The Influence of a Hotel Quality of Service and Image and its Effect on Tourism Customer Loyalty

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I. Statement of Problem Hospitality and tourism have evolved into truly global industries are dispersed worldwide. Due to changes in lifestyle, the services offered by hospitality businesses are now considered to be necessities. Consequently, during the past decade, there has been an exponential growth in hospitality businesses to meet the demands of the growing market. Today, hospitality organizations are faced with intense competition. Hence, in the scheme of business, it has become apparent that the ultimate goal of any organization in a hyper- competitive market, is to maintain a loyal customer base. It is essential for any hospitality organization to seek opportunities to gain a competitive advantage by adopting various strategies.Thus, hospitality firms should develop proactive strategies to gain customer loyalty, as opposed to relying on pricing strategies to attract new customers. Customer-supplier relationship, and the resulting loyalty of the customer, can be assumed to be necessary prerequisites for any firm to prosper in the competitive market. Management thinker Peter Drucker (1973:79) wrote, “to satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business.” Thus, for many years, business organizations have focused on customer satisfaction programs (Bhote, 1996). It is now becoming apparent that it is no longer customer satisfaction, but customer loyalty, that constitutes the dominant factor in the success of a business organization. The increasing sophistication of customers’ demands also poses a challenge to the development of customer loyalty in the service industry (Kirwin, 1992). Modern consumers demand high-quality products and services and exhibit a low tolerance for products and services of mediocre qual... ... middle of paper ... ...al Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 19, 296–308. MARKOVIĆ, S., & Parson, S. (2010). Customer satisfaction and customer loyalty measurement in hotel setting: an empirical analysis. Tourism & Hospitality Management, 8 (2), 45-65. .Mak, B., & Sim, J. (2005). Model of service quality: Customer loyalty for hotels. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 8 (2), p45-65. Myongjee, Y., & Bai, B. (2003). Value Creation: The Impact of Strategic Alliance on Customer Loyalty. Journal of Quality Assurance in Hospitality & Tourism, 8 (2), 45-65. Nunnally, J. C., & Bernstein, I. H. (1994). Psychometric theory (3rd ed.). New York, NY: McGraw-Hill, Inc. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1988). SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring consumer perceptions of service quality. Journal of Retailing, 64(1), pp. 12-40.

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