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Vacation Marketing
Developing a service quality questionnaire for the hotel industry in Mauritius
Rooma Roshnee Ramsaran-Fowdar
Journal of Vacation Marketing 2007 13: 19
DOI: 10.1177/1356766706071203
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Journal of Vacation Marketing
Volume 13 Number 1
Developing a service quality questionnaire for
the hotel industry in Mauritius
Rooma Roshnee Ramsaran-Fowdar
Received (in revised form): July 2006
Anonymously refereed paper
Faculty of Law and Management, University of Mauritius, Reduit, Mauritius
Tel: 230 454 1041; Fax: 230 465 6906; E-mail: rooma@uom.ac.mu
Rooma Roshnee Ramsaran-Fowdar is a senior
lecturer in Marketing and Management and has
been working at the University of Mauritius for
eight years. Her main areas of interest include
business-to-business marketing, marketing of
services and marketing research.
ABSTRACT
KEYWORDS: hotel customers, in-depth
interviews, questionnaire, Mauritius, service
quality, SERVQUAL, tourist satisfaction
The evaluation of customer satisfaction is a primary goal for any service firm that would like to
survive in this increasingly competitive market.
Keeping tourists satisfied and delighted is even
more important for the Mauritian tourism industry
given that the destination faces fierce competition
abroad. Developing a measure of hotel service
quality is an important precursor to attracting and
retaining tourists and hence ensuring the survival
of hotels. SERVQUAL has been proposed as a
generic measure of service quality that may be
applicable to hotel services. The purpose of this
study is to investigate whether SERVQUAL
dimensions are pertinent to the hotel industry.
Results from this study verify SERVQUAL
dimensions, but demonstrate additional dimensions that are specific to the hotel sector.
INTRODUCTION
Tourism is said to be the fastest growing
industry in the world over the past 50 years
with no signs of slowing down in the 21st
century. Apart from a country’s beautiful
natural environment, the warmth of the local
population, and political and economic stability, tourists’ memorable souvenirs are
deeply influenced by the type of service that
they receive at the hotel in which they
lodge. Therefore, hotels have to strive to
deliver to their guests, not only their products and services, but also ‘quality’ and
‘satisfaction’ that may lead to long-lasting
survival and profitability. Quality is the cornerstone for success in any business and is
perceived as a key factor in acquiring and
sustaining competitive advantage.1–2 Many
studies have shown that quality service increases market shares, provides greater return
on investment and lowers production
costs.3–6
Providing quality service improves satisfaction of customers and this is believed to
lead to increased international visitation, repeat purchases of the same tourist products,
customer loyalty and relationship commitment. Moreover, highly satisfied tourists
spread positive word-of-mouth and in effect
become walking, talking advertisements for
providers whose service has pleased them,
thus lowering the cost of attracting new
customers. Also, highly satisfied customers
may be more forgiving. Someone who has
enjoyed good service in the past is more
likely to believe that a service failure is a
deviation from the norm. Hence it may take
more than one unsatisfactory incident for
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Journal of Vacation Marketing
Vol. 13 No. 1, 2007, pp. 19–27
& SAGE Publications
London, Thousand Oaks, CA,
and New Delhi.
www.sagepublications.com
DOI: 10.1177/1356766706071203
Page 19
Developing a service quality questionnaire in Mauritius
loyal customers to change their perceptions
and consider switching to an alternative service provider. Additionally, companies
which command high customer satisfaction
ratings also seem to have the ability to
insulate themselves from competitive pressures – particularly price competition.7 Customers are often willing to pay more to stay
with a firm that meets their needs than to
take the risk associated with moving to a
lower-priced service provider. On the other
hand, tourist dissatisfaction and low service
quality may lead to unfavourable behavioural
intentions, such as spreading negative comments about the service provider or even
destination, changing destination for their
holidays, complaining and redress seeking.8–9
Therefore, hotel operators have much to
gain if they can understand tourists’ expectations of them since this would assist them in
serving their customers in a better way.
Despite the notable progress in the lodging industry and the substantial demand for
research, service quality has remained underresearched to date in the area of tourism.
This study therefore aims to provide a service quality framework for the hotel industry. More specifically, the research examines
attributes tourists use to evaluate the quality
of service provided by their hotels. This
information would not only be useful to
hospitality and marketing strategists, but also
to governments and commercial sectors to
which the tourism industry is of much significance. The article first traces previous
service quality research in the area of lodging
and hospitality. This is then followed by a
section of the methodology employed to
gather data. The discussion section describes
the findings and the final part of the article is
devoted to a summary of strategic implications and suggestions for future research.
BACKGROUND
In this study, the term ‘service quality’ is to
be interpreted to mean ‘the quality possessed
by both products and service activities that
are provided by a service organization to its
customers’. Different theoretical perspectives
on service quality were developed during
Page 20
the 1980s. Gröonroos10 distinguished two
types of service quality: technical and functional quality. Technical quality refers to the
delivery of the core service or outcome of
the service (i.e. what is offered and received),
while functional quality refers to the service
delivery process, or the way in which the
customer receives the service (i.e. how the
service is offered and received). Lehtinen
and Lehtinen11 discussed three distinct service quality dimensions: physical quality,
interactive quality and corporate quality.
Physical quality includes the physical aspects
associated with the service such as the reception area and equipment. Interactive quality
involves the interaction between the customer and the service personnel, while corporate quality includes the firm’s image or
reputation.
From these earlier writings, it can be seen
that the notion of service quality arises from
a comparison of what the customers feel a
seller should offer (i.e. customers’ expectations) with the sellers’ actual service performance.12 This idea was supported by
an exploratory research conducted by Parsuraman et al.13 with 12 focus groups
of consumers in four service industries
(retail banking, telecommunications, securities brokerage, product repair and maintenance). On the basis of this study,
Parsuraman et al. defined service quality as
an overall evaluation, similar to, but not the
same as, an attitude and refers to the degree
and direction of discrepancy between customers’ perceptions and expectations. They
also developed the SERVQUAL scale, an
instrument which included five main service
quality dimensions: tangibles (appearance of
physical elements), reliability (ability to perform the promised service dependably and
accurately), responsiveness (promptness and
helpfulness), assurance (courtesy, credibility,
competence) and empathy (easy access, good
communications and customer understanding). Within each dimension, there were
several items measured on a seven-point
scale ranging from ‘strongly agree’ to
‘strongly disagree’ for a total of 22 items.
Since its inception, the SERVQUAL scale
has been widely used by both academics and
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Ramsaran-Fowdar
practicing managers across industries in various countries. Though SERVQUAL has
been generally robust as a measure of service
quality, the instrument has been criticized on
conceptual and methodological grounds.
One of the main problems mentioned in the
literature is the applicability of the five
SERVQUAL dimensions to different service
settings. Replication studies done by other
investigators failed to support the fivedimensional factor structure as was obtained
by Parsuraman et al.14–15 in their development of SERVQUAL. For example,
McDougall and Levesque’s study16 did not
support Parsuraman et al’s (1985) contention
that service quality is comprised of five
dimensions. They revealed only the following three underlying dimensions of service
quality: tangibles, contractual performance
(outcome) and customer-employee relationships (process). Moreover, research has indicated the possibility of two (Babakus and
Boller17 – in a public utility sector) to nine
(Carman18 – in a dental school patient clinic,
business school placement centre and acute
care hospital) distinct dimensions underlying
the service quality construct. Babakus and
Mangold19 argue that the instability of the
dimensionality of SERVQUAL is probably
due to the type of service sector under
investigation. Parsuraman et al.20 concede
though that the universality of the five
dimensional structure of service quality remains in doubt and should be further researched.
Only a few studies have directly applied
the service quality paradigms within the context of the hospitality industry.21–5 For
instance, Saleh and Ryan26 applied the
SERVQUAL model27 to lodging services to
test the five service quality gaps proposed by
the gap model28 and the dimensionality of
the SERVQUAL model as applied to hotel
services. They used 33 attributes of hotel
services identified in earlier lodging studies
rather than the 22 items included in the
original SERVQUAL model. Their findings
confirmed the existence of the gaps in hotel
services, but failed to identify the five service
dimensions suggested by SERVQUAL.
Getty and Thompson29 proposed a perform-
ance-based measurement model (LODGQUAL) for lodging research. Although this
proposal was new to the lodging industry, a
similar performance-based service quality
model (SERVPERF) was already proposed
by Cronin and Taylor30 for services research.
Although they justified the use of their
model in the lodging industry, their scale
development procedure must be taken cautiously. For example, the retrospective performance evaluations (obtained through a
recall method), the use of student subjects,
and their proposed dimensionality of lodging
services may not generalize highly differentiated lodging products.
Therefore, research indicated that perceived service quality is contingent upon the
type of service offering. This implies that
one generic measure of service quality is
inappropriate for all services. Previous studies
have shown that SERVQUAL does not
cover all dimensions of hotel services that are
important to guests. Since qualitative research about the quality of lodging services
has been somewhat scarce, this research is
therefore aimed at finding out the following:
• What are the attributes on the basis of
which hotel guests evaluate the quality of
service provided by hotels?
• Can SERVQUAL dimensions be replicated in the hotel industry or should
additional dimensions be included in the
service quality construct?
• What instrument will help hotel managers measure service quality, monitor
and improve their service and competitiveness?
Service perceptions have still not received
enough research attention in the area of
tourism. The present study is therefore an
effort to analyse tourists’ perceptions of services provided by hotel operators. Defining
service quality and providing techniques for
its measurement is a major concern of service providers and researchers. This becomes
a particularly complex issue in a high contact
service industry such as tourism and hospitality.
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Developing a service quality questionnaire in Mauritius
THE TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY
INDUSTRY IN MAURITIUS
The tourism industry is the third pillar of the
Mauritian economy, after the manufacturing
sector and agriculture sectors and has been a
key factor in the overall development of the
country. In the past two decades, tourist
arrivals increased at an average annual rate of
9 per cent with a corresponding increase of
about 21 per cent in tourism receipts. Tourist arrivals have been expanding significantly
rising from 102,510 in 1977 to 656,453 in
2000, a more than six-fold increase. Europe
has long been the widest market with tourist
arrivals (67 percent) originating mainly from
France, UK, Germany, Italy, Switzerland
and Belgium. Africa is the second major
market and is dominated by tourists from
Reunion Island and South Africa.
The challenges that face the Mauritian
tourism sector in the years ahead are both
vast and demanding if it is to maintain its
status as an exclusive destination. At a time
when world events – for example, wars,
SARS and terrorism acts – impact so dramatically on international travel and have
such a profound effect on a destination’s
appeal, it is more important now than at
any time in the past to ensure that all
players who are involved in tourism have a
common vision for the future, and are in
total synergy with their collective endeavours. This will offer the dynamic industry
the opportunity to perform at its optimum
level and position Mauritius so that it is
able to compete to its greatest advantage in
the market place. Reinforcing Mauritius’
image as an exotic holiday destination to
attract the discerning traveller and achieve
continued growth is essential.
Apart from governmental attempts to promote Mauritius, the hotel industry has also
made its contribution towards the improvement of the quality of service to meet with
international quality standards.31–2 Some hotels have initiated quality programmes and
have been accredited with the ISO 9000
certification and others are in the process
towards achieving this goal. Despite these
initiatives, however, a number of tourists
remain dissatisfied and complain about high
Page 22
food and beverage prices, poor language and
communication ability of personnel and a
limited variety of food being served.33 Studies conducted on service quality issues in
hotels of Mauritius are of little help because
they do not provide detailed evidence on the
evaluation of service quality from the perspectives of guests.34 Therefore, this study
will contribute to the literature by providing
qualitative evidence on customers’ expectations of service quality from hotels and this
will help tailor a service quality measurement
tool for the hotel industry as a whole.
METHODOLOGY
This article represents an exploratory effort
in understanding hotel service quality in the
Mauritian context. This was an important
driver as there was scant literature related to
service quality of hotels in Mauritius. Moreover, the SERVQUAL model had been
tested in settings other than the hospitality
industry.35 In-depth interviews were conducted with 32 tourists over a period of two
months to probe into their needs and the
services they hoped to obtain from their
hotels. A convenience sample was used by
choosing tourists visiting tourist villages in
the different parts of the island. Tourists who
were approached were first asked some preliminary questions about their background
and profile and it was ensured that the
respondents included in the study were chosen in such a way as to achieve diversity in
terms of age, gender, country of origin,
occupational status and marital status. Only
those tourists who had travelled to Mauritius
on vacational purposes were interviewed.
Each respondent was subjected to a set of
open-ended questions on their expectations
of service quality provided by hotels. For
example, questions asked during those unstructured interviews included: ‘What do
you expect from an excellent hotel?’; ‘How
do you know you are receiving a high level
of hotel service?’; ‘Which criteria do you
consider when choosing a hotel?’; ‘Which
variables affect your satisfaction with a hotel?’; ‘What makes a hotel’s service excellent?’; ‘Why do you think no one patronises
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Ramsaran-Fowdar
some hotels, while others have very high
occupancy rates?’. Respondents were asked
general questions about service quality and
the responses obtained were grouped judgementally into different dimensions of service
quality. Respondents had to come up with
their own ideas about service quality and
were deliberately not exposed to items from
the SERVQUAL model. Each interview
lasted for about 45 minutes to one hour and
subjects were encouraged to respond freely
in their own words. Detailed notes were
taken during the interviews and these were
eventually compiled into a report. The respondents were thanked for their time and
kind co-operation with a souvenir token
from Mauritius.
CONCLUSION AND IMPLICATIONS
Table 1 compares the SERVQUAL dimensions to the items generated from the indepth interviews. Two additional quality
dimensions were found, namely ‘core hotel
benefits’ and ‘hotel technologies’ and a few
additional items within each of the generic
quality dimensions. When asked about their
expectations from a good hotel, most respondents immediately stated that they
wanted a comfortable and relaxed stay with
quality food, extra amenities in rooms and
recreational facilities. The core service was
therefore the most important quality attribute for hotel guests and this is not represented in the SERVQUAL instrument.
Moreover, hotel customers laid a lot of
emphasis on the tangible environment in
particular hotel and room décor and cleanliness. Guests were also demanding regarding
reliability and promptness of service and
consistent courtesy of staff. Younger customers made comments regarding the paucity
of internet access in hotels. In this respect,
Mauritian hotels were still lagging behind in
terms of technological facilities.
The results of this study indicate that
dimensions in SERVQUAL cannot be replicated fully to the hotel industry. Other
dimensions such as ‘core benefits’ (including
a comfortable, relaxed and welcome feeling,
variety/quality of food and recreational
facilities and provision of evening entertainment, among others) and ‘hotel technologies’ (including access to telephone,
television, e-mail, online reservation and
international calling facilities among others)
may emerge as equally critical when determining the attributes that customers use to
evaluate hotel service quality. Hotel managers should take these key quality dimensions into account when assessing the level
of the service they provide. Ensuring quality
would eventually lead to growth of their
clientele. Ways of achieving quality service
could include the administration of hotel
customers satisfaction surveys using the
service quality dimensions involved; the
improvement of the level of service performance where needed by filling the gaps
and the management of expectations regarding quality of service.
Another managerial implication includes
the need for hotels to develop human resource management strategies to recruit and
train employees to become skilful in their
jobs, have excellent interpersonal skills, be
courteous, friendly and competent and be
empowered to be able to meet customer
needs and solve their problems. Hotel managers should also pay a lot of attention to
hotel décor, cleanliness and comfort of
rooms, quality and variety of food served
and provide basic guest room facilities such
as soap, shampoo, tea, coffee, kettle, and so
forth. In addition, staff should not make any
errors in computing bills and should provide
accurate information and service when
requested. Furthermore, hotel managers
should now realise the potential of the technology for the hotel industry. The changing
lifestyles of customers imply that the hotel
industry should make creative and innovative use of technology to enhance the value
of its service offerings.
This research is only exploratory and
needs further validation to finally develop a
reliable scale for measurement of service
quality in the hotel industry. The results
from this study may not be replicable outside Mauritius. Despite these limitations,
however, the results provide some interesting findings and there is now enough
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Developing a service quality questionnaire in Mauritius
Table 1: Service quality attributes
SERVQUAL dimensions (Parsuraman et al. (1985)) Quality attributes in the hotel industry*
Tangibility (physical facilities, equipment and
appearance of personnel)
1. Modern-looking equipment
2. Visually appealing facilities
3. Visually appealing materials
4. Neat appearance of employees
Tangibility (physical facilities, equipment and
appearance of personnel)
1. Modern and comfortable furniture
2. Appealing interior and exterior hotel décor
3. Attractive lobby
4. Cleanliness and comfort of rooms
5. Spaciousness of rooms
6. Hygienic bathrooms and toilets
7. Convenient hotel location
8. Neat and professional appearance of staff
9. Availability of swimming pool, sauna and gym
10. Complimentary items
11. Provision of clean beaches
12. Provision of beach facilities (beach mattresses,
umbrellas, beach towels, etc.)
13. Visually appealing brochures, pamphlets, etc.
14. Availability of non-smoking areas in restaurants
15. Image of the hotel
Reliability (ability to perform the expected
service dependably and accurately)
1. Delivery of promises
2. Dependability in handling the customers’
problems
3. Correct performance of the service the first
time
4. Maintenance of error-free records
5. Delivery of services at the time promised
Reliability (ability to perform the expected service
dependably and accurately)
1. Staff performing services right the first time
2. Performing the services at the time promised
3. Well-trained and knowledgeable staff
4. Experienced staff
5. Staff with good communication skills
6. Accuracy in billing
7. Accuracy of food orders
8. Accurate information about hotel services
9. Advance and accurate information about prices
10. Timely housekeeping services
11. Availability of transport facilities
12. Reliable message service
Responsiveness (willingness to help customers and
provide prompt service)
1. Keeping customers informed about when the
service will be performed
2. Providing prompt service to customers
3. Willingness to help customers
4. Responsiveness to customers’ requests
Responsiveness (willingness to provide prompt
service)
1. Willingness of staff to provide help promptly
Assurance (courtesy and knowledge of staff and
their ability to inspire trust and confidence)
1. Courteous staff
2. Ability of staff to instill confidence in customers
3. Making customers feel safe in their transactions
4. Knowledgeable staff to answer customer
questions
2. Availability of staff to provide service
3. Quick check-in and check-out
4. Prompt breakfast service
Assurance (courtesy displayed by hotel staff and their
ability to inspire trust and confidence)
1. Friendliness of staff
2. Courteous employees
3. Ability of staff to instill confidence in customers
(continued)
Page 24
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Ramsaran-Fowdar
Table 1: (continued)
SERVQUAL dimensions (Parsuraman et al. (1985)) Quality attributes in the hotel industry*
Empathy (caring, individualized attention
provided to customers)
1. Understanding the customers’ requirements
2. Providing customers with individual attention
3. Convenient operating hours
4. Dealing with customers in a caring fashion
5. Having the customers’ best interest at heart
Empathy (caring, individualized attention provided
to guests by hotel staff)
1. Giving special attention to the customer
2. Recognizing the hotel customer
3. Calling the customer by name
4. Availability of room service
5. Understanding the customers’ requirements
6. Listening carefully to complaints
7. Problem-solving abilities of staff
8. Hotel to have customers’ best interest at heart
9. Customer loyalty programme
Core hotel benefits (the central aspects of the service:
benefits to hotel customers)
1. Comfortable, relaxed and welcome feeling
2. Quietness of rooms
3. Variety/quality of sports and recreational
facilities
4. Security of room
5. Security and safety at the hotel
6. Comfortable and clean mattress, pillow, bed
sheets and covers
7. Reasonable room rates
8. Variety of basic products and services offered
(toothpaste, soap, shampoo, towels, toilet paper,
stationery, laundry, ironing, tea, coffee, drinking
water)
9. Guest room items in working order (kettle, airconditioning, lighting, toilet, fridge, etc.)
10. Quality of food in restaurant
11. Reasonable restaurant/bar prices
12. Choice of menus, buffet, beverages and wines
13. Provision of children’s facilities (playground,
baby-sitting, swimming pool, etc.)
14. Provision of evening entertainment
Hotel technologies (technological services available to
hotel guests)
1. In-room technologies (telephone, voicemail, ondemand PC, television, internet plug, meal
ordering, email, wake-up system)
2. Hotel technologies (online reservation, email,
internet, fax, international calling facilities, hotel
website, direct hotel email, computerized feedback
form, special promotions on hotel website,
acceptance of credit and debit cards)
* Items are grouped judgementally and not through
statistical processes like factor analysis
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Developing a service quality questionnaire in Mauritius
evidence to indicate that additional dimensions need to be included if the SERVQUAL measure is implemented in the hotel
industry.
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