The impact of tourism service quality on customer satisfaction: the case of five-star hotels in Jordan. Ramzi AL-Rousan* and Badaruddin Mohamed

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1 124 Int. J. Leisure and Tourism Marketing, Vol. 2, No. 2, 2011 The impact of tourism service quality on customer satisfaction: the case of five-star hotels in Jordan Ramzi AL-Rousan* and Badaruddin Mohamed Tourism Planning and Development, School of Housing, Building, and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang 11800, Malaysia Fax: Fax: manzomh45@yahoo.com bada@usm.my *Corresponding author Yudi Fernando School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang 11800, Malaysia Fax: yudhitjoa@gmail.com Abstract: This paper aims to investigate the service quality expectations of business hotel customers and evaluate their satisfaction with regard to tourism service quality (TSQ) in five-star hotels in Jordan. To achieve the objectives of this paper, questionnaire surveys were used to measure visitor satisfaction. The questionnaire instruments were developed from previous studies and contained 23 proposed TSQ items. The respondents were tourists who stayed in five-star hotels in Jordan. From the 322 questionnaires collected, only four service quality dimensions were found to be positively related to customer satisfaction. Among the four dimensions, assurance was the highest predictor in measuring customer satisfaction. Therefore, the quality of service is directly related to the customer satisfaction. Theoretically, the findings showed that customers would only be satisfied when the service is perceived to be valuable and of superb quality. It is also one of the determinants influencing customers choices with regard to the five-star hotel they will stay in. The results of this paper could provide tourism planners and marketers in Jordan an increased understanding of the concept of TSQ and teach them how they can continually improve their services. Keywords: tourism marketing; service quality; five-star hotel; Jordan. Reference to this paper should be made as follows: AL-Rousan, R., Mohamed, B. and Fernando, Y. (2011) The impact of tourism service quality on customer satisfaction: the case of five-star hotels in Jordan, Int. J. Leisure and Tourism Marketing, Vol. 2, No. 2, pp Copyright 2011 Inderscience Enterprises Ltd.

2 The impact of TSQ on customer satisfaction 125 Biographical notes: Ramzi AL-Rousan is a PhD candidate of Tourism Planning and Development from School of HBP, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM). He has a Master s degree in Tourism from Alyarmok University in Jordan. He is active to participate in conferences and journal publication. His research areas are tourism service quality in hotel industry. Badaruddin Mohamed is a Lecturer in Planning at the School of HBP, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), specialising in Tourism Planning. He is a Dean of Research in Division Research and Innovation at USM s Research Creativity and Management Office. He graduated with a PhD degree in Tourism Planning and Development and a Master s degree in the same field from Tokyo, Japan. He is actively involved in research and consultancy work related to tourism. Yudi Fernando is a PhD candidate in Service Marketing from the School of Management, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang, Malaysia. He is an MBA graduate from the School of Management, USM. His current research interests are service marketing, marketing management, industrial marketing, supply chain relationship and logistics. Thus far, he has published in several journals, such as Int. J. Information Management, Benchmarking: An International Journal, Int. J. Productivity and Quality Management, Int. J. Value Chain Management, Journal of Technology Management and Innovation, Int. J. Logistics Systems and Management, Int. J. Operations and Supply Chain Management, etc. 1 Introduction As is the case with many other businesses, hotels are affected by shifts in emphasis among the country s living patterns. People and industries have moved from the so-called Rust Belt to the Sunbelt. The hotel industry has been active in the rebirth and reconstruction of central cities. For most hotel companies in the 21st century, true marketing has also evolved to reflect this sophistication. This development also acknowledges the increased sophistication on the part of guests and potential clientele (Denney and Michael, 2007). Hotel services are a mixture of complementary products. Thus, it has become more complicated to measure hotel service quality, as this task requires measuring certain levels of quality service in terms of accommodation, food, drinks and entertainment. This condition, e.g. may apply to businessmen who need to be entertained while staying at a cosy place. Service marketers and tourism planners have to understand the importance of hotel service characteristics to their targeted market. As competition continues to grow, improving the quality of service has become an imperative for the hotel industry, increasing the necessity of identifying the dimensions of service quality and its relative importance for customers (Fick and Ritchie, 1991). Identifying these areas could provide managers the means to improve service quality within the hotel industry (Asubonteng et al., 1996).

3 126 R. AL-Rousan, B. Mohamed and Y. Fernando Tourism is undoubtedly an important industry to many economies as it is one of the main sources of revenue and foreign exchange. Moreover, this industry plays a vital role in preserving cultural and historical heritage. It promotes national development as billions of dollars in investment are expended on infrastructures, such as roads, airports, telecommunication facilities and hotels, that are necessary to foster the industry s growth. Tourism is also a crucial factor for employment opportunities especially in the services sector. Jordan has a wide range of tourist attractions; thus, tourism is the most promising sector of its economy. Jordan has a developed tourism infrastructure with a plethora of luxury hotels and resorts, advanced transportation infrastructure, a wide range of activities and cultural events as well as spas and numerous tour operators conducting business in the country. Over the past two decades, the theory and practice of service quality have received considerable attention from academics and practitioners. Viewed as a means by which customers distinguish between competing organisations (Marshal and Murdoch, 2001), service quality is known to contribute to market share and customer satisfaction (Anderson and Zeithaml, 1984; Buzzell and Gale, 1987; Parasuraman et al., 1985; Zeithaml, 2000). Thus, the pursuit of quality services in both private and public sector organisations is driven by the need to survive and remain competitive. A five-dimensional structure of SERVQUAL, developed by Parasuraman et al. (1985, 1988), is widely used and tested to measure service quality. However, due to different settings and environments, there is a need for it to be adapted to the specific service segments and the cultural context within which it is used (Akbaba, 2006). There are three main types of service quality in hotels, namely, physical product, service experience and quality of food and beverage (Wilkins et al., 2007). According to Akbaba (2006), business travellers had the highest expectations for the dimension of convenience followed by assurance, tangibles, adequacy in service supply and understanding and caring. Inconsistent findings from various hotel industries have encouraged researchers to determine the service quality measurement which would fit with their environment. Due to the lack of consensus regarding the construct of service quality (Johnston, 1995), questions have continued to emerge. This study will focus on two objectives: to investigate the service quality expectations of customers of business hotels and examine the linkages between service quality and customer satisfaction. 2 Service quality Previous studies have investigated complex conceptual relationships and how such relationships act to drive behavioural intention (Cornin et al., 2000; Parasuraman et al., 1985). In service marketing, for instance, hypothesised that customer satisfaction is influenced simultaneously by price, and service quality. Since the 1980s, the quality of products and services has become a real concern as it became possible to measure the quality of material products; however, the quality of services has been impossible to limit or study. The knowledge of new concepts and directions of marketing services are the other concerns for tourism administrators. Exact knowledge of the quality of products remains insufficient to provide a better

4 The impact of TSQ on customer satisfaction 127 understanding of service quality because it is characterised by merits, such as being intangible, correlation between production and consumption and disharmony and destruction. These characteristics have also made it difficult to define and measure service quality (Parasuraman et al., 1985). Parasuraman et al. (1985) have proposed that service quality is a multidimensional concept consisting of five key dimensions: reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles. All these key dimensions were used in this study. The first concept, reliability, is defined as the ability of the service provider to deliver the promised service consistently and accurately. It is the responsibility to keep promises regarding service delivery, pricing, complaint handling and the like. The second concept, responsiveness, is the willingness to help customers by providing prompt service as soon as a request is received. The service personnel has to provide prompt attention to all their customers requests, questions and complaints. The third concept, assurance, refers to the capability to motivate trust and confidence in the product or service provided. Empathy is the service quality aspect which focuses on dealing with customers as individuals. Here, service providers must be able to put themselves in the shoes of the customers to enable them to better understand the latter s needs. In doing so, the service providers can provide satisfaction to the customers. Finally, tangibles refer to service dimension which focuses on the aspects that represent the service physically where the product or service is not only seen but also satisfactorily workable or useable. In general, tourism is as good as the quality of service provided by the players in the industry. This is because in tourism, quality of service plays an important role in the process of delivery (Rutherford and O Fallon, 2007); it is therefore the standard being used to assess the effectiveness of a particular leisure service agency, including the tourism service sector (Godbey, 1997). In short, for most travel service providers, service quality is an intangible, but a crucial area of interest that must be improved to ensure customer loyalty. As described above, the major service evaluation tool is the SERVQUAL model, and Parasuraman et al. have stated that this model could apply to various service contexts. Many tourism researchers have used this model to evaluate the quality of services provided in tourism and affiliated industries (Baker and Fesenmaier, 1997; Childress and Crompton, 1997; Ostrowski et al., 1993; Vogt and Fesenmaier, 1995). For example, Mackay and Crompton (1988) tested SERVQUAL in Canadian municipal parks and identified the same five dimensions as proposed in Parasuraman et al. s (1985) model (as cited in Crompton et al., 1991). In another study, Brown and Swartz (1989) expanded on SERVQUAL and eventually discovered the discrepancy where service providers failed to comprehend the level at which customers evaluate their experiences. In contradiction to Brown and Swartz s findings (Bigne et al., 2003), also employing SERVQUAL to test the quality of service received from travel agencies, discovered that it is still a valid and reliable model to evaluate the service quality provided by travel agencies. On the whole, other researchers discovered that although SERVQUAL has been designed to measure service quality, it only provides a framework and still needs to be adapted and modified to evaluate specific services (Backman and Veldkamp, 1995; Parasuraman et al., 1988, 1991).

5 128 R. AL-Rousan, B. Mohamed and Y. Fernando 3 Hypothesis In service study, service quality is a predictor of customer satisfaction. The perceived service quality is the result of the comparison of customer expectation with actual service performance (Parasuraman et al., 1985). Several findings from the studies of different marketing scholars, such as those of Cronin and Taylor (1992), Fornell et al. (1996), Selnes (1993), Sivadas and Baker-Prewitt (2000) and Zeithaml et al. (1996), have proven that service quality is an antecedent of customer satisfaction. When customers perceive a hotel service s attributes to be high in quality, they are likely to experience higher levels of satisfaction with the service. Shu et al. (2002) have found that the quality of service the visitors have experienced affected the overall satisfaction level among visitors to a wildlife refuge. H1: There is a significant positive correlation between tourism service quality (TSQ) and customer satisfaction. H1a: There is a significant positive correlation between tangibility and customer satisfaction. H1b: There is a significant positive correlation between reliability and customer satisfaction. H1c: There is a significant positive correlation between responsiveness and customer satisfaction. H1d: There is a significant positive correlation between assurance and customer satisfaction. H1e: There is a significant positive correlation between empathy and customer satisfaction. 4 Methodology A self-administered questionnaire, an adapted version of SERVQUAL scale, was used in this paper to measure the perceived TSQ of the hotel guests. The questionnaire was divided into three parts. The first part of the questionnaire contained questions relating to sociodemographic data about the respondents. The second part was designed to measure the respondents perceptions regarding quality of services offered by the hotel. Based on the previous literature and questionnaire instruments developed in previous studies, 23 service quality items were developed for our questionnaire. Meanwhile, the third part of the questionnaire assessed the respondents perceptions regarding satisfaction on the same five-point scale. Seven customer satisfaction items were developed for the questionnaire. The researchers introduced the tool of measurement in such a way that it briefly illustrated the topic of the study and procedures of response. The measurement grades were placed according to the five-point Likert scale (Malhotra, 2003). The grades were ordered regressively as follows: strongly agree (5), agree (4), neutral (3), disagree (2) and strongly disagree (1).

6 The impact of TSQ on customer satisfaction 129 The study was conducted in three branches of the Marriot Hotel chain situated in three cities in Jordan for three months in the summer of The target population selected for this study during the data collection period comprised tourists who stayed in all three branches of the Marriot Hotel. A convenience sampling approach was employed, in which 322 questionnaires were distributed to the guests who agreed to participate in the survey. The guests completed the questionnaires in the presence of the researchers. The completed questionnaires were then collected by the researcher immediately. The Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) version 16.0 was used to analyse the data. Descriptive statistics analysis was used to measure customers perception scores. To explore the dimensionality of the 23-item scale, a factor analysis was performed. Validity and reliability of the adapted scale were established. Validity tests determine how well an instrument measures a particular concept. Reliability of a scale, on the other hand, indicates the stability and consistency with which the instrument measures the concept and helps assess the goodness of a measure (Sekaran, 2000). A reliability analysis was employed to have an idea on the internal consistency among the items and the convergent validity of the overall scale. Within-scale factor analyses were used to ensure that all indicators in the scale measured the same construct. This process is known as construct validity (Flynn et al., 1995). To test the internal consistency of each factor, a reliability analysis was conducted. Based on the new factors derived from the factor analysis, a multiple regression analysis was used to identify the relative importance of the factors in predicting customer satisfaction with the service quality provided by the Marriot hotels in Jordan. 5 Result and analysis Table 1 shows the demographics of the respondents. As can be seen from Table 1, the gender distribution was 56.5% female and 43.5% male. The highest proportion of the respondents (18.3%) fell into >62-year age group, followed by the year age group (25.2%). The majority of respondents were married (51.9%). The question on the educational level of customers showed that 42.5% of the respondents had a university degree, followed by diploma (20.2%), postgraduate (12.1) and others (professional editor, specialised market research). A variety of occupations were reported by the respondents. The highest frequencies were private sector (45.5%), followed by government (18.9%). As for annual income, the highest rate was $21,000 $30,000 (32.0%), while the lowest rate was $61,000 $70,000 (2.5%). Figure 1 shows that the majority of respondents came from Europe (66.5%) followed by the USA (21.1%), while the number of tourists from Asia and Australia had similar numbers (20%).

7 130 R. AL-Rousan, B. Mohamed and Y. Fernando Table 1 Profile of the respondents (N = 322) Category Frequency Percent Gender Male Female Age <20 years old years old years old years old years old years old years old years old > years old Status Single Married Divorced Widowed Education Primary school Secondary school Diploma college University degree Postgraduate degree Others Occupation Government Own business Private sector Retired Others

8 The impact of TSQ on customer satisfaction 131 Table 1 Profile of the respondents (N = 322) (continued) Category Frequency Percent Annual income <$20, $21,000 $30, $31,000 $40, $41,000 $50, $51,000 $60, $61,000 $70, >$70, Figure 1 Country of origin of the respondents 5.1 Factor analysis Factor analysis was used to reduce the items to several factors. Some items sometimes represent the same idea, thus these can be omitted if they are redundant or unnecessary. The number of participants in the current research is 322. According to Hair et al. (2006), if the number of samples in the factor analysis is 100 or larger, factor loadings in the range of ± 0.30 to ± 0.40 are considered to meet the minimal level for interpretation of structure. Loadings of ± 0.50 or greater are considered practically significant and loadings exceeding ± 0.70 are considered indicative of well-defined structure and are the goal of any factor analysis. The adequacy of the sample size was confirmed using both

9 132 R. AL-Rousan, B. Mohamed and Y. Fernando the Kaiser Meyer Olkin (KMO) test sampling adequacy and Bartlett s test of sphericity. In fact, KMO for tourism service quality in Table 2 (0.86), and customer satisfaction (0.89) in Table 4 exceeded satisfactory values. The retention decision of each item was based on factor loadings which were greater than or equal to 0.50; cross-loadings with the other factors were generally smaller than 0.35 (Igbaria et al., 1995). 5.2 Factor analysis for TSQ The results of the factor analysis concerning TSQ show that all of the items are found to have a five-dimensional construct with 23 items. The results indicate that the five-factor solutions with eigenvalues were greater than 1.0, and the total variance explained was 72.91% of the total variance. The KMO measurement of sampling adequacy was 0.86, indicating sufficient intercorrelations. Meanwhile, the Bartlett s test of sphericity was significant ( 2 = 6.360, p < 0.001). By identifying whether or not the correlation matrix is an identity matrix, one can be certain if the variables are unrelated. The chi-square significant level was less than Therefore, a value higher than about 0.10 or so may indicate that data are not suitable for factor analysis (Table 3). Table 2 KMO and Bartlett s test for TSQ KMO 2 df *** ***p < Table 3 Factor analysis for TSQ Tangibility (X1) Furniture in this hotel is modern and comfortable The interior and exterior decoration in this hotel is quite appealing Component Code X2 X1 X5 X3 X4 Q1 Q The employees have neat appearances Q The hotel facilities are up-to-date Q The brochures and pamphlets are visually presented Q The hotel is clean Q Reliability (X2) The front desk employee accurately verified the reservation requests The time it took to check in or check out is not too long The reservation system (e.g. telephone or internet reservation) is easy to use Q7 Q8 Q

10 The impact of TSQ on customer satisfaction 133 Table 3 Factor analysis for TSQ (continued) Component Code X2 X1 X5 X3 X4 Transport facilities are available Q The employees provide error-free records Q Responsiveness (X3) The employees are courteous Q The employees gave us special attention Q The employees adapted services to our needs Q The staff are willing to help guests Q Assurance (X4) The staff in the hotel are polite Q The staff imparted confidence to the guests Q The staff are friendly Q The staff had sufficient support from the hotel to do their jobs Empathy (X5) The employees quickly apologised when service mistakes are made The employees listened carefully when you complain The employees called the customers by name Employees understand the customers requirements Q19 Q20 Q21 Q22 Q Eigenvalues Total variance (72.91%) Note: Italic loadings indicate the inclusion of that item in the factor. Table 4 KMO and Bartlett s test for customer satisfaction KMO 2 df *** ***p <

11 134 R. AL-Rousan, B. Mohamed and Y. Fernando Table 5 Factor loading for customer satisfaction Customer satisfaction (Y1) Code Y1 I am satisfied with the modern looking equipment Q I am satisfied with the appearance of the personnel Q I feel the employees have the ability to dependably perform the expected service Q I am pleased with the courtesy and knowledge of staff Q I am pleased with the care provided to customers Q I am very satisfied with the hotel services Q All services in this hotel are enjoyable Q Eigenvalues Total variance 57.86% Note: Italic loadings indicate the inclusion of that item in the factor. 5.3 Factor analysis of customer satisfaction Rotated factor analysis on customer satisfaction showed that all of the items were found to be one-dimensional construct with seven items (Table 4). The results indicate onefactor solution with eigenvalues greater than 1.0, and the total variance explained was 57.8% of the total variance. The KMO measure of sampling adequacy was 0.89 indicating sufficient intercorrelations. The Bartlett s test of sphericity was significant ( 2 = , p < 0.001). The factor loading on customer satisfaction ranged from 0.69 to 0.80, sufficiently addressing the issue of validity (Table 5). 5.4 Validity analysis The validity analysis for this research was carried out using Cronbach s alpha. The validity for the potential variables was found to be 0.85 for tangibility, 0.90 for reliability, 0.90 for responsiveness, 0.83 for assurance, 0.93 for empathy and 0.87 for customer satisfaction (Table 6). Because the results are significantly higher than the value of 0.7, the questionnaire is deemed to have excellent stability and consistency. A regression analysis was used to further investigate the relative importance of the five TSQ dimensions in predicting customer satisfaction. Table 7 shows the results of the regression analysis. The hypothesis testing that was conducted to check for the direct relationship between TSQ and customer satisfaction showed that tangibility ( = 0.251, p < 0.001; t-value = 5.813), reliability ( = 0.221, p < 0.001; t-value = 4.983), responsiveness ( = 0.135, p < 0.01; t-value = 2.867) and assurance ( = 0.309, p < 0.001; t-value = 6.480) had significant effects to DV. However, empathy was found to be not significant in customer satisfaction ( = 0.088, p > 0.05; t-value = 1.957). An examination of the t-values for the five dimensions indicated that the most important factor in predicting customer satisfaction evaluation is assurance, followed by tangibility. It appears that a business hotel should exert further effort to improve its service quality along these two vital dimensions.

12 The impact of TSQ on customer satisfaction 135 Table 6 Results of the validity and reliability tests Variable Cronbach s alpha Mean SD Tangibility Reliability Responsiveness Assurance Empathy Customer satisfaction Table 7 Regression results on TSQ and customer satisfaction Service quality t-value Standardised coefficients beta Tangibility *** Reliability *** Responsiveness ** Assurance *** Empathy F *** R² Adjusted R² R² change F change *** **p < 0.01; ***p < One of the major criticisms SERVQUAL has received from researchers is on the dimensionality of service quality. The most serious criticisms concern the number of dimensions, and their stability from one context to another (Buttle, 1996). When SERVQUAL is employed in modified forms for different service fields, researchers identified varying numbers and contents of dimensions according to the service sector under investigation (Buttle, 1996). Parallel to these claims, numerous studies have been conducted on service quality in the hotel industry (e.g. Fick and Ritchie, 1991; Mei et al., 1999; Saleh and Ryan, 1992; Tsang and Qu, 2000). These studies have produced several contributions to help gain an understanding of the dimensional structure of service quality of hotels. This study was conducted in the five-star hotels in Jordan and identified five service quality dimensions tourists use to evaluate service quality in these hotels. The findings confirmed the five-dimensional structure of SERVQUAL, but some of the dimensions found along with its components differed from that of SERVQUAL. These findings support the claim that the number of service quality dimensions is dependent on the particular service being offered; in addition, different measures should be developed for

13 136 R. AL-Rousan, B. Mohamed and Y. Fernando different service contexts (Babakus and Boller, 1992; Carman, 1990). The studies conducted in the hotel industry produced different outcomes with regard to the hierarchy of dimensions in contributing to an overall assessment of service quality. Akan (1995) reported that the most important dimension is the courtesy and competence of hotel personnel, while Mei et al. (1999) reported that employees comprise the most important dimension. On the other hand, Saleh and Ryan (1992) reported that most important dimension was conviviality, while Knutson et al. (1990) found it to be reliability. Ekinci et al. (1998) stated in their study that intangibles were the most important dimensions influencing the perception of quality in the hotel sector. In this study, it was found that assurance is the most important factor in predicting tourists service quality evaluation. This appeared to be different from that in Parasuraman et al. s (1988) study, wherein reliability is defined as the best predictor. This finding suggests that for the guests of hotels, the purpose of their stay may be an important determining element when evaluating the quality of hotels. 6 Conclusion In this study, a scale for measuring the service quality of five-star hotels was proposed through exploratory factor analyses. Having knowledge on these areas would definitely help managers to meet the challenge of improving service quality in the hotel industry. This paper contributes to the theoretical orientation of TSQ and tourists satisfaction in hotel industry literature by determining some pivotal service quality levels. This study also identified five TSQ dimensions, namely, tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy, all of which comprise the criteria tourists use to evaluate the service quality of five-star hotels in Jordan. The findings of this study indicate that the most important factor in predicting TSQ evaluation was assurance, followed by tangibility, reliability and responsiveness. The findings of this study suggest that among the five dimensions of service quality, assurance has emerged as the best predictor of TSQ. These results support the idea that despite the usefulness of the SERVQUAL scale as a concept, it should be adapted for the service environment as well. Along with the important findings obtained in this study, the modified questionnaire itself is another important contribution. The questionnaire developed in this study is suitable for use for tourists staying in five star hotels in Jordan, allowing them to confidently identify the service areas of services which require action. At the same time, the modified questionnaire could also provide indicators through which managers and planners can plan service policies that would result in satisfied customers. Finally, the results of this study may not have been representative of the whole population, due to the fact that a convenience sampling method was used to collect the data. This study was conducted for only five-star hotels. To be able to generalise the findings for this specific hotel segment, a study that would include more hotels in a variety of regional settings could be conducted. Monitoring customer satisfaction has become an important focus for all managers in the hotel industry. Failure to recognise the power of customer satisfaction, especially their emotions, could destroy the power of customer retention and loyalty (Yi and Alison, 2001). Therefore, the hotel management s greatest challenge lies not only in attracting customers but also specifically in identifying customer satisfaction individually. Customers may agree that the hotel provides high levels of service quality but not

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