Tourist satisfaction on service quality and service environment of midscale hotels in Mandalay

Abstract

Tourist satisfaction, service quality and service environment are among the crucial factors in the hotel industry. Although service quality has been perceived to bring about tourist satisfaction in various studies, this aspect has not been much scrutinized in the Myanmar hotel context. Hence, this research aims to investigate the tourist perception of service quality in the mid-scale hotels in Mandalay based on the application of SERVPERF performance-only measurement model. Furthermore, this study also investigates service physical environment, servicescapes, and its influence on the tourist satisfaction. In this research, quantitative method was used with 400 respondents participating in the survey. The result showed that five service quality dimensions significantly influenced the overall tourist satisfaction. Assurance had the highest impact on tourist satisfaction whilst reliability showed the weakest influence. For the four service environment dimensions, cleanliness, ambience, and layout showed significant impact on the overall tourist satisfaction, with cleanliness showing the highest influence while aesthetic dimension did not affect the overall tourist satisfaction. The study contributes to the understanding of service quality performance and service environment and helps in setting a good service criteria of mid-scale hotels in Mandalay. The study benefits small and medium sized mid-scale hotel businesses as the results can provide them key factors that affect guest satisfaction as well as help assessing the hotel performance. The research will also be useful for the development process between the hotel service sector, together with the Ministry of hotels and tourism of Myanmar and the private organization of Myanmar Hoteliers association.