1.6 Rationale for the chosen topic

1.6 Rationale for the chosen topic

Understanding the concepts of customer loyalty, service quality are important specially for the hotel to stay in the business. Identifying the impact of these terms on each other will be able assist further actions towards the success of a service organisation.

The recession which impact many countries all over the world had a huge impact on hospitality industry in UK (PWC Report 2009). People did not have extra to spend on leisure trips and the consumers who still manage to have a holidays or business related overstays at hotels put more pressure on room rates and expected more for the money they spend. ( PWC report 2010)

Evening Standard briefly pointed out that some hotels are discounting on their rates sometimes on a half price rates. Eventually the competition raised among the hotels to be one among the hotels which the consumer chosen to be as a matter of fact many hotels seems to give more importance to their marketing budgets and efforts. This has made many hoteliers forgotten about quality standards.

Specially in London, hotel industry which plays major part of the economy ,hasn’t still resolved  their quality measurement issues. Below supportive examples are proof to show that the service quality standards are still lacking behind.

Ø  “ACSI surveys shows that the  20%  express complaints about the time of arrival to time of departure including the appetence, decoration of the rooms to maintenance.

Ø  www.trivago.co.uk:  identified that London has the lowest average rating  for hotel satisfaction across Europe.

Ø  Lonely planet  described “London hotels are worst in Europe, after a  online poll”

Ø  Recently done master card poll finds out that the 80% of the hotel complains were about poor service and majority stated that they will not return again to the same service provider in future Hotel info .com identifies “London hotels have shown disappointing results in a survey measuring customer satisfaction”

Ø  The BBC London reports that the London has most expensive hotels but an increasing volume of complaints about basic hygiene.

If the consumer expectations are not identifies properly, if these expectations are not meet up correctly with the growing demands that may also affect the tourism industry which brings out capital to the economy. Moreover to overcome the economic downturn, every sector should concentrate on every possibility to win the market. Previous researches have indicate that the service quality, perceived value, satisfaction of the consumers  are some of the main characteristics  to gain competitive advantage in the hotel industry.( Parasuraman, 1996).

This study aim to bring out the fact that how the perceived quality may influence the “thinking of a  customer” ,researcher finds it very important to an hotel to understand these factors which they should give more weight in order to maintain their existing customers and battle in the customer centric market. (Bolton & Drew, (1991)

The specific purposes of this descriptive quantitative study is to identify the demographic characteristics of the consumers who seek two star accommodation in London and to understand the perception-expectation “gap”, and how it impact on customer future behavior trends. Once  these aspects are identified ,the hotels can improve their service quality according to customer expectation in order to gain customer loyalty.