Service quality in tourism

Tourism and tourism services have long been forecast to be among a nation's most prospering industries. Service quality will be the key determinant of business success or failure in an area of the economy where products alone are highly similar and easily interchangeable. Providing consistent service quality is therefore an indispensable factor for those tourism products and services, which are to fulfill or even surpass customer expectations. Through appropriate measurement techniques valuable knowledge and implications about the level of service quality - both from a producer and customer perspective - can be derived. Similarly, the recognition of service-inherent management strategies and a review of available service quality models are further prerequisites for a successful business venture. For this study, a subjective, attribute-based measurement concept was applied to determine the level of customer satisfaction with the service quality of a leading German travel agency chain. This sector of the tourism industry was chosen because here service quality may very well be the only remaining factor with which to attain a long-term competitive advantage. The empirical analysis, based on customer satisfaction and importance preferences towards travel agency services, not only reveals highly significant statistical results but also the existence of two distinct customer benefit segments.