Improving Service Quality in Hotel and Resort

Service quality is one area which was studied extensively for the past four decades. In the field of service marketing, there are many definition for service quality. Parasuraman et al, (1988) defines service quality as a discrepancy between customers’ expectation and perception of a service or service experience and this is basically the perceived service quality. Based on this concept, Parasuraman et al. (1985), developed a model known as the SERVQUAL. The SERVQUAL model is based on 22-item scale and it measures service quality based on five dimensions which are reliability, responsiveness, tangibility, assurance and empathy. According to Parasuraman et. al (1985) these five dimension are generic and they are applicable across the industries. However, there are some critics to this model also such as Gronroos (1990) and Mangold and Babakus (1991) who opines that SERVQUAL solely focuses on the service delivery process while neglecting the outcome of the service. Interestingly, the inventors of SERVQUAL suggested the importance of both the functional and technical aspect of service quality in the model (Parasuraman et.al, 1985). However, they didn’t include the technical aspect but it in the instrument. The emphasis on the functional aspect is basically the American school which was

For different types of companies, quality might refer to quality of products or quality of service. Compares with quality of products, service quality is much more difficult to measure because service is intangible and acts and processes only existing in time. In addition, service has unique characteristic which cannot be found in products, such as customer influence, inseparability of production and consumption, heterogeneity, perishability and labor intensity (Nie & Kellogg, 1999). Even though, there are still many practitioners and academics are keen on measuring service quality because it has already emerged as a key strategic issue. Companies want to better understand service quality, and to establish methods for improving quality to achieve competitive advantage and build customer loyalty (Abdullah, 2006). Based on the importance of service quality, an increasing number of literatures and companies pay attention to measuring

When the competition was growing in service sector the demand for service quality was understood. At this time a new question was emerged, if it is possible to apply the principles of TQM in service industry. The literatures and viewpoints of different researchers made the latest moderations to TQM concepts and made TQM adaptable for service sector also.(2) Today, customers have a wide choice of service providers and they would choose only the best service providers in terms of quality, reliability, and profitability and who are at par with international standards. Therefore, the quality of service plays a dominant role and is a primary factor in ensuring the survival of the service provider in the global market. The whole focus is now concentrated on providing services to customer beyond his expectations. This concept is applicable to all service industries and has given birth to the concept of TQM in service

Hung, Y. H., Huang, M. L., & Chen, K. S. (2003). Service quality evaluation by service quality performance matrix. Total Quality Management and Business Excellence.

In order to understand service quality and models proposed to assess it, Seth, Deshmukh, & Vrat (2005) conducted a literature review of the service quality models and examined 19 different service quality models. Their paper summarized different models and highlighted the strengthens and weakness of each model. The authors conclude that while none of models were able to address all aspects of measurements and selection of a model to measure service quality would be dependent on the subject that the researcher wished to measure.

Customer preferences are important concept within services marketing theory. According to my review, service quality have significant relationship with customer preferences. Their finding indicates that the service quality provided by staff is fundamental and crucial to the customer satisfaction in the restaurants. Furthermore, customers will choose the restaurants based on their satisfaction level. In another study by Cronin and Taylor (1992), the study have shown the perceived service quality can greatly affect customers’ satisfaction and customer preferences. Many restaurants out there will pay more attention on service quality because it will directly influencing the customer preferences which will lead to customer revisit and customer will become loyalty to the restaurants. And will directly affect he restaurant revenue. In addition, Yüksel & Yüksel (2002) stated that service quality had the most significant impact on dining satisfaction at the aggregate market

Service Quality as described by (William G. Zikmund, 1993) “is the degree to which the performance of service provider’s matches customer expectations. It can also be defined as those essential characteristics of a service that measures its excellence”.

Under this approach, TQM implementation focuses on meeting specific award criteria. Although some argue that this is not an appropriate use of award criteria, some organizations do use this approach and it can result in improvement.

In hospitality industry, SERVQUAL was one of the most popular model measurement tools to measure consumer expectation and perception towards service quality. It is a factor that would difference the importance from pre-stage service to service. The gap model was developed to measure “gaps” between the services process and the perception of service quality after the service process. Nonetheless, SERVQUAL model

Therefore, it is suggested that service quality may not be a key variable of strategic competitiveness. However, it is necessitated that in the future, XYZ Hotel should continue delivering exceptional service to its guests, as five-star hotel is famously known for its excellency in service delivery. Hence, this can be done by consistently monitor the quality of food served at all the restaurants in the hotel, the promptness level of staff in fulfilling the needs and wants of the guests and not only monitor the behavior and attitude of staff in the restaurant or front office, but also the

Total Quality Management (TQM) is an improvement tool that is widely used in many companies. It consists of many aspects including Managing people as well as business processes in order to maintain customer satisfaction. With TQM, Businesses starts to do the right thing from the start and to ensure zero error. Therefore, it is important to learn the principle of TQM and how it acts in organizations with its advantages and disadvantages.

Sureshchandra, Rajendran and Anantharaman (2002) identified five critical aspects of service quality from the customers point of view namely core service/service product, human element of service delivery, systematisation of service delivery, tangibles of service and lastly social responsibility in order to conceptualise service quality. Table 1 will further provide an explanation to the five critical aspects of service quality as outlined by Sureshchandra et al (2002).

UDK / UDC: 640.41(658.562) JEL klasifikacija / JEL classification: L83 Stručni rad / Professional paper Primljeno / Received: 31. svibnja 2007. / May 31, 2007 Prihvaćeno za tisak / Accepted for publishing: 03. srpnja 2007. / July 03, 2007 Summary The quality of service in hotel industry is an important factor of successful business. The existing trend of complete quality management in hotel industry ensures the achievement of competitive advantage of hotel companies and is therefore the subject of contemporary research into service quality in

SERVQUAL is a standardized and reliable instrument that has been used by majority of work to date endeavor to measure service quality (Rohini & Mahadevappa, 2006; Shahin, 2013; Riyadh Lidhari, 2009) although there are a number of other models (Seth et al., 2005). Zeithaml, et al. (1990) in his introduction pages mentioned that service quality methods can be used and applied to all types of profit and non-profit oriented organization services. Direct or modified application of the SERVQUAL model in measuring agricultural service organizations in no exception (Horri et al., 2012; Rana et al., 2013). Grīnberga-Zālīte (2011) in his study on the assurance of customer-guided training services' quality at rural advisory centers found that SERVQUAL model precisely indicates those criteria of Latvian Rural Advisory and Training Center (LRATC) service quality, which had a lower performance than customer expectation. The SERVQUAL model also used to measure quality of agricultural extension service in the KPSDMP - KP regency of Garut, Indonesia (Ruhana, 2011) and customer satisfaction in Markazi province

Service quality is generally viewed as an overall evaluation of the service provided (Taylor & Baker, 1994). It has also been viewed as a multidimensional construct formed from the consumer). Moreover, empirical studies indicate that consistently providing high quality service may help hospitality firms increase their number of brand loyal customers (Backs & Parks, 2003). It is evident that for the long term success of hospitality firms, customer loyalty is significantly more important than mere customer satisfaction