Mehdi Haghighi Kafash; Hamed Bagheri
Abstract
The chief goal of hotels is to satisfy and retain their customers.Previous researches have shown that contented hotel guests are morelikely to revisit a hotel than guests who were somehow dissatisfied.This study attempts to scrutinize the relationship between servicequality perceptions and customer loyalty ...
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The chief goal of hotels is to satisfy and retain their customers.Previous researches have shown that contented hotel guests are morelikely to revisit a hotel than guests who were somehow dissatisfied.This study attempts to scrutinize the relationship between servicequality perceptions and customer loyalty in the hotels located in thecity of Shiraz. The other specific purposes of this study are thefollowing: 1) to investigate the perceived service quality and customerloyalty in hotels of Shiraz, 2) to scrutinize relations between servicequality and customer loyalty dimensions, and 3) to providesuggestions to improve service quality and customer loyalty in thefour-star hotels of Shiraz. In this research, perceived service qualitywas measured through five dimensions of SERVQUAL (tangibles,reliability, assurance, responsiveness, and empathy) developed byParasuraman et al. (1988). Also, customer loyalty was measured bythe questionnaire developed by Skogland and Siguaw (2004).Afterwards, 196 questionnaires were collected and analyzed usingKolmogorov- Smirnov (K-S) test, Spearman correlation coefficient,and Binomial Test. Results demonstrated a strong correlation betweenservice quality perceptions and customer’s loyalty. Furthermore,among the 5 dimensions of Servqual (tangibles, reliability, assurance,responsiveness, and empathy), the tangibles dimension showed theleast correlation with customer loyalty, emphasizing more importanceon human elements of service quality.
