A tractable approximation approach to improving hotel service quality
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A Tractable Approximation Approach to Improving Hotel Service Quality
Robin G. Qiu, Zhengpeng Wu, Yan Yu
Received: 28 January 2011 / Accepted: 22 July 2011 / Published: 25 August 2011 © The Society of Service Science and Springer 2011
ABSTRACT Typically, the service quality in the hotel industry is analyzed using cross-sectional empirical studies. For example, to examine current causal relationships among various latent and manifest variables using structural equation modeling plays a key role in understanding how services are provided at a given hotel. Note that accurate prediction of service quality certainly helps decision-makers better manage their services operations to sustain quality services to meet the ever-changing needs of customers. In this paper, by integrating continued fraction interpolation theory and genetic algorithms, an innovative service quality prediction model in the hotel industry is presented. An illustrative example is provided, which essentially shows the applicability of this proposed innovative methodology.
KEYWORDS Continued Fraction Interpolation Method, Genetic Algorithm, Structural Equation Modeling, Service Quality, Service Industry, Hotel Industry. Robin G. Qiu ( ) Division of Engineering and Information Science, The Pennsylvania State University, USA e-mail: [email protected] Zhengpeng Wu Department of Applied Mathematics, Communication University of China, Beijing 100024, China e-mail: [email protected] Yan Yu College of Economics and Management, Nanjing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics, Nanjing 210016, China e-mail: [email protected]
2 Robin G. Qiu, Zhengpeng Wu, Yan Yu
1. INTRODUCTION As Chinese economy has been booming for over 30 years, the hotel industry in China has been quickly and well developed. The number of hotels from budget motels to luxury hotels has substantially increased to meet the increasing needs of different customers. As there are more and more tourists with a variety of cultures and needs from both domestic and overseas customers, the competition to satisfy the customers gets substantially intensified and challenging. As service quality in the hospitality industry is widely recognized as a prerequisite for success in today’s competitive environment (Ghobadian et al. 1994, Verma et al. 2002, Tse & Ho 2009), sustaining competitive services with quality becomes the highest priority in the daily operations. The literature has shown that the competitive service quality of a hotel leads to improved customer loyalty and attraction of new customers, positive word-of-mouth, employee satisfaction and commitment, and enhanced corporate image, ultimately leading to its business success (Berry et al. 1989, Akbar et al. 2010). In other words, hotels with perceived high-quality services typically would have higher market shares and return on investment. This clearly leads to the conclusion that the most important factor affecting business performance in a hotel in the long run is the quality of services offered by the hotel (Ghobadian et al. 1994,
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