managers to identify the service attribute that reflect quality and measure the quality of the services that they render. The article through a case explains how hotel managers could gain insight about level of the services offered by them and area of improvement to achieve high satisfaction and patronage among customers.

 

OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY:

Based on the discussion in previous sections, following two objectives are framed.

1)       To describe profile of hotel guest and their method of booking.

2)       To study customer satisfaction through gap analysis between expectations and perceived service quality based on SERVQUAL dimensions.

RESEARCH METHODOLOGY:

The objectives of the present research are achieved through analyzing the customer’s response towards service quality of the candidate hotel through SERVQUAL.  SERVQUAL by Parasuraman et. al. itself has seen considerable changes through its journey from 1988 to 1994. Originally it was based on seven point Likert scale now it employs nine point Likert scale, it has one column, two columns and three columns variants, had originally 22 and then modified to 21 item statements and sequence of statements has also undergone change. As argued in above section the SERVQUAL scale in spite of criticism is still the most preferred choice for measuring service quality in service setup (Lam and Woo, 1997); so in present research the five dimensions of SERVQUAL that are Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy served as criteria for making judgment about quality of services provided by hotel to its guests. However the items of the scale are redesigned to suit the needs of hotel industry in Indian environment. Twenty two statements have been used to constitute the five dimensions, where four statements indicate each of the Tangibility, Reliability and Responsiveness and five statements for each of the remaining Assurance and Empathy dimensions. The statements are chosen carefully through reviewing the scales and constituent statements that are proposed by earlier researchers and modifications are applied to suit requirements of this study. Tangibles in candidate hotel are identified though four items focusing on aesthetics, cleanliness, hygiene and facilities. Similarly reliability is studied based on indicators that encompasses ability to deliver the promised service dependably and accurately, responsiveness through willingness to help customers and provide prompt service, assurance through knowledge and curtsey of employees and their ability to convey trust and confidence finally empathy through statements encompassing caring and individualized attention hotel staff provides to its guests. Internal consistency of scale items in each of the dimensions are estimated through Conbrach’s alpha. The alpha values for Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance and Empathy are 0.862, 0.758, 0.869, 0.678 and 0.755 respectively. The service quality gap has been identified through estimating the difference between customer expectations and provided services as perceived by them on five dimensions of SERVQUAL.

 

The sampling design used is judgement cum convenience sampling, which is a non-probability sampling method. The guest’s ability and willingness to participate in survey was judgement factor and convenience factors were the availability and approachability of the respondents for administering the questionnaire while check-in and checkout. However there is a natural sense of randomness in arrival and exit of customers. The checkout of guests is random because it depends on stay duration requirement of individual customers which is bound to differ between the guests without any predictable pattern. Since the questionnaire is offered to all the guests without discrimination and non participation by the guests itself is random, the effect of randomization in sampling cannot be ignored.  The universe of the study is the guests arriving at a hotel in Uttar Pradesh for a duration of two months, between 01^st August 2016 to 30^th September 2016. The study sample frame covers guests arriving at four stared Hotel in Lucknow, UP (Name of Hotel is concealed as the management did not wanted it to be public). The customers of this hotel constituted the source of data. The sample size is 200 customers as respondents from this Hotel. Data pertaining to the guest’s opinion on hotels under study is analysed to study the satisfaction of customers according to SERVQUAL model.

 

The structured questionnaire is presented to guests while arrival to measure expectation and after check out to measure perception about services actually rendered.

 

The Hotel is four star facility located in upscale locality in Lucknow housing many government and private offices, malls and shopping centres. This Hotel keeps in mind the needs of new age consumers and intends to offer amicable hospitality experience to its guests.

 

Description of facilities at candidate Hotel: 24 Executive rooms, 20 non-Executive rooms, 2 banquet halls. The hotel also has a restaurant, lounge bar, gymnasium, ayurveda centre, administrative office, laundry and staff quarters.

 

ANALYSIS AND FINDINGS:

Demographic profiling of respondents:

In this section, the distribution of the guests based on gender, educational certificate, purpose of travel, the process of reservations and booking are being estimated.

 

The guests’ distribution based on their gender is as follows:

 

Table 1: Respondents distribution based on gender (Source: Author)

Gender	Frequency	Percentage
Female	89	44.5
Male	111	55.5
Total	200	100

 

As described in table 1, 44.5% of the total guests are female and 55.5% are male.

 

 

 

The distribution of guests’ based on the education is as follows:

 

Table 2: Respondents distribution based on Education (Source: Author)

Educational certificate	frequency	Percentage
High School	36	18
Intermediate	12	6
Graduate	119	59.5
Post Graduate or Higher	33	16.5
Total	200	100

 

As described in table 2 maximum guests are with graduate degree with a percentage of 59.5 and the lowest numbers of guests are intermediate. Most people who occupy mid-segment hotel rooms are well educated.

The distribution of guests’ at the hotel based on the purpose of their travel is as follows:

 

Table 3: Respondents distribution based on purpose of travel (Source: Author)

Purpose of travel	frequency	Percentage
Personal	86	43
Leisure	31	15.5
Business	83	41.5
Total	200	100

 

Table 3 shows, mostly people stay in the hotels either for personal requirements or for business travel, 43 and 41.5 percentage respectively, whereas only 15.5 percentage people travel for recreation and leisure purpose. Personal and business purpose guests are almost equal in number so hotels must equally focus on both the segments.

 

The distribution of the business travelers/guests based on the method of the reservations is as follows:

 

Table 4: Respondents distribution based on method of the reservations (Source: Author)

Reservation	Frequency	Percentage
Through Employer	26	31.3
Personal	57	68.7
Total	83	100

 

Among all the business purpose travelers 31.3 percent guests got their reservation done by their employer but majority 68.7 percent personally ensure their reservations. Since precisely 87 percent of guests including all categories of guests (assuming all personal and leisure travelers self reserve hotel rooms and 57 guests out of 83 business purpose travelling guests totaling to 164) get their hotel reservation done themselves, hotels must give relatively more importance to managing customer relation with individual guest.

 

The distribution of guests’ among those who get their booking personally done use internet for booking.

Table 5: Booking done through internet personally (Source: Author)

Mode of Booking	Frequency	Percentage
Through Internet	105	52.5
Other	95	47.5
Total	200	100

Among the guests who get their reservation personally done, when asked whether they use internet for booking their hotel, 52.5 percentages affirmed. Internet as a medium of hotel booking has gained popularity over the other mediums of hotel reservations. This shows digital and socio-cultural shift happening in India.

 

Variation in service quality perception among guests based on duration of Stay:

Since questionnaire has been administered to guest that differed in duration of stay, it is worth to analyze the effect of duration of stay on service quality perception and expectation. An ANOVA test (See table 2 in Annexure) is applied with duration of stay as independent variable and computed variable average service quality Perception for each dimension  (for testing Ho1) and computed variable average service quality Expectation for each dimension (for testing Ho2) as dependent.

 

To test the hypothesis Ho1 and Ho2 stated below…

Ho1: There is no significant difference in service quality perception among the hotel guests based on their duration of stay.

 

Ho2: There is no significant difference in service quality expectation among the hotel guests based on their duration of stay.

 

ANOVA test (Table 2 Annexure) at 0.05 level of significance fails to reject the Ho1 as well as Ho2 and hypotheses that ‘no difference in service quality perception (expectation) among the guests based on their duration of stay’ is accepted. Hence service quality perception (expectation) of guests (as respondents) could be used for analysis through SERVQAL independent of their duration of stay.

 

Estimation and the analysis of the Service Quality of Hotel/s based on the five dimensional model of SERVQUAL:

In order to understand and analyze the service quality of the hotel in case, gap between Expectation and Perception of guests obtained on five dimensions of SERVQUAL through structured questionnaire is calculated.

 

In following section, the frequency distribution and corresponding percentage and summated average of the choices on Tangibility, Reliability, Responsibility, Assurance and Empathy for expectation and perception is described through Table 6 to table 10. The gap in average values of expectation and perception is shown in second last column of each table. The significance of difference between expectation and perception is tested through paired sample ’t’ test at 0.05 level of confidence.

Tangibility:

Table 6: Gap analysis for Tangibility dimension (Source: Author)

Tangibility Indicators	Level of Data Collection		Very few  (1)	Few (2)	Middle (3)	High (4)	Very high (5)	Avg.	Diff. in E  and P (E- P)*	**‘t’ Sig. (2-tailed)
Attraction of the outer building structure.	Expectation(E)	f	0	5	47	45	103	4.23	1.50	.000
		%	0	2.5	23.5	22.5	51.5
	Perception (P)	f	0	89	77	32	2	2.74
		%	0	44.5	38.5	16	1
Attraction of the inner decoration of the hotel.	Expectation(E)	f	0	1	36	46	117	4.40	1.74	.000
		%	0	0.5	18	23	58.5
	Perception (P)	f	2	92	81	22	3	2.66
		%	1	46	40.5	11	1.5
Discipline and the cleanness of the hotel staff.	Expectation(E)	f	0	4	28	41	127	4.46	1.62	.000
		%	0	2	14	20.5	63.5
	Perception (P)	f	5	65	102	14	14	2.84
		%	2.5	32.5	51	7	7
Having new and modern hotel facilities.	Expectation(E)	f	0	1	21	66	112	4.45	1.61	.000
		%	0	0.5	10.5	33	56
	Perception (P)	f	2	46	135	16	1	2.84
		%	1	23	67.5	8	0.5

*Mean in SPSS Table 1 in Annexure         ** See Annexure SPSS Table 1 for details.

 

According to the table 6, guests consistently had high expectation from the hotels for all the four indicator of tangibility. The average score of Expectation component of Tangibility dimension is 4.38 with range deviation of 0.23. ‘Discipline and the cleanness of the hotel staff’ is highest rated indicator with average score of 4.46. The average score of Perception component of Tangibility dimension is 2.77, range deviation is 0.18 and ‘Attraction of the inner decoration of the hotel’ is lowest rated indicator with average score of 2.66.  Perception scores are lower to corresponding Expectation scores and difference between perception and expectation if statistically significant for each of the indicator. Average E-P is 1.62.

 

Reliability:

Table 7: Gap analysis for Reliability dimension (Source: Author)

Reliability Indicators	Level of Data Collection		Very few  (1)	Few (2)	Middle (3)	High (4)	Very high (5)	Avg.	Diff. in E  and P (E- P) *	**‘t’ Sig. (2-tailed)
On  room delivery (Concurrence between booking and delivery at arrival)	Expectation(E)	f	0	5	67	110	18	3.71	0.34	.000
		%	0	2.5	33.5	55	9
	Perception (P)	f	1	21	85	89	4	3.37
		%	0.5	10.5	42.5	44.5	2
Maintaining of the room up to the guest’s request	Expectation(E)	f	2	8	82	94	14	3.55	0.52	.000
		%	1	4	41	47	7
	Perception (P)	f	6	55	78	49	12	3.03
		%	3	27.5	39	24.5	6
Sufficiency of the available facilities of the room during stay	Expectation(E)	f	0	11	79	93	17	3.58	0.65	.000
		%	0	5.5	39.5	46.5	8.5
	Perception (P)	f	4	57	89	48	2	2.94
		%	2	28.5	44.5	24	1
Orders performed and verification for services received	Expectation(E)	f	0	2	31	44	123	4.44	1.68	.000
		%	0	1	15.5	22	61.5
	Perception (P)	f	6	79	78	31	6	2.76
		%	3	39.5	39	15.5	3

*Mean in SPSS Table 1 in Annexure         ** See Annexure SPSS Table 1 for details.

 

According to the table 7, guests had high expectation from the hotels for all the four indicator of Reliability dimension. The average score of Expectation component of Reliability dimension is 3.82 and ‘Orders performed and verification for services received’ is highest rated indicator with average score of 4.44. The average score of Perception component of Reliability dimension is 3.02 and ‘Orders performed and verification for services received’ is lowest rated indicator with average score of 2.76.  Perception scores are lower to corresponding Expectation scores and difference between perception and expectation is statistically significant for each of the indicator. For this dimension the Average E-P is 0.8. It is found that the difference between expectation and perception is low for first three indicators (see table 7 above) especially for ‘On room delivery’ where difference is just 0.34. It seems that what hotel staff tells and show to customers while booking is kept at guest arrival.

 

Responsiveness:

Table 8: Gap analysis for Responsiveness dimension (Source: Author)

Responsiveness Indicators	Level of Data Collection		Very few  ( 1)	Few ( 2)	Middle (3)	High ( 4)	Very high ( 5)	Avg.	Diff. in E  and P (E- P) *	**‘t’ Sig. (2-tailed)
Welcoming and Greeting the guests	Expectation(E)	f	0	5	67	110	18	3.71	0.67	.000
		%	0	2.5	33.5	55	9
	Perception (P)	f	1	71	62	52	14	3.04
		%	0.5	35.5	31	26	7
Quick response to the request made by guests	Expectation(E)	f	2	7	71	101	19	3.64	0.45	.000
		%	1	3.5	35.5	50.5	9.5
	Perception (P)	f	0	51	68	72	9	3.20
		%	0	25.5	34	36	4.5
Updating and Informing the guests by the staff	Expectation(E)	f	0	5	63	116	16	3.72	0.58	.000
		%	0	2.5	31.5	58	8
	Perception (P)	f	1	58	60	75	6	3.14
		%	0.5	29	30	37.5	3
Operating speed in providing services	Expectation(E)	f	1	3	76	119	1	3.58	0.49	.000
		%	0.5	1.5	38	59.5	0.5
	Perception (P)	f	0	41	99	60	0	3.10
		%	0	20.5	49.5	30	0

*Mean in SPSS Table 1 in Annexure         ** See Annexure SPSS Table 1 for details.

 

Table 8 again shows that expectation outnumbers perception for the entire four indicators of Responsiveness dimension.  The average score of Expectation component of Responsiveness dimension is 3.66 and all four indicators are closely rated with range deviation of 0.14. The average score of Perception component of Responsiveness dimension is 3.12 and again all indicators are closely rated with range deviation of 0.16.  Here again Perception scores are lower to corresponding Expectation scores and difference between perception and expectation if statistically significant for each of the indicator and average E-P is 0.55. It is notable that based on high rating and less difference between expectation and perception, performance of hotel on Responsiveness dimension is better than previous two dimensions (i.e. tangibility and reliability).

 

Assurance:

Table 9: Gap analysis for Assurance dimension (Source: Author)

Assurance Indicators	Level of Data Collection		Very few  (1)	Few ( 2)	Middle (3)	High (4)	Very high (5)	Avg.	Diff. in E  and P (E- P) *	**‘t’ Sig. (2-tailed)
Staff interaction brings confidence	Expectation(E)	f	0	5	67	110	18	3.71	0.85	.000
		%	0	2.5	33.5	55	9
	Perception (P)	f	2	68	88	41	1	2.86
		%	1	34	44	20.5	0.5
Staff are knowledgble to guest issues and problems	Expectation(E)	f	0	7	71	119	3	3.59	0.73	.000
		%	0	3.5	35.5	59.5	1.5
	Perception (P)	f	1	70	84	45	0	2.87
		%	0.5	35	42	22.5	0
Concurrence  between the services and the price	Expectation(E)	f	0	5	63	118	14	3.71	0.88	.000
		%	0	2.5	31.5	59	7
	Perception (P)	f	2	69	91	37	1	2.83
		%	1	34.5	45.5	18.5	0.5
Providing a delicate and calm environment	Expectation(E)	f	1	11	69	113	6	3.56	0.77	.000
		%	0.5	5.5	34.5	56.5	3
	Perception (P)	f	4	67	97	31	1	2.79
		%	2	33.5	48.5	15.5	0.5
Efforts of the staff in keeping hotel stay  safe	Expectation(E)	f	0	5	63	116	16	3.72	1.06	.000
		%	0	2.5	31.5	58	8
	Perception (P)	f	2	92	81	22	3	2.66
		%	1	46	40.5	11	1.5

*Mean in SPSS Table 1 in Annexure         ** See Annexure SPSS Table 1 for details.

 

Table 9 again shows that expectation outnumbers perception on each of the indicator of Assurance dimension as seen in previous dimensions. The average score of Expectation component of Assurance dimension is 3.66 and again all five indicators are closely rated with range deviation of 0.16. The average score of Perception component of Assurance dimension is 2.8. There is spread in difference between expectation and perception (E-P) with 0.77 as minimum difference and 1.06 as maximum difference and 0.86 as average. The maximum difference is found on fifth indicator ‘Efforts of the staff in providing and keeping place safe’. Here again Perception scores are lower to corresponding Expectation scores and difference between perception and expectation if statistically significant for each of the indicators.

 

Empathy:

Table 10: Gap analysis for Empathy dimension (Source: Author)

Empathy  Indicators	Level of Data Collection		Very few  ( 1)	Few ( 2)	Middle (3)	High ( 4)	Very high ( 5)	Avg.	Diff. in E  and P (E- P) *	**‘t’ Sig. (2-tailed)
Skill, experience and knowledge of the staff	Expectation(E)	f	0	5	57	120	18	3.76	1.39	.000
		%	0	2.5	28.5	60	9
	Perception (P)	f	12	119	53	16	0	2.37
		%	6	59.5	26.5	8	0
Politeness of the staff	Expectation(E)	f	0	6	12	148	34	4.05	1.36	.000
		%	0	3	6	74	17
	Perception (P)	f	18	52	103	27	0	2.70
		%	9	26	51.5	13.5	0
Staff ‘s understanding of guest problems	Expectation(E)	f	0	12	23	137	28	3.91	1.31	.000
		%	0	6	11.5	68.5	14
	Perception (P)	f	9	74	106	11	0	2.60
		%	4.5	37	53	5.5	0
Individualized attention by staff	Expectation(E)	f	0	22	40	108	30	3.73	0.95	.000
		%	0	11	20	54	15
	Perception (P)	f	0	67	111	21	1	2.78
		%	0	33.5	55.5	10.5	0.5
Service request are completely understood	Expectation(E)	f	0	4	23	127	46	4.08	1.16	.000
		%	0	2	11.5	63.5	20.5
	Perception (P)	f	4	57	92	45	2	2.92
		%	2	28.5	46	24	1

*Mean in SPSS Table 1 in Annexure         ** See Annexure SPSS Table 1 for details.

 

Table 10 again shows that among all the dimensions expectation scores are highest on Empathy dimension. Similar to each of previous cases perception scores are low in comparison to expectation scores for this dimension also. The average score of Expectation component of Empathy dimension is 3.91 and range deviation is 0.35 which is high relative to other dimensions. The average score of Perception component of Empathy dimension is 2.67. There is high difference between expectation and perception (E-P) for each of dimension and average E-P is 1.23 second highest after tangibility. Here again Perception scores are lower to corresponding Expectation scores and difference between perception and expectation if statistically significant for each of the indicators.

 

LIMITATION OF THE STUDY:

The study was confined only to the single hotel; sample comprising of respondents from multiple hotels may add strength to the findings. As per the discussion ‘Customer Satisfaction’ is dynamic hence validity of study is temporal and recency of study must be accounted for before generalizing the findings. Another notable aspect of the study is indicators reflecting the five dimensions of SERVQUAL are not original and developed to suit the requirements of this study based on literature review, an empirical method could strengthen the scale validity. Finally judgment sampling method used for this study must be mentioned.

CONCLUSIONS AND SUGGESTIONS:

34.5 and 65.5 percent are female and male guests respectively (booked hotel as lead traveler in case of more than one guest). 76 percent guests are graduate or above. 43 and 41.5 percent guests are on personal and business travel respectively, remaining is leisure travelers. Among business travelers 68.7 percent personally get their reservations done. Internet is most preferred method of booking hotel rooms with 52.5 percent of all bookings are done through internet.

 

Scores for Expectation component of all the five dimensions that reflect service quality of hotel outnumber the perception scores. It clearly shows that expectations of guests for quality of services rendered by hotels that they book are high that hotel consistently failed to meet. The reason for high expectation is not explored in this article, though the reasons could be on either side of these two things, one people develop unrealistic expectations from the hotels due to aspirations inculcated through culture rooted belief of meticulousness associated with hospitality such as notion of “Atithi Devo Bhavah (guest is at par with GOD)” and deserves treatment nothing less than the best. The other reason could be the high expectations that are created through marketing communications, mostly by best in class hotels who afford to do so. Marketing communication message of few top hotels express service levels based on the notion of “showing better than the best one has” that are beyond the achievable limits of most hotels. Society creates generalized high expectations from all hotels amounting to situation of over expectation and under delivery. Whatever the real reason are, the fact is, findings of this article show expectations of guests is not met and there exists a clear gap in service quality of mid tear four starred hotel which is a matter of concern for managers at hotels in this segment.

 

To mitigate the gap hotels has to see that they create realistic expectations among the guests and having being done so they should ensure to perform on each of the service quality dimension to meet the expectations. From the findings it is evident that hotel under study is lacking mainly on ‘Tangibility’ and ‘Empathy’ dimensions and maximum managerial effort and resource commitment should be on these two fronts.  The candidate hotel has performed best on ‘Responsiveness’ dimension, it is induced that hotel staff’s maximum focus is on servicing guest on board as dissatisfaction could be most promptly reflected in this case.

 

In light of findings and conclusions it is recommended that the hotel managers should understand the guests’ expectations and meet them.  Develop operating procedure for relevant services to reach the claimed standard, and even beyond that. They should also be careful not to exaggerate advertisement to increase the guests’ expectations.

 

Hotels must make sufficient investment to develop proper standards and to support them with the enough resources and facilities such as sound operating system, trained staff and advanced technology. They should specially focus on tangibility and empathy dimensions to minimize the overall gap. Physical aspects of hotel service such as cleanliness, hygiene and aesthetics are important areas of managerial focus and resource commitment. A more subtle aspect is improving on Empathy dimension that could be done through meticulously hiring dedicated staff with high emotional quotient, offering them exemplary soft skill training and establishing organizational culture such that all staff complies with the customer satisfaction rules and standards.

 

It is recommended that the hotel managers could take a cue from findings that reflect the distribution of guests on gender, education level, methods for room reservation and intension of travel to design marketing communication, promotions and offers to attain superior targeting goals.

 

 

Finally, since service quality perceived is not stable rather changes with time due to change in socio-economic environment of guests, it is recommended that hotel managers should make periodic review of guest expectations and accordingly calibrate efforts to improve service quality and offer customers satisfaction for higher loyalty.

 

Hotel managers shall note that price (one of the indicator of Empathy dimension with high gap value) is one of the key factors in shaping perceived value, thus pricing strategies must be given due attention. Hotels must maintain sound feedback system to measure service quality so that they remain aware of level of service quality rendered by them and corrective action may be taken as and when required to keep guests satisfied and loyal. This will ultimately bring positive influences on the tourism industry in Lucknow and similar cities in India.

 

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ANNEXURE:

Table 1- Paired Samples t-Test (Between Expectation and Perception of service quality indicators)

Table 2 – ANOVA (Effect of duration of Stay on Expectation and Perception)

 

 

 

 

Accepted on 21.05.2017          © A&V Publications all right reserved