Measuring service quality in the hotel industry: A study in a business hotel in Turkey

The role of service quality in the success of hotel businesses cannot be denied. It is vital for the hotel managers to have a good understanding on what exactly the customers want. Identifying the specific expectations of customers, the dimensions of the service quality, and their relative importance for customers for each specific segment of hotel industry would definitely help managers in the challenge of improving the service quality. The objectives of this study were to investigate the service quality expectations of business hotels’ customers, examine whether the quality dimensions included in the SERVQUAL model apply in an international environment, search for any additional dimensions that should be included in the service quality construct, and measure the level of importance of each specific dimension for the customers of the business hotels. The findings of this study confirmed the five-dimensional structure of SERVQUAL; however, some of the dimensions found and their components were different from SERVQUAL. The five service quality dimensions identified in this study were named as “tangibles”, “adequacy in service supply”, “understanding and caring”, “assurance”, and “convenience”. The findings showed that business travelers had the highest expectations for the dimension of “convenience” followed by “assurance”, “tangibles”, adequacy in service supply”, and “understanding and caring”. The research findings also confirmed that, although the SERVQUAL scale was a very useful tool as a concept, it needed to be adapted for the specific service segments and for the cultural context within which it was used.