Hospitality Tourism Culinary Arts

Published Date: 02 Nov 2017

Service quality today is seen as an important strategy of a business. It is seen as a determinant for repeating business. This study was to measure the service quality in a 5 star resort in Maldives, namely Anantara Resort Maldives.

NAANU Quality is portrayed in various manners and it is often used as a tool of advertisement and promotion in the field of hospitality and tourism. (Hospitality Performance, Inc./John R. Hendrie, April 17, 2004). It is a basic foundation on which an establishment can position itself above others or group itself within a cluster of establishments or rival organizations that provide products and services with standards of excellence.

Standardization and creating a benchmark as well as an evaluation scheme is the main idea in creating a fortified system in which the establishment can create and sustain profitability and customer satisfaction. Quality sustenance models are frequently used to monitor performance of the establishment in the eyes of the managers as well as in the eyes of the consumers.

(Karl Koch, State Secretariat for Economic Affairs, Berne, Switzerland Quality Offensive in Swiss Tourism 4-5 November 2004)

The Maldivian island resort concept is quite different to conventional seaside tourist destinations. Individual islands are allocated for resorts, which create complete privacy and unique settings. The promise made by many of the tourist resorts in the Maldives is very similar, and almost all have similar products to offer with their own unique touch to it.

"Celebrate the Maldives with Anantara, discovering the ultimate tropical island getaway with brilliant coral reefs and water sport adventures. Experience a healing massage at Anantara Spa, as you peer through the glass floors revealing the puffer fish, stingrays and baby reef sharks swimming underneath. Settle into luxury, impeccable style and Anantara's gracious service at Anantara Dhigu Maldives."

This is a promotional message used by Anantara Maldives, which is one of the resorts on which we will be conducting a study where we will be evaluating if the managers believe that the staff are performing up to the standards by which the company wish to portray itself as a high end tourist development, and its respective positioning in the market. This study is done with the belief that the service quality is not up to par with the levels expected by the consumers. In this study we will be able to achieve results from several of the company’s resorts in the Republic of Maldives.

There are numerous areas in which staffs are affected in performing their full level of service potential. These include training, organization, mentality, ambition and as well as factors such as culture.

International awards of recognition create a great incentive for resorts to demonstrate their full potential in creating a well-worthy tourist product or experience. This allows them to create an edge over other resorts as well as create a benchmark for performance quality. Some of the awards that influence include Condé Nast Traveler’s Readers Best Island Award, Green Hotel Award, and Responsible Tourism Award. These titles help the companies keep in mind that they have a title to stand up to as well as for the rivals that they have a title to reach up to.

The importance of service quality cannot be dismissed, since it is the contributor to successful business continuation. Service quality is basically the bridge between perception and expectation of the consumers and the actual product experience and delivery from the establishment. (Indian Journal of Economics and Business, Dec, 2008 by Mohammed Almossawi). There are many areas that require investigations in order to find the answer to the research undertaken here. The methodology to be utilized is the SERVQUAL instrument.

DAPHNE SERVQUAL was developed to measure service quality across different industries. (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry, 1988). In the earlier research, Parasuraman et al (1985) defined service quality in ten major dimensions that consumers use in forming expectations and perceptions of services. Later, Parasuraman et al (1988) revised and defined the service quality in five dimensions – reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy and tangibles.

One of the important dimensions in SERVQUAL - "empathy" was identified as: the ease of access, approachability and effort taken to understand customers' requirements (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry 1985). The highlight of the attributes from the Empathy SERVQUAL’ consisting of; employees has to give their customer attention, having the customer’s best interest at heart, employees who understand the needs of their customer as well as providing a convenient business hours (Parasuraman, Zeithaml & Berry 1985). This study shows a high standard quality of service from the SERVQUAL dimensions empathy means employees should be concern and understands the customer’s need in order to gain their trust and increase profitability. This concept can be applied into any company’s firm, where the employer should first learn to acknowledge the employees and appreciate their contributions. This will show more positive results in term of individual’s performances in serving the guest better. However, from the study by Presbury (2005) showed that the interpersonal relationship that is generated between guests and employees play a major role in guest satisfaction and loyalty. Despite that, as cited by Goetsch and Davis (1997), they stated: " Quality encompasses every aspect of your business and is actually an emotional experience for the consumer. Consumers want to feel good about their purchases, to feel that they have received the best value. Consumers will take pride in their association with a company with a high quality image"

A friendly environment provided to the staff will determine the service quality towards the consumer. Therefore, the assessment of management commitment to service leads to employee satisfaction, and this emotional response affects employee service behaviors. In other words, management commitment to service influences employee work attitude and ultimately organizational effectiveness (Bohlander& Kinicki, 1988). And also, Gronross (1983) found that when managers treat their employees well, employees in turn treat their customers well. According to Schneider’s (1980) study, job satisfaction is the primary reason why employees deliver good service to customers.

JOVIN Responsiveness is another SERVQUAL dimensions that is used to assess the level of service quality. According to Parasuraman et al. (1988), responsiveness defined as the willingness to help customers and provide prompt service. In this dimension, there are four items which are keeping customers informed as to when services will be performed, prompt service to customers, willingness to help customers and readiness to respond to customers’ requests (Zeithaml et al, 1990).

Abdullah and Rozario (2009) stated that responsiveness can be show through speed of being entertained, willingness to respond, accuracy and dependability. A successful service quality will lead to the satisfaction of customers. Iacobucci, Ostrom, and Grayson (1995) argued that the improvement in the service quality should lead to customer satisfaction. The willingness and speed to respond when problem arises will lead to the increment in customer satisfaction level. As customer satisfaction is a definite need for service organization improvement, so the maintaining and measuring customer satisfaction is one of the most important aspects of quality improvement is a basic need of organizations (Shahin and Dabestani, 2010). Therefore, the responsiveness elements among the service staffs are important to ensure the service quality as it will lead to the customer satisfaction.

Furthermore, Mason et al. (2006) mention that a customer will judge the standard of a hotel by its service quality. Thus, responsiveness is a necessary for the hotel staff in order to maintain or improve its service quality to achieve the standard of hotel. In this respect, Sirakaya et al. (1999) suggested that selection of high customer-contact (responsiveness) employees requires an extra effort because unfriendly and unresponsive service personnel can be detrimental to hospitality firms in a highly competitive market.

CHRIS The third most important element in the SERVQUAL (Parasumaran, Zeithaml and Berry,1985) assurance; is defined as a set of activities or processes that are designed to ensure that products, goods and/or services satisfy the requirements of customers in a systematic and reliable fashion. Assurance helps by improving on excellence. Wyckoff (2001) argued that through assurance, the employees began coaching each other, and experiences of team problem solving promoted greater teamwork on the job. Furthermore, assurance is greatly seen as a personal learning process for its respective employees, either in the hotel or tourism industry.

However, it is not necessary that assurance could be applied to the hospitality and tourism industry, although it is part of the SERVQUAL. For instance, the industry faced a disaster, a Blackout in 2003, which affected mostly on the hotels that could last several days. Kwortnik (2005) discussed that to prevent the events due to human and natural forces, backed-up emergency power, would be preferred, to support the essential systems. Nonetheless, in today’s context, service quality is conceptualized as customer defined and multidimensional (Kwortnik, 2005). Besides that, to further continue assurance, guest satisfaction and important-performance analysis also provides assurance.

Ryan and Huimin (2007) discussed that users of lower-rated accommodations in China attributes importance compared to those of higher-rated hotels, as the chosen hotel assured is of good quality. In comparison to Ryan and Huimin’s study, Taiwan service quality is compared through its hotel rating system (Su and Sun, 2007), which, indicated that there are potential areas for improvements if the SERVQUAL is accepted.

DENISE The revised definition of service quality also includes tangibility as one of the dimensions. According to Mohammed Almossawi, 2008, he stated that tangibility is a measuring method to measure the appearance of physical facilities, equipment, personnel and communication materials related to the service. It means that everything that is related to the physical appearance of the resort. Customers will be able to measure or rate based on the appearance of the resort to determine whether it has good service quality. If the core component of the service becomes more tangible, the expectations and perceptions from the customers will also be increased accordingly.

According to Service Quality In Relation to Tangibility (Benn Dixon/Alessandro Napolitano 2006), Tangibility can also be referred to the employee’s physical appearance. The way the employee dresses up is one of the ways to measure service quality. Managers can make sure that the employees in their different department dress well in order to maintain a good standard in the resort.

Not only that, it also refers to the attention that an employee gives to the customers. This means that they are always helpful or being friendly to the customers. Managers can evaluate the performance of their employees by receiving good comments or from feedbacks from the customers. The appearance of a website can also determine the tangibility standard of a resort.

Tangibility is highly linked with what a customer looks for in a resort in terms of service qualities. The appearance of a resort is the first image or impression about it. Making service more tangible can ease up the evaluation process of service in a particular resort.

HANNAH Lastly, the fifth dimension mentioned by Parasuraman et al (1988) is reliability. In the context of this study, "reliability" refers to measuring the service reliability. It has to reflect the quality of the performance and a proper realization of the services offered by the resort for its guests during the product and services consumption stage. As there are many resorts offering similar products and services, reliability is one of the ways to differentiate a resort with its competitors. A common example of how it works can be measured through simple questions, such as; did the guests experience the services as promised? By failing to do so, the resort can be marked as unreliable hence it will indirectly affect other product elements and contribution such as customer satisfaction, reputation and company profitability.

In order to measure reliability, however, there must be a service realization which does not only concern the outcome of the service process but also the actual creation and execution of the service. It involves the service encounter, human contact, operations, time and environmental factors. (Van Raaij and Pruyn,1998). It shows that other elements must co-exist to inject reliability of services offered. For example, without a receptionist the resort is unable to take bookings. It fails to function despite having empty rooms thus the service cannot be occurred or realized.

This dimension also can determine the standard of a resort and how successful it may be. The resort must be able to maintain its services to meet the guest’s expectations. Market research has shown that customers dissatisfied with a service will divulge their experience to more than three people (Horovitz, 1990). Reliability is also related with the employees, whether they themselves are able to meet the service requirements and guest expectations. There are many factors influencing the quality of service delivered by employees which measures the service reliability such as working behavior and motivation.

Reliability correspond with the other 4 dimension of quality service, as each of these dimensions have contribution to the level of service reliability of a resort is able to provide. Based on an empirical study by Parasuraman et al. (1991), it was concluded that service reliability lies at the heart of excellent service and is deemed by most customers to be the core attribute of good service. Breaking the service promise is thus the single most important ways in which service companies fail their customers (Berry et al., 1990).

Framework

Proposition

Individual emotions and attitudes will determine the personal motivation and quality of service.

Working environment and job status will influence the staff performing.

Individual emotions and attitudes will determine the personal motivation and quality of service.

Working environment and job status will influence the staff performances.

Responsiveness of the staff will reflect the standard of hotel

Assurance of the staff’s performance that could affect the standards of the hotel.

The standard of the resort is affected by the overall tangibility of core components.

Service reliability reflects the quality of a resort and differentiates it with competitors offering similar products and services.