Abstract

In today’s volatile business environment, hotels are competing for a larger share in the market and customer-driven quality management is becoming the preferred method for improving their performance. To ensure success, a hotel needs to measure the quality of service it renders to its guests in order to identify areas that may require improvement. This fact prompted the researcher to apply the Servqual model to assess the customers’ perceptions and their expectations of service quality provided by hotels. The study was quantitative in nature and conducted in the form of a self-administered survey. The findings revealed that the average ratings for expectations were higher than the average perception ratings in all five dimensions of service quality (reliability, empathy, assurance, responsiveness and tangibles). This resulted in a negative total Servqual gap. Tangibles had the largest gap score (-0.59333) when compared with the other gap scores. This implied that guests attached high expectations to the tangible elements of the hotel. In contrast, reliability had the lowest gap score (-0.166) when compared with the other gap scores.

Key words: Service quality, expectation, perception, gap scores, hospitality industry.