Customer Satisfaction with the Hospitality Services: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Hospitality sector in India has emerged as a major service provider due to increased spending capacities, mobility, enhanced business activity and changing social value systems. It is also one of the major contributors to the foreign exchange reserves of India with rich natural beauty, monuments, historical & cultural milieu being the major attractions for tourists across the globe. It is thus paramount for the hospitality industry to continuously monitor the changing aspirations and tastes of the potential customers so as to reorient their service offerings. It was therefore thought prudent to undertake status analysis of the perceived quality of services rendered by hotels in Chandigarh as word of mouth and favourable inclination play an important role in promotions. A structured questionnaire adapted from SERVQUAL was personally administered to 350 foreign & domestic tourists, out of which 312 responses were valid & analyzed with the help of mean, standard deviation, correlation & regression techniques. Five dimensions of service quality and servicescape were analysed. The study has implications for the hospitality industry in terms of their strategy formulation and implementation for customer attraction and retention. Key words: SERVQUAL, customer satisfaction, hospitality industry, relationship marketing

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