Tourism Service Quality and Customer Satisfaction

This assignment delves into the crucial link between service quality and customer satisfaction within the tourism industry. It requires students to examine various factors that contribute to perceived service quality, including tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. The analysis should encompass how these dimensions influence customer satisfaction, behavioral intentions (e.g., repurchase likelihood), and overall event experiences. Students are encouraged to draw upon provided academic literature and critically evaluate the impact of service quality on tourism success.

Managing Quality in
Hospitality, Tourism and
Events

Executive summary:
The present report will be discussing many types of problems which were faced by
Expedia.com which is one of the leading online travel booking site in UK. The report is all about
Expedia.com and the issues related to poor customer service which it is facing by customer
review on Trip advisor. There are many poor review on Trip advisor with regard to their
provision of booking and customer service during recent times as the customer are relating their
experience with online site to as a nightmare. The main focal point of Kaizen is to improve
process and products with the best use of creativity of employee.

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
Outlining the current problems of Expedia.com.........................................................................3
TASK 2............................................................................................................................................4
Examining the capabilities and competences of Expedia.com to improve quality.....................4
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................5
Assessing impact of Kaizen and ISO on Expedia.com in terms of delivering consistent and
effective quality management.....................................................................................................5
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................5
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................5
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INTRODUCTION
In the hospitality industry, it is very much important to manage the quality of personnel
who have been employed there. This is because the main motive of hospitality industry is to
satisfy customer and make their experience of holiday good one. In the present time,
Expedia.com is regarded as one of the best online travel booking site and has evolved to be
world's leading online travel company. The report is all about Expedia.com and the issues related
to poor customer service which it is facing by customer review on Trip advisor. The report will
be covering the capabilities of its employees to improve the quality and impact of Kaizen and
ISO on delivering quality.
TASK 1
Outlining the current problems of Expedia.com.
Expedia.com is the internet booking engine which is owned by Expedia Inc. and is
involved in all type of booking like that of hotel reservation, car on rent, holiday packages etc.
This was launched on 22nd October 1996 under the division of Microsoft which was aimed to
give a great experience to customers in sense of hotel and holiday booking. The slogan of
company is “Your trip, Your way” which clearly shows that Expedia.com is very much engaged
in customer satisfaction and quality of service (Bastida and Huan, 2014). As this is one of the
biggest challenges of hospitality industry to make customer happy and satisfy them by the means
of the best quality of services. If the customers are satisfied with company, then they surely will
be bringing profits and revenue generation and ensuring customer loyalty.
This customer satisfaction is regarded to as an indicator of service quality in tourism and
hospitality industry which is very essential for them. They always need to satisfy their customer
so that they can be loyal to company and then maintain the relationship of trust. Providing them
the quality of service like convenient hotel booking and that too in cheap and affordable prices
from others in market. Many customers have complained about bad quality of service which they
faced during their travel booking and travelling. There are many poor review on Trip advisor
with regard to their provision of booking and customer service during recent times as the
customer are relating their experience with online site to as a nightmare (Lee, Lee and Park,
2014).
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There were many types of poor service quality which customer are complaining about
like without giving any notice and re-routing the flights and then refusing about reimbursement
of additional cost to customer. There were some families who experienced changes in their
flights in the year 2013 that was also before Christmas and till month of January also they were
unable to solve this problem (Pizam, Shapoval and Ellis, 2016). Customers began complaining
about this bad quality of service which has been offered to them and they gone through a very
bad experience with the staff of Expedia.com. There were some problems which customers were
facing from which some include the following.
Refusal to reimbursement- This is the main reason as to why the customers are really very
much upset with the company. Expedia.com re-routed their flights without informing customers
for this and then they were not ready to give them reimbursement for the same. This created the
feeling of distrust among customer that they were not able to give good quality of service to their
customer and then they complained for this.
Customer care- The customer care service of Expedia.com is also very bad as customer care
executive were always not available to the call and then misguide customers (Su, Swanson and
Chen, 2016). They thought Expedia.com are just risking the travel of their customer by giving
them no good experience and charging higher prices. The call centre of Expedia.com is at India
and they are having no idea of customer service plus the supervisor is mostly not coming to
phone call.
Mis-selling- The price of Expedia.com only seems to be very low but actually they are charging
high amount as compared to the experience which they are offering to their customers. They
assume that they can get good quality of experience and that too in the best price in some other
online sites as well.
Distrust of customer- All these above-mentioned problems lead to distrust of customer on the
services and price of Expedia.com (Tzetzis, Alexandris and Kapsampeli, 2014). Customer in UK
began to book their tickets and hotel reservation from some other sites which they believe to be
better than Expedia.com in all aspects.
There are 5 dimensions in quality which the company need to assure if they are giving
any service or product to their customers which are as follows:
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Tangibles- this is the physical form of all the service aspect and product of Expedia.com which
they would be providing to its customers like facilities, equipments and communication
materials.
Reliability- this is giving the customer all possible services which they are promising to them so
that customer are dependable on company. Reliability is the ability of company to deliver
promised services so that customer can depend upon them.
Responsiveness- this will be defining as to willingness of company to help customers and to be
able to provide them a prompt quality of services (The 5 Service Dimensions All Customers
Care About, 2018). Expedia.com and its staff must be very much responsible so that they could
provide them with the best quality of services.
Assurance- this is giving customer the assurity in conveying trust and confidences of services.
Assurance is the knowledge and courtesy of employee and their ability in conveying trust and
confidence.
Empathy- this is the feeling of care and to give individual attention to all the customer.
TASK 2
Examining the capabilities and competences of Expedia.com to improve quality.
It is the duty and responsibility of Expedia.com and its management to ensure quality of
service by giving their staff training on how to treat customers. Expedia.com is having
capabilities and competences to improve the quality of service and then to bring back customer
trust in company. Customer service and their satisfaction is the best way out to improve the
profitability of company so the company must be having that many capabilities so that they can
gain back confidence of customer (J. Harrington, Chathoth and Altinay, 2014). The staff of
company should be highly qualified so that they can improve company in all aspects. Moreover,
the capabilities and competences of firm to analyse the right base for growth will be very much
important so that they can improve quality of work. In the year 2015, Expedia.com was doing
and performing very good in terms of financial aspect and this continued in 2016 as well.
There was about 13% per year increase in the revenue of company and in 2015, first 3
quarters it was about $5 billion; this was a strong performance of company in terms of revenue.
So, the problem of company in terms of quality and customer service has improved to large
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extent as the revenue has been concerned. The financial capabilities of Expedia.com in travel and
tourism industry is good during past 2 years and company is also spending around $6.5 million
on its advertisement in the year 2015 (Carlson, Rosenberger III and Rahman, 2015).This gone to
promote the activities of company on its website over last year they also began booking of
railway tickets in 2016 with the target market in Asia and Europe. Expedia.com is been regarded
to as the largest site in world with many of its subsidiaries like Trivago as the best hotel booking
site. To improve the customer service there are many ways which can be used by Expedia.com.
Training the staff- this is the most basic thing which need to be done by Expedia.com and this
will thus be helping company long way out. Employees are the one who are in direct contact
with customers and if they know how to bring happiness on customer face and how to bring
profits to company. Giving right kind of training so that they can easily create good impression
of company on them (Taylan Dortyol, Varinli and Kitapci, 2014). Training is very much
important for company and that for employees as well.
Feedback from customer- this is also another way out to improve quality of service interacting
with customer personally and asking them their problem and then solving it is essential. Either
asking them there in when they are booking the travel or allowing them to write on to website of
company. Feedback will always be helping company in improving their quality of services and
staying in touch with the past guests will be allowing company to build relationship with them
and thus assuring their loyalty (Wu and Li, 2017).
Updating technology- is the most important thing in today's time without which any business
will not be able to perform in their best way. If the want to improve quality and capabilities of
company then they should ensure the incorporation of technology into company. Without the use
of efficient technology customer will not be able to book their tickets or even give their valuable
feedback. Hospitality industry always need to update the technology which they are having and
should be using the latest form of it.
Expedia.com is having the financial capabilities which will be helping them to increase
the revenue as they can utilize available resources into company so that customer service could
be increased. Company can also take loan from external sources like that of bank or any other
financial institutions which will thus be increasing their revenue. Training which they need to
give to their staff should be focusing about how to behave with customer and how to address all
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sort of problem of customer. Human resources like that of their staff and employees need to be
enhanced and given more and good quality of service so that they are able to handle their
customers. Expedia.com is having the capabilities to properly address the issue of poor customer
review and then to increase revenue they must be training their staff in full and efficient manner
and technology also need to be updated.
TASK 3
Assessing impact of Kaizen and ISO on Expedia.com in terms of delivering consistent and
effective quality management.
It is very important for Expedia.com to ensure that the service which they are giving to
customer so that they can easily increase profits (Allameh, Khazaei Pool and Asadi, 2015).
Being consistent in the working of company and delivering service to all types of customer is
also another aspect of quality management. If they are not having consistency in service which
they are providing to customer then same customer will not be coming again to your company.
This consistency will be ensuring effective quality management so that customer will be able to
be loyal for company. There are some techniques which will be helping Expedia.com to deliver
consistency and effective quality management like Kaizen and ISO
Kaizen is the best tool for managing quality and delivering consistency in organisation so
that customer can be retained in company. Kaizen in Japanese means improvement and this is
used in business in continuous improvement in all functions. The different departments of
business need to be developed and improved like supply chain, logistic department and
purchasing. This system is also used to eliminate waste and then its management. Kaizen is not
only used in business but all other parts of economy like that of psychotherapy, health care sector
and government banking as well.
This came into existence after 2nd World War in Japan and mostly used in Toyota for
manufacture its cars. Kaizen is also used for change for better which is either one time
improvement or that for long time (Uysal, Woo and Kim, 2016). This is also used in
Expedia.com to improve the quality of work which is done by them on daily bases so that the
customer can experience better quality of service during their travel booking and travelling. The
process of Kaizen will be implemented to do work correctly, eliminating the over hard working
and then teaching employee how to perform experiment on their working.
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But there are some advantage and disadvantage of this process of Kaizen which need to
be looked so that this can be efficiently managed. The main focal point of Kaizen is to improve
process and products with the best use of creativity of employee.
Advantages:
Kaizen is aimed in identifying the wrong about process and then changing that process for
betterment of company so that the same problem should not occur in the future (Kaizen
advantages and disadvantages, 2017). All the part of process which is creating wastage of
products or that of man power should be eliminated so that things are utilized in their best form.
The people who are participating in activities of Kaizen are there with some amount of
responsibility and performing their duty. This responsibility will be giving rise to employee
morale and increase in their motivation level so that they can perform in better way.
As the people know what they are been assigned for so teamwork within them are also most
likely to increase. This increase in teamwork will be leading to be able to think beyond the need
of their specified departments.
As wastage are done at their minimum level so the company can be able to achieve all their long
and short term goal of company (J. Harrington, Chathoth and Altinay, 2014). This will also be
helping them to identify long and short term goal and thus ensuring to achieve them.
Identifying customer and their need become easy as that result in keeping the need and demand
Of customer in forward and making the product of company more successful.
Rather, to some advantages there are also disadvantage of process which will be there,
Disadvantage:
The sort of improvement which company want to do in the process to save resources is not that
much easy as this will be requiring more time and efforts of employee. The big companies will
not be able to adopt the changes very frequently which is to some extent difficult for them.
The excitement of using the new type of management style will be there but only for certain
period and with the work pressure on employee they will not be giving more time to the changes
which need to be take place.
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The second technique which need to be followed by Expedia.com for quality
management will be of ISO which is also known as International organisation for
standardisation. This ISO is an international body which is representing the national standard in
quality management. This is meant to certify the business and the quality of services and the
organisation has met the requirement of ISO 90001 (Tzetzis, Alexandris and Kapsampeli, 2014).
Which is basically meeting the customer expectation and delivering customer satisfaction and
paying attention on customer is the main and basic part of company. The management of quality
within company is most essential which will be enabling the customer to remain in touch with
same company every time. This is important for the firm so that they can value the
standardisation in their firm, advantage with sales and marketing of firm and the meeting to
requirement of company. If any of the company is associated with this ISO 90001 will be
Advantages-
Increased marketability- this will be telling them that they are capable of providing quality of
product to its customer and thus will be resulting in higher sales and customer retention.
Reduced expenditures- if there are any weakness in operational area of business then they will be
able to improve this weakness. Both money and time will be saved if they are using this ISO
9000 standardisation by saving the wastage of all things.
Disadvantage-
The management or employee of Expedia.com will not be having adequate level of
understanding of this ISO 90001 system.
The system of ISO will be requiring higher amount of fund so Expedia.com will be having
difficulty in funding the system.
The process of setting up the systems is also very lengthy, time and requiring heavy
documentation which will be stopping the firm in adopting the system.
Recommendations:
From the above merits and demerits of both the quality management techniques it is
advised to company that they can use ISO 90001 system as this will be more useful for company.
At the present time Expedia.com need to increase its marketability more than any other thing and
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this marketability will only be increased if they are using ISO 90001. This system will be
increase expectation of customer from the company and will be delivering the best quality of
service to them. ISO 90001 will also be reducing the unwanted expenditures from the company
and thus increasing the revenue of company. So ISO 90001 is highly recommanded to
Expedia.com which will be helping the company in making better its quality and service towards
the customers.
CONCLUSION
From the above report on Expedia.com and the problems of poor customer service it has
been concluded that the use of Kaizen in the management of quality will be best for the firm.
There are many types of problem which has been faced by Expedia.com like they are facing the
problem of bad customer review. There were many chances when they were not been able to
reimburse the amount of loss of flight to customers which in turn deteriorated the impact of
company on the customer. This is concluded from the above assignment that Expedia.com must
be implementing ISO 90001 which will be helping them to increasing marketability and reducing
expenditures.
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REFERENCES
Books and Journals:
Allameh, S.M., Khazaei Pool, J., and Asadi, H., 2015. Factors influencing sport tourists’
revisit intentions: The role and effect of destination image, perceived quality,
perceived value and satisfaction. Asia Pacific Journal of Marketing and Logistics.
27(2). pp.191-207.
Bastida, U. and Huan, T.C., 2014. Performance evaluation of tourism websites' information
quality of four global destination brands: Beijing, Hong Kong, Shanghai, and Taipei.
Journal of Business Research. 67(2). pp.167-170.
Carlson, J., Rosenberger III, P.J. and Rahman, M.M., 2015. Cultivating group-oriented travel
behaviour to major events: Assessing the importance of customer-perceived value,
enduring event involvement and attitude towards the host destination. Journal of
Marketing Management. 31(9-10). pp.1065-1089.
J. Harrington, R., K. Chathoth, P., and Altinay, L., 2014. Strategic management research in
hospitality and tourism: past, present and future. International Journal of
Contemporary Hospitality Management. 26(5). pp.778-808.
Lee, J.S., Lee, C.K. and Park, C.K., 2014. Developing and validating a multidimensional
quality scale for mega-events. International Journal of Hospitality Management. 43.
pp.121-131.
Pizam, A., Shapoval, V., and Ellis, T., 2016. Customer satisfaction and its measurement in
hospitality enterprises: a revisit and update. International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management. 28(1). pp.2-35.
Su, L., Swanson, S.R. and Chen, X., 2016. The effects of perceived service quality on
repurchase intentions and subjective well-being of Chinese tourists: The mediating
role of relationship quality. Tourism Management, 52. pp.82-95.
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Taylan Dortyol, I., Varinli, I. and Kitapci, O., 2014. How do international tourists perceive
hotel quality? An exploratory study of service quality in Antalya tourism region.
International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management. 26(3). pp.470-495.
Tzetzis, G., Alexandris, K. and Kapsampeli, S., 2014. Predicting visitors’ satisfaction and
behavioral intentions from service quality in the context of a small-scale outdoor
sport event. International Journal of Event and Festival Management. 5(1). pp.4-21.
Uysal, M., Woo, E. and Kim, H.L., 2016. Quality of life (QOL) and well-being research in
tourism. Tourism Management. 53. pp.244-261.
Wu, H.C. and Li, T., 2017. A study of experiential quality, perceived value, heritage image,
experiential satisfaction, and behavioral intentions for heritage tourists. Journal of
Hospitality & Tourism Research. 41(8). pp.904-944.
Online:
Kaizen advantages and disadvantages, 2017 [Online]. Accessed through:
<http://www.latestquality.com/kaizen-advantages-and-disadvantages/>
The 5 Service Dimensions All Customers Care About, 2018 [Online]. Accessed
through:<http://www.serviceperformance.com/the-5-service-dimensions-all-customers-care-
about/>
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