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An Application of LODGSERV to the Comparison of Leisure Travelers’ and Hoteliers’ Service Quality Perspectives1. Introduction The demand of hotel industry is dramatically increased recently because of the implementation of a five-day workweek system. In 1999, 40.32% of international tourist hotel customers were Taiwanese and 82.4% of Taiwan citizen traveled once per year for leisure (Tourism Bureau, 2005). In addition, as the process of economic development and national income of Taiwan are going, the growing importance of the service sector becomes obvious.According to the Tourism Bureau in Taiwan,people are in the increasing demand of hospitality industry with the implementation of a five-day workweek, increase of leisure time, consumption capability and the elevation of quality. Unfortunately, 60% of the leisure travelers didn’t stay at hotels over night. The hoteliers in Taiwan tried to increase the room rate by exploring the segments of domestic leisure travelers.In Taiwan, the government has been dedicated itself to laying out various initial policies for making Taiwan the Asia Pacific Regional Operations Center(APROC). It also makes efforts to implement set policies. Internally, the government is intensively upgrading comprehensive levels of businesses and has the service industry incorporated into the Award of National Quality to serve the purpose of strengthening business service quality. It also establishes the system of customers’ satisfaction indicator and service quality standard.It seems there are little concerns about the different perspective between customers and hoteliers (Armstrong, Mok, & Go, 1997; Chu & Choi, 2000). The object of this study is to compare the different perspectives with regard to service quality between leisure travelers and hoteliers in Taiwan hotel industry. The perspectives of hotel service quality were compared between customers and hoteliers to investigate the value of service quality for marketing purposes in hotel industry.Knowing how leisure travelers perceive the service quality and how competitors engage in service quality management system can help hotels to identify customers needs and want, differentiate themselves from competitors, enhance customer loyalty,retain existing customers, increase repeat business, and build positive word-of-mouth(Chu & Choi, 2000; Getty, 1994; Harrington & Akehurst, 1999) 34468
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2. Literature Review
There are five dimensions of SERVQUAL that are assurance, responsiveness,tangibles, empathy, and reliability and it provided the main structure for developing other service quality scales such as DINSERVE and LODGQUAL (Knutson, Stevens,Wullaert, Patton, & Fumito, 1991; Stevens, Knutson, & Patton, 1995). Some researchers adapted the instrument SERVQUAL to the restaurant industry and use the lessons learned in developing and refining LODGSERV: a service quality index forthe lodging index (Knutson, Stevens, Patton, & Thompson, 1992; Knutson, Stevens,Wullaert, & Patton, 1991; Knutson, Stevens, Wullaert, Patton et al., 1991). The instrument contained 40 statements and they used confirmatory factor analysis to purify the LODGSERV scale and confirm the five dimensions of service quality.The topic of service quality for hotel culminated in all over the world recently and the researchers or experts engaged in finding the best way of measuring or improving service quality for hotels from different aspects such as employees, the expectation and perception, and service providers (Choi & Chu, 2001; Harrington &Akehurst, 1999; Qu & Tsang, 1998; Suh, Lee, Park, & Shin, 1997; Yucelt & Marcella,1995). Over the last decade, there has been some discussion and controversy debate about the measurement service quality or customer satisfaction in order to benchmark the quality of hotel services (Ekinci & Riley, 1998; Kivela, Inbakaran, & Reece,1999a). The discussion and debate were focused on the measurement and/or improve the hotel service quality from different kinds of aspects such as employee performance, customer perspective, the gaps in the service measurement model, and holistic viewpoints. The comparative studies were conducted separately between different typed of customers or hotelier instead of both (Choi & Chu, 2001; Knutson,Stevens, Wullaert, Patton et al., 1991; Lewis, 1987; Luchars & Hinkin, 1996; Yasin &Yavas, 2001).The past research of hotel service quality indicated different types of attribute variables that related to the components and concepts of service (Saleh & Ryan,1991). Some researchers utilized different frameworks to develop the service quality instrument such as Cost of Quality, Rapid Assessment Methodology, Quality Function Deployment and Importance-Performance Analysis (Chu & Choi, 2000;Jeong & Oh, 1998; Yasin, Czuchry, & Dorsch, 1996; Yasin & Yavas, 2001). Most of them regarded employees as keystone of customer satisfaction and service quality, so the lodging operations thought empowerment and given authority may improve the service quality. Some studies tested an integrative model of service quality, guest