SERVICE QUALITY DIMENSIONS AND ITS EFFECT ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ON SERVICES PROVIDED BY STAR HOTELS OF NILGIRI DISTRICT

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1 SERVICE QUALITY DIMENSIONS AND ITS EFFECT ON CUSTOMER SATISFACTION ON SERVICES PROVIDED BY STAR HOTELS OF NILGIRI DISTRICT *Arun.R **Dr.Umamaheswari.M * Full Time Ph.D., Research Scholar, Department of Management, Dr. SNS Rajalakshmi College of Arts and Science (Autonomous),Coimbatore **Head, Associate Professor, Department of Management, Dr. SNS Rajalakshmi College of Arts and Science (Autonomous),Coimbatore ABSTRACT The hotel industry is a new developing growing service with huge potential in India for next decade. So far, it has already been an industry of highly ripe development, and the orientation is served in hotel Industry. However, with the increase of the competition, hotel industry must offer good quality services to its customers.modern luxurious hotels provide various facilities to customers like climate control, internet connectivity, pool, spa etc. Objectives of the study is to analyze the service quality dimensions on services provided by hotel to assess the behaviorual pattern of customers primary data as well as secondary data were collected from the study. Interview schedule has been used in this study. Multiple regressions, anlysis have been used in this study. It is found from the study, which the Service Quality dimensions like Tangibility and Responsiveness is negatively correlated with Customer Satisfaction. Hence the Star Hotels of Nilgiri District should take care of Customer physical aspects such as facilities, equipment, appearances of personnel and also willingness to help customers and provide prompt service that will help to improve the Customer Satisfaction and retention of customers to star hotels to provide good profit to the management. Keywords: service quality, tangibility, reliability, customers satisfaction etc., The hotel industry is a new developing growing service with huge potential in India for next decade. So far, it has already been an industry of highly ripe development, and the orientation is served in hotel Industry. However, with the increase of the competition, hotel industry must offer good quality services to its customers It is commonly accepted that service industry is viewed as a gauge for market modernizationthe hospitality industry is a very significant service sector industry in the entire world. The Indian hospitalityindustry has recorded healthy growth fuelled by robust inflow of foreign tourists as well as increased touristmovement within the country and it has become one of the leading players in the global industry. The World Travel& Tourism Council calculated that in 2012 the tourism industry generated INR6.4 trillion or 6.6 per cent of the nation's GDP. It supported 39.5 million jobs, 7.7 per cent of its total employment. The sector is expected to grow at an averageannual rate of 7.9 per cent from 2013 to This gives 243

2 India the third rank among the countries with the fastest growingtourism industries over the next decade. According to provisional statistics by Ministry of Tourism, Govt of India6.84 million foreign tourists arrived in India in 2013, an increase of 8.8 per cent from 6.58 million in 2012 and an increaseof 7.1 per cent from As per the UNWTO World Tourism Barometer, December 2013, India s rank in the WorldTourism Receipts during 2012 was 16th rank in international tourist arrivals was 41. The rank of India wasseventh among Asia and the Pacific Region in terms of tourism receipts during The Hotel is an establishment that provides accommodation or it can be said that it provides you a home away fromhome. Now, Five Star Hotels are very important in any economy as most of the international tourists and high profiledomestic tourists stay in these hotels. Hence service quality in these hotels must match International Standards. Modern luxurious hotels provide various facilities to customers like climate control, internet connectivity, pool, spa etc. The Federation of Hotel & Restaurant Associations of India (FHRAI) is regulating body whichcollects information from its members through a questionnaire and then publishes its findings in Annual Indian Hotel Industry Survey, which is an extremely beneficial report. Attractiveness of Indian Tourism is encouraging many foreign and domestic players to set up their operational facilities in the country. Tourism is a rapidly growing industry worldwide, which is partially fueled by the continual globalization of businesses and nations. However, this newly perceived easy access across countries does not necessarily translate to an easy integration of difference in beliefs and culture. Culture has been highly ignored when it comes to achieving customer satisfaction. With the ever evolving population and customers becoming more sophisticated and demanding, service providers are falling behind in keeping up with the needs of their customers and retaining their high levels of satisfaction they once received. Thus, it is time to take a closer look into how culture impacts modern customers satisfaction evaluation. Previous literature looked primarily at the customer satisfaction evaluation process; however, in order to cope with the rapidly changing tourism trend, it is important to pay attention to the effect of culture on customers preferences. Limited research has been done in this area of interest, which explains what attributes are important in satisfaction from culture to culture. This understanding is vital to set a common understanding of customers satisfaction based on the cultural backgrounds. SERVICE QUALITY According to Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Leonard (1988), service quality is defined as the discrepancy between expected service and perceived service. Also, service quality is identified as an important indicator for customer satisfaction and business performance measurement (Lewis and Mitchell, 1990). According to Fornell, Johnson,Anderson, Cha, & Bryant (1998), the customers perception of service quality is more important than the customers perception driven by price. Therefore, satisfaction is quality driven rather than value driven. Parasuraman et al. (1988) studied on dimensions of service quality (SERVQUAL) and the studies have provided an extremely valuable insight on measurement of service quality. The authors identified five different dimensions and they are: Tangibles: refers to physical aspects such as facilities, equipment, appearances of personnel Reliability: refers to ability to perform the promised service efficiently and accurately Responsiveness: refers to willingness to help customers and provide prompt service Assurance: refers to knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to convey trust Empathy: refers to caring and individualized attention provided to customers STATEMENT OF THE PROBLEM Nilgiris district is one of the tourist spots in Tamilnadu and attracts foreign and domestic tourists. Numerous businessmen and officials make regular official visits to Nilgiris district. These activities regularly promote the floating population to Nilgiris district. Nilgiris district has been surrounded by historical monuments and places. There has been an opinion that if the district needs to attract more tourists then it must offer better boarding and lodging facilities. Considering these aspects and the hotel accommodation available in Nilgiris district, an attempt has been made to understand the visitor s expectations and perception about the quality of hospitality industry in this District. Hotel services organizations aware of creating customer loyalty importance and dealing with him as continuous and permanent profit source, and their success depends on their capacities and capabilities to ensure sound base of loyal customers, taking in consideration that many loyal customers often act as a source of attracting new customers.serviceorganization s customers will remain loyal to service organization, if their evaluation to what they obtained is relatively larger than they expect to get it from competitors, and since loyalty expresses customer s repeating to deal with service organization, this affects customers satisfaction with provided services by that organization where customers always prefer the service that is characterized by quality, specifications and characteristics that are matching with their needs and desires, which consequently lead to build loyalty to the organization. OBJECTIVES OF THE STUDY 1. To analyze the Service Quality Dimensions influencing with Customer satisfaction 2. To offer a valid suggestion for the hotel owners to understand the behavior of consumer and improve their business. 244

3 HYPOTHESIS 1. Service quality dimensions is not positively influencing with customer satisfaction. Research Methodology The study is to be focused on the analysis of marketing practices to be applied and adopted by the hotel and resort business in ooty as perceived by managers and customers. These practices are limited to product offering, pricing and promotion. Nineteen hotels and resorts constituted the study group of 19 owners/managers from get the permission for to meet customers, 525 customers to be evaluated the level of implementation of marketing practices of the businesses. Only the customers who are to be checked-in in the hotels and resorts during the data gathering period comprised the customer respondents. Furthermore, only the hotels and resorts that provide both sleeping accommodation and food and beverages are considered in the study.in tune with the objectives of the study the researcher has to depend on both primary and secondary data. The primary data have been collected from customers of hotels in Nilgiris district, with the help of an Interview Schedule.The secondary data have been drawn from different sources like newspapers, magazines, journals, books, websites, pamphlets etc. The primary data have to be collected from the potential respondents from different areas and has been properly sorted, classified, edited, tabulated in a proper format and to be analyzed by deploying appropriate statistical tools. The statistical tests are to be conducted at 5 per cent and 1 per cent level of significance. The Multiple Regression analysis has been used in this study.. ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETRATION Multiple Regression Analysis Multiple regression co-efficient measures separately the relationship between two variables in such a way that the effects of other related variables are eliminated. In other words, it measures the relation between a dependent variable and a particular independent variable by holding all other variables constant. Thus, each multiple regression co-efficient measures the effect of its independent variable on the dependent variable. Multiple regression analysis of Overall Opinion About customer satisfaction services provided by hotel followed by selected service quality dimension variables, the following regression model is fitted for performance: Y= α + β 1 X 1 +β 2 X 2 + β 3 X 3 +β 4 X (1) Y (CustSatis) = β 1 (X1) + β 2 (X2) + β 3 (X3) + β 4 (X4) + β 5 (X5) (2) Where, Y = CustSatis- Overall Opinion About customer satisfaction X1- Tangibles X2- Reliability X3- Responsiveness X4- Assurance X5- Empathy α = Intercept, β β 5 =Estimated Coefficients, = Error term The co-efficient of the explanatory and controllable variable (β 1 β 5 ) can be estimated by the use of the multiple regression through linear regression with stepwise method. Hence for Overall Opinion About customer satisfaction services provided by hotel followed by selected service quality dimensions were intercepted using regression model. 245

4 MULTIPLE REGRESSION ANALYSIS OF THE SELECTED SERVICE QUALITY DIMENSIONS WITH OVERALL OPINION ABOUT CUSTOMER SATISFACTION SERVICES PROVIDED BY STAR HOTELS S.NO. FACTORS Standardized Coefficients (β) t-value p-value S/NS (constant) ** S X1- Tangibles ** S X2- Reliability ** NS X3- Responsiveness ** NS X4- Assurance ** NS X5- Empathy ** NS R 2 F Change Sig in F Change Sample size (N) ** 0.000** 525 SOURCE: PRIMARY DATA **p <0.01, *p<0.05 S-Significant NS- Not significant ANOVA Sum of S/NS Model df Mean Square F-value p-value Squares Regression ** S Residual Total *P<0.05S-Significant NS Not Significant From the table-1 reveals that correlation analysis that has been done on all the data that has been collected through the survey. This analysis is done to show the existing relation among the study variables namely Overall Opinion About customer satisfaction services provided by hotel followed byselectedservice quality dimensions. In this all of the predictor variables were entered simultaneously. Because the predictor variables and the enter method used. Table -1 this table The Adjusted R Square value tells us that our model accounts for 87.6 per cent of variance a good model and the Standardized Beta Coefficients give a measure of the contribution of each variable to the model. A large value indicates that a unit change in this predictor variable has a large effect on the criterion variable. The t and Sig ( p) values give a rough indication of the impact of each predictor variable namely X1- Tangibles(t , p , p< 0.01), X2-Reliability(t , p , p< 0.01),X3-Responsiveness(t , p , p< 0.01),X4-Assurance(t , p , p< 0.01) and X5-Empathy(t , p , p< 0.01). It found that p value suggests that a predictor variable is having a large impact on the criterion variable. Hence, Overall ANOVA results, which assesses the overall significance of this model (F , p value- 0.00, p<0.01). This model is statistically significant. It is found that Service Quality dimensions influencing with Customer Satisfaction SUGGESTIONS OF THE STUDY Tourism industry is one of the major segments of our economy, it contributes major part of foreign exchange and generates employment and helps infrastructure development. Government of India has formulated policies to boost the tourism industry. 1. It must open more avenues for business opportunities, could be tourism related itself or tribal studies, Low cost airlines and helicopter services, Unique entertainment facilities, More sources of communication, Family entertainment facilities, more playgrounds and parks, Film city, Insurance, Meals and festivals must be held so as to include the tourists, Orchards and forests may be promoted as tourist picnic spots.etc 2. This study concluded with suggestions for to improvement of various infrastructure facilities Parking facilities, Road connectivity, Shopping facilities, Medical facilitates and Basic amenities for of various facilities like create and improve various 246

5 infrastructure facilities and basic amenities like drinking water facilities, road connectivity and other facilities which will brings more tourist from the different part of India and rest of the world in future CONCLUSION It is found from the study, which the Service Quality dimensions like Tangibility and Responsiveness is negatively correlated with Customer Satisfaction. Hence it is concluded that the Star Hotels should take care of Customer physical aspects such as facilities, equipment, appearances of personnel and also willingness to help customers and provide prompt service that will help to improve the Customer Satisfaction and retention of customers to star hotels to provide good profit to the management. REFERENCE 1. Danaher, P. J., & Mattsson, J. (1994b). Cumulative encounter satisfaction in the hotel conference 2. process. International Journal of Service Industry Management, 5(4), Davidson, M., Mannin, M.L., Brosnan, P. & Timo, N. (2001). Organizational climate, perceived 4. customer satisfaction, and revenue per available room in four- and five-star Australian hotels, 5. Tourism Analysis, 6(2), pp Francese, P. (1993). Breaking the rules: Delivering responsive service. Hospitality ResearchJournal, 16(2), Ghosh, S. G. (2005). Hotel Front Office Training Manual, Aman 8. Sim, J., Mak, B. & Jones, D. (2006). A Model of Customer Satisfaction and Retention forhotels. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 7(3), Vallen, G. K & Vallen J. J. (2009). Check-In Check-Out: Managing Hotel Operations, 8 th Edition. Pearson Education. 10. Alzaid, A.A. and Soliman, A.A. (2002), Service quality in Riyadh s Elite Hotel: measurement and evaluation. J. King Saud. Univ. Admin. Sci 14(2), Pp Brysland, A. and Curry, A. (2001), "Service improvements in public services using SERVQUAL". Managing Service Quality, 11(6), Pp Cronin, J.J. and Taylor, S. A. (1994). SERVPERF versus SERVQUAL: reconciling performance-based and perceptionsminus-expectations measurement of service quality, J. Market. 58, Pp Hessamaldin, M.S. (2008). Customer Satisfaction in Four Star Isfahan Hotel, An Application of SERVQUAL Model, Master s Thesis. Lulea University of Technology, Iran. 14. Sim, J., Mak, B., & Jones, D. (2006). A model of customer satisfaction and retention for Hotel, Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 7(3), Skogland, I. &Siguaw, J. A. (2004). Are your satisfied customers loyal? Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 45(3), Pp Taylor, C. R., Franke, G.R. & Maynard, M. L. (2000). Attitudes toward direct marketing and its regulation: A comparison of the United States and Japan. Journal of Public Policy and Marketing, 19(2), Pp Tsang, E. (2004). Toward a scientific inquiry into superstitious business decision-making, Organization Studies, 25, Pp Tse, K. K. & Wilton, P.C. (1988). Models of consumer satisfaction formation: An extension. Journal of Marketing Research, 25(2), Pp Wang, Y., Vela, M. R., & Tyler, K. (2008). Cultural perceptions: Chinese perceptionsof UK Star Hotels service quality, International Journal of Culture, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 2(4),