The Influence of Perceived Service Failure Recovery Strategies on Customer Satisfaction and loyalty in Hotels
Author Affiliations
- 1Department of Hotel Studies, Faculty of Tourism and Hotels, Menoufiya University, EGYPT
Res. J. Management Sci., Volume 2, Issue (11), Pages 16-24, November,6 (2013)
Abstract
In today’s competitive environment, most hotels focus on keeping and developing relationships with their customers as a key to success. As a result, most hotels attempt to deliver first-class service in order to enhance customer satisfaction. However, failures can frequently occur in the process of service delivery due to the high degree of personal interaction with many departments and services. Service failure can negatively affect the satisfaction and future behavioral intention of customers. Consequently, service recovery strategies could be considered valuable tools to complement customer satisfaction in hotels. The purpose of this research is threefold: first to analyze service failure categories and service recovery strategies used by Egyptian hotels second to measure the impact of perceived service failure recovery strategies on customer satisfaction and loyalty in hotels and third to discover if there are differences between Egyptian and Foreigner guests with regard to how hotels respond to their complaints.The Critical Incident Technique (CIT) was conducted to identify service failures and recovery strategies employed by hotels. Data were selected from a sample of guests in five-star hotels. A total of 270 usable completed questionnaires were returned, 172 from Egyptian guests and 98 from foreigner guests. The research found conclusive results on selected service failure and service recovery strategies in hotels. The findings indicate that hotels’ service recovery strategies influence the customers’ satisfaction with differences among these types of strategies. Some kinds of discrimination practiced by hotels between Egyptians and foreigners in favor of the last one in how they recover the service problems occurred during the customers stay was clearly found.
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