EXAMINE THE IMPACT OF SERVICE QUALITY ON TOURIST SATISFACTION IN HOTEL INDUSTRY IN SRI LANKA

Abstract

The service quality is most important factor in any service-related business. The hotels have big role to play in service quality aspect to meet the customer requirements. Therefore, the hoteliers should find ways to provide excellent and quality services and other facilities to their customers and stand out among the rivals. Service quality creates direct impacts on the guest return behaviour and company profit in the long run. In recent years, the hotel industry in Sri Lanka has become highly competitive and challenging. Most of the hotels getting customer complaints due to not providing quality services to their customers. The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of service quality on tourist satisfaction in the hotel industry in Sri Lanka with reference to Asia Leisure hotels. The SERVQUAL model has been applied to detect the quality improvement areas and tourist satisfaction based on five dimensions such as tangibility, reliability, responsiveness, assurance, and empathy. This research adopted a quantitative approach and as the study mainly focused on testing the hypotheses, the deductive research approach was applied. Data were collected from 376 respondents which consisted of 34 fivepoint Likert scale questions, using a stratified random sampling technique. The collected data were analyzed by using SPSS version 26. The impact of the service quality on tourist satisfaction has been studied by applying the Pearson correlation coefficient and regression analysis. The findings revealed that the service quality dimensions have different aspect in influencing tourist satisfaction. Assurance illustrates strongest impact on tourist satisfaction with having the highest beta coefficient value, followed by empathy, tangibility, reliability and responsiveness. This study will help managers of Sri Lankan hotels to identify the service quality areas that need to be improved and assist in related decision making to enhance tourist satisfaction.