PERCEIVED SERVICE QUALITY AND ITS RELATIONSHIP WITH CUSTOMER LOYALTY IN ETHIOPIAN HOTEL INDUSTRY
Abstract
Hotel industry as one of the service providers is under growing pressure to demonstrate that their services are customer focused. In this study the SERVPERF model applied to evaluate the perceived service quality of the industry. The main objective of this study was to examine the relationship between perceived service quality and customer loyalty in Ethiopian hotel industry. Quantitative research design was employed in this study to test the developed hypothesis. In order to collect primary data, a self-completed questionnaire was distributed. Primary data was gathered from all those customers’ who visited and/or stayed at any of the selected star hotels. 400 questionnaires were distributed and 340 questionnaires were successfully collected and returned and 321 (80.25%) usable questionnaires obtained and ready for data analysis. The collected data was analyzed by using statistical package for social science (SPSS) version 16. The result of this study showed that perceived service quality has strong and significant correlation with customer loyalty in Ethiopian hotel industry. Particularly, tangibility, assurance, empathy, responsiveness and reliability dimensions have positive and significant association with customer loyalty in Ethiopian hotel industry.References
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