Management of Accommodation for Customer Satisfaction: NiteNite City Hotels, Birmingham - Coursework Example

Management of Accommodation for Satisfaction: NiteNite Hotels, Birmingham Introduction Service quality is considered one of the mostimportant precedents of guest satisfaction in hotel and accommodation management. Scholars have defined service quality in relation to customer satisfaction and perception of quality. Accommodation is a central aspect in hospitality and its management plays a great in shaping customer perception about quality of service. Many customers judge the quality of service they have received in a hotel based on the quality of accommodation among other factors. According to Ananth et al. (2002), in the hotel industry, service quality that satisfies the customers is very important in encouraging them to visit again or remain loyal to the hotel. It has been argued by a number of researchers that enterprises exist to serve their customers and quality of service and customer satisfaction are some of the critical factors for success of any business (Berkman and Gilson, 1986). The key to gaining sustainable advantage in the hotel business is based on delivering of high quality service that satisfies customers. In the hotel and hospitality industry, the greatest challenge to managers remains provision and sustenance of customer satisfaction (Barsky and Nash, 2006). Guest relations remain a key strategic factor in business success in the industry and customer requirements for quality service is becoming increasingly critical. Good management of accommodation is one of the aspects that are central to quality service and customer satisfaction (Barsky and Nash, 2002). This paper provides a critique of current literature and arguments about management of accommodation for customer satisfaction in hotels. The paper uses NiteNite City Hotels located in Birmingham City as a case by examining accommodation management in the hotel and its relationship to quality and customer satisfaction. The paper mainly focuses on service quality and customer satisfaction with relationship to accommodation. Aspects such as target market of hotel, location, rating, and pricing are considered in relationship to accommodation. Customer Satisfaction Customer satisfaction remains a popular topic in marketing literature although even after many attempts by scholars in its measurement and explanation, there is still no consensus on its definition. Customer satisfaction is generally defined as a post-consumption evaluative judgement about the quality of service or product offered (Atkinson, 2008). Generally, a customer will be satisfied or dissatisfied with a product on the basis of evaluation made after its consumption; this will also depend on the expectations of the customer before purchase of the goods or service. The disconfirmation theory developed by Oliver (1980) is considered the most widely accepted conceptual explanation of customer satisfaction. According to this theory satisfaction is the difference between expected and experienced performance. Thus satisfaction is described as positive disconfirmation occurring if the service is better than expected while dissatisfaction is the negative disconfirmation that comes about as a result of a worse service than expected (Oh and Parks, 2007). Studies reveal that customer satisfaction, or lack of it may directly or indirectly affect business performance. According to Kandampully and Suhartanto (2000), customer satisfaction has positive effects on business outcomes, particularly profitability. Most of the studies investigating customer behavioural trends indicate that customer satisfaction is a key factor in customer loyalty, it influences purchase decisions, and it leads to positive word-of-mouth (Kim et al., 2001). Some scholars have also revealed that customer satisfaction can be determined by subjective and objective factors (Jones et al., 2007). Some of the subjective factors that have been pointed out include customer emotions and customer needs while objective factors include service features or product features. In the hospitality industry, a number of studies have also been carried out to examine customer satisfaction. These studies have largely concentrated on examining the attributes that travellers find important with regard to their satisfaction. According to Al Khattab (2011), aspects of hotel service such as cleanliness, security, service for money, and room space affect customer satisfaction. Similarly, Choi and Chu (2001) indicated that factors such as prompt service, convenience of location, cleanliness, comfort, prompt service, and employee attitude play a key role in the satisfaction of customers in the hospitality industry. Another study carried out by Crick and Spencer (2011) indicated that the main determinants of customer satisfaction in the hotel industry included behaviour of employees, cleanliness, timeliness, and location of rooms. Finally in a study measuring the satisfaction of travellers with hotel services, Christie (2002) indicated that staff quality, value for money and quality of rooms were important factors as far as traveller’s satisfaction was concerned. It is clear that most of these studies relate customer satisfaction to aspects of accommodation in the hospitality industry. Every manager in the hospitality industry understands that provision of services preferred by customers is the starting point towards their satisfaction. The easiest method that is routinely applied in the industry to gauge factors that are important to customer satisfaction is to ask them through feedback questionnaires (Hersh, 2010). According to Ladhari (2009), guest comment cards and customer feedback forms are the most commonly used tools for measurement of customer satisfaction. These are distributed in hotel rooms or issued at the receptions where customers can access them easily. Another effective method is though the complaints that customers make through provided phone numbers to hotel management, these enable the management to know which issues are most important to customers. According to Wuest (1996), factors relating to hotel accommodation have featured highly on the complaints lists of customers in many hotels. Similarly Vijayadurai (2008) indicates that most of the aspects of services offered in hotels that have been identified by customers as being key to their satisfaction relate directly to accommodation, this indicates that accommodation management is a central issue for customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry. Many hotels have either performed well or incurred losses due to issues related primarily to customer satisfaction or dissatisfaction with accommodation services (Antony and Ghosh, 2004). For this reason most institutions in the hospitality industry take accommodation very seriously as a factor determining the satisfaction of their customers. Customer Satisfaction with Accommodation at NiteNite City Hotels, Birmingham NiteNite City Hotels is one of the few hotels in England that have embraced the concept of cabin-rooms. The hotel is characterized by affordable accommodation with windowless cabin rooms that cater well for travellers on budget (NiteNite, 2014). As would be expected of any service, there are customers who are satisfied with the services offered while others are not very satisfied. Some of the factors that play a huge role in the satisfaction of customers with the services of this hotel include its location, quality of accommodation, and the cost of its rooms. NiteNite Hotel is located at one of the most convenience and prime areas of Birmingham City, particularly for travellers (NiteNite, 2014). The hotel is less than five minutes walk to some of the City’s main facilities including the ICC, the Mailbox, Symphony Hall, Birmingham Library, and China Town. This implies that travellers can be able to stay in this hotel at an affordable price and visit all these places conveniently (Hotels, 2014). Many studies have linked customer satisfaction to factors such as employee attitude, cleanliness, timeliness, location of rooms, staff quality, value for money and quality of rooms (Zeithaml and Parasuraman, 1996). While all these factors relate to accommodation management, it is also evident from the case of NiteNite Hotel that customer satisfaction can be impacted on by other aspects outside of accommodation. The hotel still receives many customers on the basis of its affordable prices and its prime location. In this case accommodation can be viewed in a larger context beyond the room and hotel premises to include factors such as location and price of the accommodation. Even though the hotel offers small rooms, most of which have no windows, it more than compensates for that by being conveniently located in an area where travellers can access many desirable sites and facilities without having to go a long distance or spend a lot. This argument can be reinforced by the fact that most travellers spend a lot of their time outside their hotel rooms or most of them just spend a night before moving on. For this reason, the hotel provides the most convenient accommodation for the satisfaction of customers who want to spend less. It can be argued that the management therefore can focus more on enhancing the outdoor experience of customers just as well as the indoors experience as part of accommodation management. With regard to accommodation in the hotel, many customers have indicated their satisfaction with the facilities offered at the prices they pay (NiteNite, 2014). The hotel offers facilities such as Wi-fi internet, coffee shop, express check-in, 24 hours front desk, and plasma TV in rooms. All these are features of accommodation that are quite important for a travelling guest. Apart from these, the rooms are clean and all facilities are provided even though the space is smaller than other types of hotels. This is in line with most theoretical findings that point out accommodation aspects as being important to customer satisfaction (Barsky and Nash, 2003). As it has been indicated by Le Blanc and Nguyen (1996), value for money and quality of rooms is an important factor for customer satisfaction. For the kind of prices that the hotel offers, NiteNite hotel clearly offers competitive accommodation services for customer satisfaction with regard to budget travellers who prefer affordable quality over luxury. Feedback by customers has also indicated that most customers are satisfied with the service quality and the conditions of the facilities in the hotel and can recommend it as value for money to other travellers (NiteNite, 2014). Determinants of Service Quality There is agreement among most writers that customer satisfaction or expectation is largely affected by many aspects of the service package rather than one (Valdani, 2009). According to Zeithaml and Parasuraman (1996), there are ten determinants of service quality; these include competence, courtesy, communication, access, reliability, credibility, security, responsiveness, understanding, and tangibles. The importance of these determinants vary from one service industry to another but a combination of at least two or more of them determines service quality in many cases. Further research classified the determinants of service quality into five broad categories including tangibles, responsiveness, reliability, empathy, and assurance (Sulek and Hansley, 2010). According to Presbury et al. (2005), reliability is the most important determinant of service quality followed by responsiveness, assurance, and empathy in that order. These theoretical findings clearly support what has been observed with customer satisfaction at NiteNite Hotel as far as service quality is concerned. Due to its convenient location, affordable prices, and 24-hour reception service, most travellers visiting or going through Birmingham City find NiteNite to be a reliable hotel for the purposes of accommodation on a short-term basis. These customers form the main market target of the hotel. The hotel was specifically planned to target travellers and short term customers who are more interested in accommodation and convenience rather than luxury. It is evident that most of the target customers for the hotel are young people travelling alone or with partners without family. For this group of customer the hotel represents a viable option at affordable costs. It is evident that for this type of customer, the hotel is very reliable. Evidence suggests that most of the visitors to NiteNite are attracted to its reliability in accommodation more than any other factor. This presents an opportunity for the hotel managers to concentrate on optimizing the reliability of its services as an accommodation hotel. Responsiveness has been ranked as the second most important determinant of quality service (Presbuty et al, 2005). The fact that NiteNite maintains a 24-hour reception desk and is willing to check in customers at any time points to the hotel management’s responsiveness to the needs of its customers. Assurance and empathy are the two other important factors that determine quality of service, it can be argued that these factors form part of the accommodation management strategy of NiteNite hotel due to the nature of the services offered. With regard to assurance, it is evident that customers are assured to getting affordable accommodation in the hotel at any time they check in. Customers are also assured of aspects such as security, meals at the dining halls, entertainment and clean rooms. The customers may also be attracted to empathy as a service quality aspect because the hotel provides large plasma TV sets in each room that provide a means to view external environments because most of the rooms lack windows. In general it can be pointed out that with regard to service quality, the theoretical observations of various studies resonate with the reality in practice in the hospitality industry. In that respect it can be argued that accommodation managers in hotels should concentrate on improving aspects of reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy as they play a big role in customer satisfaction (Gruen et al., 2000). Other studies have identified five more determinants of service quality including attentiveness or helpfulness, care, commitment, functionality, and integrity (Barsky and Labagh, 2002). According to Crick and Spenser (2011), the key determinants of service quality include product reliability, quality environment, worker attitudes, and skills. It can be argued that although some of these determinants are relevant, a number of them repeat what other scholars have already pointed out in different names. For example it can be argued that helpfulness, care, and commitment are all aspects of empathy or assurance. As illustrated by the case of NiteNite Hotel, functionality is an important aspect of service quality and customer satisfaction. According NiteNite (2014), many customers have indicated that they like it for the functionality of its facilities and services. Even thought the hotel offers squeezed accommodation at lower rates, all the facilities function excellently and the services are also reliable. Workers’ attitudes and skills also contribute to service quality because most customers would like great service and good attitudes from the hotel staff. Hotels that cater to budget customers and offer accommodation considered inferior to that offered by more luxurious hotels are expected to make up for some of their deficiencies through good staff service (Hersh, 2010). In consideration of all factors that have been associated with service quality in theory, it is important to loos at factors that have not been given prominence. Most of the scholars that have researched service quality and customer satisfaction have done this in a general way without considering what can be termed at moderating or intermediary factors that also affect service quality. Money is one of the most important factors that can be considered a critical determinant of service quality. Customers who pay high prices for services have higher expectations as a consequence and therefore even though most of the postulated factors of service quality may be attained, they would still feel less than satisfied if they had set their expectations considerably high. On the other hand, all the factors of service quality that have been highlighted in theory ignore the ultimate determinant of service quality, the customer. Irrespective of what a hotel provides, quality service largely depends on the customer’s perception (Ladhari, 2009). While some customers will be pleased with what can be termed as standard service, some customers would still feel unsatisfied. It can therefore be said that for service quality to be understood fully it requires some studies to target aspects of customer psychology and its effects on the measurement of service quality. The fact that most travellers that visit NiteNite find the service satisfying suggests that their satisfaction may be related to what they are willing to pay for the service. Satisfiers and Dissatisfiers According to Swan and Combs (1976), “consumers judge products on a limited set of attributes, some of which have relative importance in determining satisfaction, while others are not critical to consumer satisfaction but have relationship with dissatisfaction when the performance on them is unsatisfactory”. Swan and Combs (1976) hypothesized that determinants of customer satisfaction can be placed in two categories, instrumental and expressive determinants. According to them, instrumental determinants include aspects of the performance of a physical product while expressive determinants are those that relate to the psychological performance of the product. Customer satisfaction in service industries like hospitality tend to be associated with expressive outcomes that equal or surpass the expectations of the customer, on the other hand dissatisfaction is related to performance that is below the expectations of the customers (Zeithaml and Parasuraman, 1996). The most important finding of the work by Swan and Combs (1976) is that expressive outcome led to both satisfaction and dissatisfaction in different circumstances. According to Jones et al (2007), although it is difficult to make prediction on the link between satisfaction and dissatisfaction, low values of expressive attribute may reduce satisfaction but will not necessarily lead to dissatisfaction. Studies by Hausknecht (1988) concluded that satisfaction can best be characterized by emotions of interest, joy and surprise whole dissatisfaction may be characterized by anger, surprise and disgust. Although the study reveals the difference between satisfiers and dissatisfiers, it does not explain the causes of these states. Studies by Lee and Feick (2006) revealed that quality of service is one of the factors that cause satisfaction and dissatisfaction. This indicates that even though quality of service is very important for customer satisfaction, it is not necessarily critical for satisfaction or even the only factors. This observation enables us to view customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry from a different perspective. For example, it can be argued that due to the convenience of the location of NiteNite Hotel, its accessibility and its affordability, most travellers may be satisfied with its accommodation even if they do not perceive the quality of service provided by the hotel as being up to their liking. A number of studies have been conducted recently by researchers in the travel hospitality service industries. Studies by Oh and Parks (2007) identified a number of key actions by employees of airlines and hotels that resulted to both satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the customers. According to the studies, these factors included employees’ responsiveness to customer needs, their willingness to respond to respond to a problem, and unsolicited actions by the staff. It is evident that while all these factors have been identified by other theorists as being important to service quality and customer satisfaction, their availability does not automatically lead to satisfaction. In some cases, service quality factors that appear to be contribute to customer satisfaction may in fact lead to dissatisfaction. Conclusion Service quality is still largely considered as the main factor determining customer satisfaction in all service industries. In the hospitality industry, customer satisfaction depends on the quality of accommodation guests get among other factors. This study illustrates that a lot of theoretical findings over the years support the postulation that determinants of service quality affect customer satisfaction. It has been demonstrated by the case of NiteNite Hotel that this is largely true in the hospitality industry. the study has also demonstrated that service quality is not the only factor that determines customer satisfaction with accommodation services in a hotel as issues such as cost, location and convenience also play a significant part. On the basis of the arguments in this paper it can be concluded that most of the theoretical work that forms a basis for explaining customer satisfaction in the hospitality industry has proven to be useful in explaining satisfaction by linking it with service quality. However, as the studies on satisfiers and dissatisfiers show, service quality is not the only significant factor that affects customer satisfaction. It is necessary for more research to be carried out with focus away from service quality to determine other factors that play a role in customer satisfaction. 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