Ijthr vol 1 (1) november 2014

International Journal of Tourism & Hospitality Reviews

Vol 1 (1), November 2014, ISBN 978-81-925781-0-1, pg 01-09

www.giapjournals.org/ijthr.html Page 1

ANTHROPOLOGY OF PILGRIMS WITH REGARD TO

ACCOMMODATION AND THE ACTIVITIES THEY PERFORMED

WHILE VISITING TO SHAHDRA SHARIEF SHRINE

Parvez Abdulla,

Asst. Professor, School of Management Studies BGSB University,

Rajouri, Jammu & Kashmir

[email protected]

Sharaz Ahmed Malik Research Assistant, School of Management Studies, SMVD University,

Katra, Jammu & Kashmir

[email protected]

Abstract

Tourism is a prosperous industry; within tourism pilgrimage tourism is on evolving a lot in these days. It

has been found that pilgrimage tourism increased many fold in every nook and corner of the world. May

it be the case of Christine, Muslim, Hindu and Buddhist followers, pilgrimage of all of these has risen in

the these years. Pilgrims, like tourists also spends money on traveling, accommodation, donation, eating

and purchasing. Spending of these pilgrims becomes a source for earning natives of pilgrimage

destination. Keeping, this thing in mind, this study has been conducted to know various activities of

pilgrims. Here in this paper only accommodation related activities, time duration of trip of pilgrims and

various activities which were performed by pilgrims has been recorded, specifically from those pilgrims

who visits to Shahdra Shrief Shrine Rajouri of State Jammu and Kashmir.

Keywords: Pilgrims, Shahdra Shrief, Accommodation, Tour, Trip, Activities.

INTRODUCTION

Name of Jammu and Kashmir remains associated with tourism since, hundreds years. But pilgrimage in the

State is a new trend which evolved and got many folds increased in last few decades. There are number of

Hindu, Muslim, Buddhist and Shikh Shrine. Among them Shri Mata Vashno Devi Katra, Shri Amarnath,

Shahdra Shrief, Charar Sharif, Hazaratbal, and Nangali Sahib Gurdawara are prominent religious places.

Pilgrims visited to vVashno Devi recorded all time high during 2011. Similarly, pilgrims comparatively to other

Muslim Shrine in the Stae are increasing day by day to Shahdra Shief Shrine from last few years.

Shahdra Shrarief is the Shrine of Baba Ghulam Ali Shah Badshah (RA) which is located in the mid of hills of

State Jammu and Kashmir in Tehsil Thanamandi of District Rajouri. Millions of visitors and pilgrims visited to

this Shrine round the year but during the summer season, this Shrine received large number of tourist from

within the State and different parts of the country. Therefore, while visiting to Shrine pilgrims spend money on

different activities like transportation, accommodation, donation, purchasing and eating. This money generates

the income for the localities and the people living in the Rajouri. The incoming visitor may not be considered as

pure pilgrims, there are different types of visitor’s visits there. This can be understood by the activities they

perform while visiting to Shahdra Shrief. This study is endeavor to analyze visitors accommodation related

facet, activities they performed and duration of their trip, time they spent at the Shrine and the factor facilitate to

their visits to Shahdra.

OBJECTIVES

This study is conducted for pilgrims who visit to Shahdra Sharief Shrine Rajouri, therefore:

1. This work is devoted to study accommodation related aspect of pilgrims.

2. Duration of trip of pilgrims and time spend by them at Shrine

3. Various activities performed by pilgrims while visiting to Shrine.

HYPOTHESES

In the light of objectives following hypotheses has been laid down:

H1: Tourism has made a significant contribution to the economic development and

upliftment of social status of people living in the vicinity of the shrine

H0: The pilgrimage tourism does not provide any scope for socio economic

transformation of the region.

mailto:[email protected]





RESEARCH METHODOLOGY

A sample of 1000 respondents has been selected non probability sampling techniques and responses were

recorded from 1000 respondent but at the time of scrutinizing of responses only 734 responses were found valid

and fit for study. Non probability sampling technique is used because in such type of study were we have not

prior data available we cannot apply random sampling or probability method, so for study of such nature we

therefore usually apply non probability sampling method. But with due care we can incorporate random affect

within this method also which we have done here. Data is collected through a well structured questionnaire and

tabulated and analyzed using SPSS and Excel. Basic Statistical techniques like frequency, limit of central

tendency, percentage, cross tabulation and Chi Square test has been used. Reason behind using this simple

statistics is that the aforesaid objectives and hypothesis are completely addressed and explain by these methods

therefore we confined to applying these research techniques. Moreover in these kinds of study were we have

open ended questions rather than Likert type scale. It is difficult to apply parametric test so we used non

parametric tests.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

Dasgupta, Mondal, & Basu (2006) stated that pilgrimage tourism plays a great role towards socio-economic

changes. According to Indian sentiment the pilgrim centre’s or tirthasthan used to visit by number of tourists to

earn virtue. One of such centre where taking holy dip. During maker sankranti, thought as in life of a person

earns that much of virtue which one can earn by visiting the entire pilgrimage centre’s throughout the life. The

pilgrimage tourism is a vital and living experience in pilgrimage sites have also become important destinations,

because they are closely linked with the cultural identity and heritage of a destinations where also pleasure

components are being added to the familiar pilgrim routes and itineraries. Thus due to continuous flow of

pilgrims and tourists at this land, the socio-economic life of the islanders are evident. Therefore, it can be said

that pilgrimage tourism has opened several sources of cash earning and as a result several new occupations have

emerged due to pilgrimage tourism.

Vijayanand (2012) describes that pilgrimage tourism is playing a major role in socio-economic development.

Among other observations, it has shown that, for many countries of the region, the economic significance of

pilgrimage tourism is very large when measured against GDP and exports. For many countries in general and

the least developed countries in particular, pilgrimage tourism is a sector in which they have comparative, if not

competitive, advantages for which they can efficiently convert domestic resources into foreign exchange. If

appropriately used, such foreign exchange can purchase the investment goods necessary to support more broadly

based economic development policies. The study has demonstrated that the social significance of pilgrimage

tourism, measured in terms of employment (especially unskilled labour), is very large. It has also illustrated that

appropriate pilgrimage tourism-related interventions can play a role in raising the standard of living and in

reducing poverty in local communities.

Further, Dasgupta, Mondal and Basu (2006) study conclude that the key elements of a pilgrimage are religious

belief and knowledge within a particular socio cultural context. In a country like India where for the masses

tourism may not be economically feasible; the pilgrimage is a vital and living experience. Pilgrimage sites have

also turn out to be important tourist destinations, because they are closely linked with the cultural identity and

heritage of destination like Ganga Sagar, where also pleasure component are being added to the familiar pilgrim

routes and itinerates.

Malik, S.A. and Abdulla, P. (2013), studied Potential, Prospects and Challenges of Development of Tourism in

Rajouri & Poonch which is published in Acme Intellects International Journal of Research in Management, this

study is explores unexplored tourism potential of the area.

In another attempt Malik, S.A. (2013) undertakes development of difficult Region through Travel, Trade and

Tourism: A Case Study of Twin Border Districts Rajouri and Poonch which is also published in International

Journal of Marketing, Financial Services & Management Research. This study sets a relation between cross

border tourism and economic development in the area.

DISCUSSION (ANALYSIS OF PRIMARY DATA)

Accommodation related Analysis - Total duration of the entire trip of the pilgrims and average days spends at

shrine. Decides the place of stay, expenditure incurred on the stay and their entire accommodation related

activities.

Duration of the Trip - Thousand of people visit to Shahdra Shrief Shrine throughout the year from State J&K

and from different parts of the country. As bulk of the respondents belongs from the same area, therefore,

majority of the respondents were on 1 day visit which represents 82% of the sample size. Table 1 shows that

13% visitors were on 2 days visit and 4% visitors were on 4 or >4 days journey. Only 2% of the total




respondents comes under 3 days tour duration. Duration of visits which dominates respondent response was 1

day and least percentage comes under 3 days journey.

Table 1: Duration of Trip

Frequency Percent Valid Percent Cumulative Percent

Valid 1 Day 596 81.2 81.2 81.2

2 Days 93 12.7 12.7 93.9

3 Days 15 2.0 2.0 95.9

.>4 Days 30 4.1 4.1 100.0

Total 734 100.0 100.0

Average = 1 Days

Figure 1a: Trip duration

Time spent at Shrine - Thousands of people, who visit Shrine of Baba Ghulam Shah Badshah (RA), after

performing routine rituals, proceed for meal at common mess (Langar). After taking food, day visitors and

others went back to their places or some stays at different hotels in Rajouri. Pilgrims who stay at shrine they opt

any among free dormitories, restaurant, TRC, house of nearby people for night stay. It is found that 81%

respondents were the day visitors, they did not halt for night stay therefore, they spends only one day at Shrine.

Remaining 12 %, 4% and 2% respondents were the two days, four or more than four days and three days visitors

as depicted in the Table 2. They stayed two days, four or more than four days and three days at the holy Shrine.

Table 2: Time spent at Shrine


Valid 1 Day 596 81.2 81.2 81.2

2 Days 93 12.7 12.7 93.9

3Days 15 2.0 2.0 95.9

>4Days 30 4.1 4.1 100.0

Total 734 100.0 100.0

Average = 1 Day




Figure 2a: Time Spent at the Shrine

Place of Stay (Night Stay) - As average duration of tour decides number of days spends and the preference of

staying place. Distribution Table 3 shows that 36% of the respondent stayed at Shrine, in dormitories. 12% in

stayed at Shrine restaurant and 10% and 4% in hotels and tourist reception centers and tourist huts. Remaining

24% were the day visitors they didn’t stay at any of these destinations and went back to their places.

Table 3: Distribution of respondents by their Place of Stay


Valid Day Visits 175 23.8 23.8 23.8

Hotel 75 10.2 10.2 34.1

Shrine dormitory 262 35.7 35.7 69.8

Shrine Restaurant 89 12.1 12.1 81.9

TRC/Tourist hut 33 4.5 4.5 86.4

Other Places 100 13.6 13.6 100.0

Total 734 100.0 100.0

Average =Shrine dormitory

Figure 3a: Place of Stay

Expenditure incurred on Accommodation – Table 4, shows that respondents who stayed at different places

during their tour, spends proportion of their money on hired accommodation. It is seen that 38% of the

respondents spents an average of Rs. 100-500 on accommodation. 11% respondents spend in between Rs. 501-

1,000 and 4.2% respondents spend Rs. 1001-15, 00 on their accommodation. There are 2% respondents who

spend in between Rs 15, 01-2,000 and again 4% respondents spend an average amount in between Rs. 2,000-

5,000 on accommodation related activities. Table 5.29 shows that there is also a small proportion of respondent

(0.4%) who spends >Rs 5,000 on their accommodation, remaining respondents were the day visitors they didn’t

spent on accommodation, they contains 40% of the total sample size.




Table 4: Spending on Accommodation


Valid Have Not Spend 296 40.3 40.3 40.3

Rs. 100-500 280 38.1 38.1 78.5

Rs. 501-1000 78 10.6 10.6 89.1

Rs. 1001-1500 31 4.2 4.2 93.3

Rs. 1501-2000 15 2.0 2.0 95.4

Rs. 2001-5000 31 4.2 4.2 99.6

>Rs. 5000 3 .4 .4 100.0

Total 734 100.0 100.0

Average = Rs. 300

Figure 4a: Spending on Accommodation

Religious/ Faith related activities - A large section i.e. 38% of the respondents visited to Shrine for just to have

glimpses of the Holy Mizar. There were also a good percentage of the devotees who visit again to Shrine after

approval of their wish, and the person coming exclusively for praying at Darbar and asking for favour for their

wish, these are 24%, 16% and 12% respondents. Distribution Table 5 also shows that 8% respondent visits to

the Shrine not specifically related to religious faith, or something related to wish or donation, they just visited

there like a common tourists.

Table 5:Religious Activities Performed


Valid Not specific Related to Religious activity 61 8.3 8.3 8.3

Visit to Shahdara Shrief Just to have a Glimpses of Darbar 281 38.3 38.3 46.6

Came exclusively for asking something related to Wish 94 12.8 12.8 59.4

Coming for Donation after approval of Wish 180 24.5 24.5 83.9

All of above 118 16.1 16.1 100.0

Total 734 100.0 100.0

Average = Visit to Shahdara Shrief Just to have a Glimpses of Darbar




Figure 5a: Religious Activities Performed

Factor Facilitates this Visit - Factor which motivates the respondents for visit shows some interesting facts that

bulk of the visitors are coming regularly to the Shrine during summer season after revival of the Mughal road;

these respondents account 22% of the total respondents. Respondent’s visits related to religious motivation,

scenic beauty and revival of Poonch – Rawlakote Road contains 19%, 4% and 2%. Some respondent’s visits

facilitate factor were mixture of the entire factor like revival of the Mughal road, religious faith and scenic

beauty, this section of respondents comprises of 8% of total sample size. 0.8% visitors facilitate factors were

revival of Poonch Rawlakote road, religious motivation and beauty of the area as shown in table 6.

Table 6:Factor Facilitates this Visit


Valid Others 322 43.9 43.9 43.9

Revival of Mughal Road 165 22.5 22.5 66.3

Revival of Poonch Rawalakote Road 16 2.2 2.2 68.5

Religious Motivation 137 18.7 18.7 87.2

Scenic beauty 32 4.4 4.4 91.6

a, c, d (Revival of Mughal Road, Religious

Motivation, Scenic beauty ) 56 7.6 7.6 99.2

b, c, d (Revival of Poonch Rawalakote Road,

Religious Faith, Scenic beauty) 6 .8 .8 100.0

Total 734 100.0 100.0

Average = Revival of Mughal Road

It is pertain to mentioned here that Mughal road is a historical route which was firstly used by Emperor Akbar

the Great in 1556 AD,then after it was used by Mughals to Visit Lahro to Kashmir. It is a majestic and shortest

route to Kashmir, heaving pictures-tic view around. This road is nearby to Shrine, therefore visitors who visits

to Mughal road also goes to Shahdra Shrief Rajouri

Figure 6a: Factor Facilitates this Visit




Duration of Stay and Expenditure Incurred on the Accommodation

Table 7, depicts that majority of the visitors stay one day at in Shahdra and they spend approximately Rs. Rs.

500-1000 on ther accommodation. Another 73% of the one day visitor’s sections pay out Rs. 1501-2000 for

their accommodation. Similarly, table 5.97 shows various combination of spending pattern of the visitors for

their accommodation for one, two three and four day stay which ranges from Rs.100-500, Rs. 500-1000,

Rs.1000-1500, Rs. 1500-2000, Rs.2000-5000 more the 50000 respectively.

Table 7: Spending on Accommodation * time spent at Shrine Cross tabulation

time spent at Shrine

Total

1 Day

2

Days 3Days >4Days

Spending on

Accommodation

Have Not

Spend

Count 267 17 1 11 296

% within Spending on

Accommodation 90.2% 5.7% .3% 3.7% 100.0%

Rs. 100-

500

Count 221 41 6 12 280


Accommodation 78.9% 14.6% 2.1% 4.3% 100.0%

Rs. 501-

1000

Count 53 17 5 3 78


Accommodation 67.9% 21.8% 6.4% 3.8% 100.0%

Rs. 1001-

1500

Count 25 5 1 0 31


Accommodation 80.6% 16.1% 3.2% .0% 100.0%

Rs. 1501-

2000

Count 11 4 0 0 15


Accommodation 73.3% 26.7% .0% .0% 100.0%

Rs. 2001-

5000

Count 16 9 2 4 31


Accommodation 51.6% 29.0% 6.5% 12.9% 100.0%

>Rs. 5000 Count 3 0 0 0 3


Accommodation 100.0% .0% .0% .0% 100.0%

Total Count 596 93 15 30 734


Accommodation 81.2% 12.7% 2.0% 4.1% 100.0%

Table 7a:Chi-Square Tests

Value Df Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)

Pearson Chi-Square 58.213a 18 .000

Likelihood Ratio 57.388 18 .000

Linear-by-Linear Association 17.509 1 .000

N of Valid Cases 734

a. 15 cells (53.6%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is .06.

Chi Square test as shown in table 7a proves that the expenditure of visitors on accommodation and their duration

of stay are significantly different. Therefore null hypothesis which reads that there is no relation between

spending on accommodation and duration of stay stands rejected and alternate hypothesis is accepted. This test

also supports our principle hypothesis i.e. therefore, from Chi square test it is found that null hypothesis is not

true and is rejected as p value of chi square test supports the alternate hypothesis i.e. tourism has made a

significant contribution to the economic development and upliftment of social status of people living in the

vicinity of the shrine has been accepted. In the meantime the second null hypothesis i.e. the pilgrimage tourism

does not provide any scope for socio economic transformation of the region is also rejected and the alternate

hypothesis is accepted.




Table 8: Time spent at Shrine * Trip Duration Cross tabulation

Trip Duration

Total 1 Day 2 Days 3 Days .>4 Days

time spent at

Shrine

1 Day Count 554 40 1 1 596

% within time spent at Shrine 93.0% 6.7% .2% .2% 100.0%

2 Days Count 32 50 7 4 93

% within time spent at Shrine 34.4% 53.8% 7.5% 4.3% 100.0%

3Days Count 4 3 7 1 15


>4Days Count 6 0 0 24 30

% within time spent at Shrine 20.0% .0% .0% 80.0% 100.0%

Total Count 596 93 15 30 734


The above table 8 shows that Chi square value of 8.16 (df=9, N-734), p<0.05 is significant at 12 degree of

freedom, showing that there is a significant at 9 degree of freedom, showing that there is significant difference

in trip duration and days/time spent at shrine.

Table 8a: Chi-Square Tests

Value df Asymp. Sig. (2-sided)

Pearson Chi-Square 8.160E2a 9 .000

Likelihood Ratio 360.368 9 .000

Linear-by-Linear Association 410.176 1 .000

N of Valid Cases 734

a. 8 cells (50.0%) have expected count less than 5. The minimum expected count is .31.

CONCLUSION

Tourist and Pilgrims who used to visit to different they perform various activities. During their visit spending on

travelling, accommodation, shopping and allied activates are the major segment of tourist expenditure. This

expenditure of tourist on the other hand becomes income for the people who are residing nearby the the

destination where pilgrims and tourist visits. This fact is proved herein case of Shadra Shrief Shrine. Therefore,

It can be concluded as most of the visitor visits to Shrine are from catchment areas therefore average trip

duration of these visitors is of one day. They also spends one day in the Shrine. As inputs from primary data that

there is various type of accommodation available in the Shrine but average number of visits who spent night

there preferred stayed in Shrine free dormitories. There are various activities performed by visitor who visits to

Shrine but majority of the visitor said that they just visited to have glimpses of Shrine only. Upon enquiring

about the factor which facilitates their visit to Shahdra, majority of them said that they visited there because of

revival of historical Mughal road.

REFERENCES

1. Malik, S.A. and Abdulla, P. (2013), Potential, Prospects and Challenges of Development of Tourism in

Rajouri & Poonch in Acme Intellects International Journal of Research in Management, Vol. 2

(2), 2320-2793, p. (69-76).

2. Malik, S.A. (2013) Development of Difficult Region through Travel, Trade and Tourism: A Case Study of

Twin Border Districts Rajouri and Poonch in International Journal of Marketing, Financial

Services & Management Research (PRINT JOURNAL), Vol. 2 (2), p. 56-66.

3. Vijayanand, S. (2012). Socio-Economic Impacts in Pilgrimage Tourism, Zenith International Journal

of Multidisciplinary Research, 2(1)

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Tourist at Ganga Sagar Island, Anthropological Survey of India, Anthropologist, 8(1), 11-15.

5. Cronbach, L. J., & Shavelson, R. J. (2004). My Current Thoughts on Coefficient Alpha and Successor

Procedures. Educational and Psychological Measurement, 64(3), 391-418.

6. Claudia Liebelt. (2010). Becoming Pilgrims in the Holy Land: On Filipina Domestic Workers Struggles and

Pilgrimages for a, The Asia Pacific Journal of Anthropology, 11(34), (p.1444-2213).




7. Naquin, S., & Yu, C. F. (1992). Pilgrimage in China. In S. Naquin & C. F. Yu (Eds.), Pilgrims and Sacred

Sites in China (pp. 1-38). Berkeley: University of California Press.

8. Naqati S.G. (2003). Mir Sayed Ali Hamadani and Kubraviya Sufi Order in Kashmir, Wattan Publications,

J&K, (p.1-29, 85-107).

9. Pinho, M. I. R. B & Pinho, I. M. R. T. (2007). Fátima: The Religious Tourism Altar. In R. Raj & N. D.

Morpeth (Eds.), Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, Management, CAB International (8), (p. 211-221),

Cambridge, U. S. A.

10. PHD Research Bureau. (2011). Jammu and Kashmir: The State Profile, PHD Chamber of Commerce and

Industry, New Delhi, 17-35.

11. Raj, R., & Morpeth, N. D. (2007). Introduction: Establishing Linkages between Religious Travel and

Tourism. in R. Raj & N. D. Morpeth (Eds.), Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage Management: An

International Perspective (pp. 1-14). Cambridge, U.S.A.

12. Smith, V. L. (1992). Introduction the Quest in Guest, Annals of Tourism Research, (19), 1–17.

13. Tourism and Local Economic Development .(2004) .The International Centre for Responsible Tourism

14. Tomoko, T., & Samuel, M. (2009. Economic and Social Impact of Tourism on a Small Town: Peterborough

New Hampshire, Journal of Service Science and Management, 61-70.




CHANGING PERCEPTION OF STUDENTS TOWARDS HOSPITALITY

INDUSTRY: A COMPARATIVE ANALYSIS

Anoop Kumar

Assistant Professor

Institute of Hotel & Tourism Management

Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak, Haryana

[email protected]

Pankaj Kumar Singh

Lecturer cum Instructor

State Institute of Hotel Management, Rohtak

Amit Kumar

Assistant Lecturer cum Assistant Instructor

State Institute of Hotel Management, Rohtak

Shalini

Lecturer

Government Polytechnic College, Sanghi, Rohtak

Abstract

Hospitality Management Institutes have seen a tremendous growth in the recent years. More and more

students are inclining to pursue hospitality related course from the institutes at national level or at different

universities or from private institutes. The popularity of this course amongst the young aspirants is because

of various factors such as, job opportunities, different avenues, popularity of various television programme

based on cooking skills, parents of students already into hotel business, eligibility criteria, entrepreneurship

plans, overseas job opportunities, passion & interest etc. Whenever a student takes admission to the

hospitality course he do think positive about the industry. But by reaching to the final year this positivity

turns into the negativity and the student takes decision either not to join the industry or to pursue some thing

else. Therefore a study is conducted to understand the difference between the perception of first year and

final year students studying hospitality courses towards the hospitality industry. A structured questionnaire

was designed in which 21 variables were included on the basis of review of literature. Further T-test was

applied to find out the significant difference between the perceptions of first year and final year students. 15

variables were found where no significant difference exists between the perception of first year and final year

students. 06 variables were found with significant difference between the perception of first year and final

year students. The results show that overall a significant difference is there between the perception of first

year and final year students and null hypothesis is rejected. The study also reveals the fact that first year

students do have positive perception towards the industry as compare to the final year students.

Keywords: Perception, Hospitality, First year, Final year. Students

INTRODUCTION

The tourism and hospitality industry is one of the largest segments under the services sector of the Indian economy.

Tourism in India is a key growth driver and a significant source of foreign exchange earnings. In India, the sector's

direct contribution to gross domestic product (GDP) is expected to grow at 7.8 per cent per annum during the period

2013-2023. The tourism sector in India is flourishing due to an increase in foreign tourist arrivals (FTA) and a larger

number of Indians travelling to domestic destinations. According to statistics available with the World Travel and

Tourism Council (WTTC), revenues gained from domestic tourism rose by 5.1 per cent in 2013 and is expected to

increase by 8.2 per cent this year. Hotels are also an extremely important component of the tourism industry. The

Indian hospitality sector has been growing at a cumulative annual growth rate of 14 per cent every year, adding

significant amount of foreign exchange to the economy. The gross annual manpower demand in the hospitality

industry has crossed five lakh in 2010 and likely to grow to almost 9,20,000 in 2020. The above discussion clearly

shows that there are ample opportunities of growth in the tourism and hospitality sector. Moreover media is also

playing a pivotal role in shaping of the young aspirants towards hospitality industry. Various TV channels like Food

Food, TLC, NDTV Good Times, Khana Khazana as well various programmes on television like Master Chef,

Highway on Plate etc. are popular amongst the audience and help in drawing huge pool of young aspirants to opt





hospitality as a career. This positive marketing and plethora of employment opportunities provided by the hospitality

sector led the young aspirants to opt for hospitality as a career. The new entrants are filled with high expectations

and enthusiastic to work in the industry but it is observed that till the time they reach the final year of their

graduation, their perceptions and interest to work in the hospitality industry declines. This has instigated us to

pursue the current study to investigate into the difference in the perception of first year and final year students and to

know the nature of their perception.

REVIEW OF LITERATURE

The subject of research needed extensive review of earlier work to understand the concept and how to go about

further in the study. Though commendable research work has been done at international level but very limited

research work is available in Indian context.

Casado (1992). Conducted a study on new and final year students and found that students who just joined the

institute were having very positive attitude towards the industry, but the final year students who were exposed to the

industry were not having equally positive attitude.

Barron and Maxwell (1993) found that in general the new students had positive image of the industry, whereas the

students with supervised work experience were having less positive in their views.

Emenheiser et al. (1997) found in his study that a majority of final year students were satisfied with their internship

which strengthened their problem-solving ability in the hospitality industry hence have a positive perception about

the industry.

Kusluvan and Kusluvan (2000) says that most of the hospitality students have no idea about the industry when

they join the course and thus when they are exposed to the actual conditions in the industry, they get negative

attitude and this contributes to the high turnover rate in hospitality Industry. It implies that students‟ expectation will

be realistic if they are informed about the real scenario of hospitality industry, and thus they will prepare themselves

to confront the upcoming conditions. He further emphasized that motivation and commitment of staff in hospitality

industry helps an organization to attain an edge over its competitors. But it is always felt that students who are going

to join the industry mostly have negative perception towards industry that is a cause of concern for hospitality

industry. As it will affect the standards of services offered to the guest. Hence it is necessary that students pursuing

hospitality courses should have a positive attitude and commitment for their job. Many times the low salary structure

of hospitality jobs are said to be responsible for the negative attitude of students.

Leslie & Richardson, (2000) surveyed that student‟s pre-internship perceptions and post-internship experiences

influence students to avoid a career in Hospitality / tourism industry.

Jenkins (2001) in his study stated that work experience as a trainee in the industry affected senior students‟

perceptions in a negative way.

Collins, (2002); Lam & Ching (2007) found that poor or no stripened, poor employee relations, unorganized work

environment, limited or no delegation, long working hours and overall a hectic working environment faced by the

final year graduates during internship are the most common factors that create dissatisfaction and decreased

motivation towards industry and internship.

Roney and Öztin (2007) highlighted that students' negative internship experiences resulted in development of a less

favorable perception of hospitality and tourism. Even when the students are having quite realistic expectations

before and during their studies, still their turnover rate is high when they join industry.

Yafang and Gongyong (2008) emphasized that final year hospitality students who were exposed to real work

conditions in hotels during their internship period develop negative perception towards industry due to lack of

coordination between schools and employers‟, „opportunities for self-development‟, „pay and welfare‟, „work

pressure‟, „opportunity for work rotation‟, „interesting and challenging work‟, and „autonomy involved in the work '.

Park and Kim (2011) have stated that post-internship perceptions generally have lower mean values than pre-

internship expectations for most career factors, thereby implying that final year students after internships become

pessimistic regarding their future jobs.




Kasli and Ilban (2013) in their finding revealed that the final year students who have undergone on a training have

developed a perception of trainees viewed as cheap labour in the hospitality industry and doesn‟t contribute to the

professional development of them and this changes the perception of the senior students negatively.

Datta et al (2013) explained that there was difference in expectation between senior students who had completed

internship and juniors who were yet to undergo industrial training. The students who had completed their training

had a more negative perspective towards the hotel industry.

The previous conduced study shows that a difference in the perception exists, between the senior and junior

students. Therefore the current study was conducted with the following objectives.

OBJECTIVE OF THE STUDY

The current investigation was carried to fulfill the following objectives.

1. To study the perception of first year and final year students studying hospitality courses towards the

industry.

2. To find out whether this perception towards the industry is in the positive side or negative side.

HYPOTHESIS OF THE STUDY

On the basis of objective no.1 following hypothesis was framed which will be tested with the help of statistical tools.

H1: Overall there is no significant difference between the perception of the first year and final year students


Sample: Total 372 students participated in the survey out of which 221 students were studying in first year of their

graduation while 151 were studying in the final year of their graduation. The questionnaire was filled by the students

studying in University Teaching Department, Government owned Institute of Hotel Management (IHM) and private

Hotel Management Institutes (HMI). State Institute of Hotel Management Rohtak, Institute of Hotel Management

PUSA New Delhi, Ganpati Institute of Hotel Management Yamunanagar, Institute of Hotel and Tourism

Management Maharshi Dayanand University Rohtak and Department of Tourism and Hotel Management

Kurukshetra University Kurukshetra were the main participating institutes.

Questionnaire: A structured questionnaire which consists of two parts was designed in which Part A was

developed to collect the demographic profiles of the respondents though the Part B was designed to record the

perception of students towards the Hospitality Industry. The perception of students was recorded on a likert five

point scale in which 5 was scored as Strongly Agree, 4 as Agree, 3 as Neutral/Not Sure, 2 as Disagree and 1 as

Strongly Disagree.

Analysis: The data was analyzed by Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 11.5. As the objective

of the research was to find out the significant difference between the perception of first year and final year students

therefore independent sample t-test was applied to find out the significant difference between the two groups.

Further to know whether this perception is in the positive side or in the negative side Mean and Standard Deviation

was used.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

Demographic profile of respondents is elaborated by table-1. Data given in table-1 indicate that 87% of respondents

were male, maximum number of respondents 61.0% were in the age group of 18-20 years followed by 25.8% of 20-

22 yrs. Students from commerce background were more 38.2% followed by Non Medical 29.6%. Students from

medical background were least in numbers (3.5%). Majority of students (79.8%) were aware about the career

opportunities in hospitality industry. 51.3% of the students already have an exposure of the hospitality industry.

Friends and Relatives of 55.6% students were already working in the hospitality industry. Maximum number

(62.9%) of students want to work in the hospitality industry after pursuing bachelor‟s degree in hospitality

management and very few only 2.2% want to go in teaching and research. To find out the significant difference

between the perception of first year and final year students independent sample t-test was applied the results of the

same are expressed in subsequent tables.




Table 1: Demographic Profile of the Respondents

Frequency Valid Percent

Gender Male 324 87.1

Female 48 12.9

Age Below 18 Yrs 36 9.7

18-20 Yrs 227 61

20-22 Yrs 96 25.8

Above 22 Yrs 13 3.4

Stream at 10+2 Humanities 88 23.7

Commerce 142 38.2

Medical 32 8.6

Non Medical 110 29.5

Prior Information about Career Opportunity Yes 297 79.8

No 75 20.2

Any Exposure to Hospitality Industry Yes 191 51.3

No 181 48.7

Any Friends & Relatives working in the

Hospitality Industry

Yes 207 55.6

No 165 44.4

Institute Studying In IHM 294 79

Private HMI 26 7

UTD 52 14

Year of Graduation First Year 221 59.4

Final Year 151 40.6

Future Projection after completing Graduation Job in the Industry 234 62.9

Want to go Abroad 43 11.6

Higher Studies 55 14.8

Teaching & Research 8 2.2

Others 32 8.6

Out of 21 variables, 15 variables were found where no significant difference was found between the perception of

first year and final year students. Though there is difference in the mean score of perception of first year and final

year students but t test shows that this difference is not significant which means that both first year and final year

students have almost same perception as far as these variables are concerned. Table 2 explains about the variables

with no significant difference and these variables are “good salary perspective” “platform to interact with new

people” “job security” “opportunity to travel to different places” “opportunity to work abroad” respectable jobs”

“chances to meet celebrities, sportsmen, politicians” “glamorous and charming jobs” “reasonable work load”

“opportunities to deal with foreigners” “parents will feel proud” “ one will get suitable life partner” “interesting and

challenging jobs” opportunity for self development” “once can work as an entrepreneur”.

Table-2: Variables Where No Significant Difference is found between the Perception of First year & Final

Year Students

N (First Year-221, Final Year-151) =372

Variables Year of Graduation Mean Score F-Value Sig. Difference

Good salary perspective First Year 3.84

2.064 0.152 NSD Final Year 3.50

Platform to interact with new people First Year 4.51

0.497 0.481 NSD Final Year 4.46

Job security First Year 3.23

2.543 0.112 NSD Final Year 3.17

opportunity to travel to different places First Year 4.28

0.815 0.367 NSD Final Year 4.13




Opportunity to work abroad First Year 4.32

6.493 0.011 NSD Final Year 4.11

Respectable jobs First Year 3.54

0.576 0.440 NSD Final Year 3.28

Chances to meet celebrities, sportsmen, politicians First Year 4.19

0.310 0.570 NSD Final Year 4.19

Glamorous and charming jobs First Year 3.60

2.421 0.121 NSD Final Year 3.48

Reasonable work load First Year 3.28

6.511 0.011 NSD Final Year 2.94

Opportunities to deal with foreigners First Year 4.37

0.598 0.440 NSD Final Year 4.34

Parents will feel proud First Year 3.95

7.000 0.008 NSD Final Year 3.62

One will get suitable life partner First Year 3.48

0.131 0.718 NSD Final Year 3.32

Interesting and Challenging jobs First Year 4.21

0.352 0.553 NSD Final Year 4.07

Opportunity for self development First Year 4.24

1.399 0.238 NSD Final Year 4.13

One can work as an entrepreneur First Year 3.99

4.537 0.034 NSD Final Year 3.83

On remaining 6 variables first year and final year students differ in their opinion. Moreover t-test reveals that this

difference in opinion is also significant (Table-3). “Good working environment to its employees” “fast career

growth” “job satisfaction due to meeting daily new challenges” “reward for good performance” “one will get sense

of achievement from the work” “managerial positions can be achieved” are the variables where a significant

difference is found between the perception of first year and final year students. The results are also expressed with

the help of table 3.

Table-3: Variables Where Significant Difference is found between the Perception of First year & Final Year

Students



Good working environment to its employees First Year 3.81

32.702 0.000 SD Final Year 3.43

Fast career growth First Year 3.79

15.836 0.000 SD Final Year 3.50

Job Satisfaction due to meeting daily new challenges First Year 3.88

24.041 0.000 SD Final Year 3.66

Rewards for good performance First Year 4.07

9.520 0.002 SD Final Year 3.87

One will get sense of achievement from the work First Year 4.09

15.064 0.000 SD Final Year 3.85

Managerial positions can be achieved First Year 2.93

8.788 0.003 SD Final Year 3.15

The second objective of the study was to find out whether the perception of students is in the positive side or

negative side. Interestingly out of total 21 variables selected for study only one variable named as “managerial

position can be achieved” is found where the first year students have a negative perception and final year students

have a positive perception (Table 4) as the mean score of final year students is greater than the mean score of first

year students.




Table-4: Variables with Positive Perception amongst Final Year Students


Variables Year of Graduation Mean Score

Managerial positions can be achieved First Year 2.93

Final Year 3.15

One variable named as “Chances to meet celebrities, sportsmen, politicians” is found where the mean score of first

year and final year students is exactly the same which is 4.19 and elaborated by Table 5 which shows that both first

year and final year students thinks exactly the same.

Table-5: Variables with Same Perception amongst First and Final Year Students



Chances to meet celebrities, sportsmen, politicians First Year 4.19

Final Year 4.19

Remaining 19 variables were found where the first year students have a positive perception as the mean score of first

year students is greater than the mean score of final year students (Table 6).

Table-6: Variables with Positive Perception amongst First Year Students



Good salary perspective First Year 3.84

Final Year 3.50

Platform to interact with new people First Year 4.51

Final Year 4.46

Job security First Year 3.23

Final Year 3.17

opportunity to travel to different places First Year 4.28

Final Year 4.13

Opportunity to work abroad First Year 4.32

Final Year 4.11

Respectable jobs First Year 3.54

Final Year 3.28

Glamorous and charming jobs First Year 3.60

Final Year 3.48

Reasonable work load First Year 3.28

Final Year 2.94

Opportunities to deal with foreigners First Year 4.37

Final Year 4.34

Parents will feel proud First Year 3.95

Final Year 3.62

One will get suitable life partner First Year 3.48

Final Year 3.32

Interesting and Challenging jobs First Year 4.21

Final Year 4.07

Opportunity for self development First Year 4.24

Final Year 4.13

One can work as an entrepreneur First Year 3.99




Final Year 3.83

Good working environment to its employees First Year 3.81

Final Year 3.43

Fast career growth First Year 3.79

Final Year 3.50

Job Satisfaction due to meeting daily new challenges First Year 3.88

Final Year 3.66

Rewards for good performance First Year 4.07

Final Year 3.87

One will get sense of achievement from the work First Year 4.09

Final Year 3.85

The variables where the mean score of first year students is higher than that of final year students are "Good salary

perspective" "Platform to interact with new people" "Job security" "opportunity to travel to different places"

"Opportunity to work abroad" "Respectable jobs" "Glamorous and charming jobs" "Reasonable work load"

"Opportunities to deal with foreigners" "Parents will feel proud " "One will get suitable life partner" "Interesting and

Challenging jobs" "Opportunity for self development " "One can work as an entrepreneur " "Good working

environment to its employees" “Fast career growth" "Job Satisfaction due to meeting daily new challenges"

"Rewards for good performance" "One will get sense of achievement from the work".

Position of Hypothesis

H1: Overall there is no significant difference between the perception of the first year and final year students

Table-7: Overall Perception


Overall Perception First Year 3.88

19.663 0.000 SD Final Year 3.72

The proposed hypothesis given above is rejected. T-test confirms (table-7) that a significant difference is found

between the overall perception of first year and final year students.

CONCLUSION

Some interesting facts are revealed by the research work conducted. First of all overall a significant difference is

found between the perception of first year and final year students. When a student takes admission to the hospitality

programme because of many reasons he does have a very positive perception about the industry. Similarly, because

of many reasons by reaching to the final year this positive perception changes to the negative perception. One of the

reasons of this changing perception of students is the interaction with the industry. Therefore the industry, while

interacting with the hospitality graduates must take care certain points so that there should not be any change in the

perception. The training programmes should be designed in such a way that the students enjoy the training sessions

and not treat it as a burden. Moreover the need of future research also arises here. The future research will conducted

to find out the reason of this negative perception. Further exposure to the industry is one of the reasons of this

negative perception. Therefore the impact of training on the perception of students will also be studied.

REFERENCES

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Educational Research, 52, 79-96.

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9. Kusluvan, S. and Kusluvan, Z. (2000) Perceptions and attitudes of undergraduate tourism students towards

working in the tourism industry in Turkey”. Tourism Management, 21, 251-269.

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http://www.seiofbluemountain.com/en/search/index.php?act=all&form=2008+International+Conference+on+Management+Science+and+Engineering



www.giapjournals.org/ijthr.html

EMPLOYEES’ SERVICE INNOVATION BEHAVIOUR AND NEW

SERVICE DEVELOPMENT IN FOUR-AND FIVE-STAR HOTELS

Mukhles M. Al-Ababneh

Assistant Professor of International Hospitality Management

Department of Hotel Management and Tourism

Petra College for Tourism and Archaeology

Al-Hussein Bin Talal University

Ma‟an, Jordan

[email protected]

Abstract

This study aims to explore the impact of Employee Service Innovation Behaviour (ESIB) on New Service

Development (NSD) among hotels’ employees. A research model was proposed in which one hypothesis

was developed. The empirical data were collected from employees who are working in four-and five-star

hotels in Jordan. A total of 332 questionnaires were returned and the data were analysed using a single

regression to determine the relationship between employee service innovation behaviour and new service

development. The results supported the proposed model that there is a significant relationship between

employee service innovation behaviour and new service development, and it also found that service

innovation performance is exited in the hotel industry. The theoretical and managerial implications were

drawn based on the study findings, and recommendations for future researchers were made, and

limitations and conclusions are discussed.

Keywords: Employee Service Innovation Behaviour, New Service Development, Hotels.

INTRODUCTION

It is necessary to differentiate creativity from innovation. Creativity means the development of potential new

and useful ideas, and employees may share these ideas with others, it is considered as the initial phase of the

innovation process. Innovation refers to the successful implementation of new and useful ideas at organisational

level (Amabile, 1996, 1997). Creativity is defined as “the production of novel and useful ideas in any domain”,

whereas innovation is defined as “the successful implementation of creative ideas within an organization”.

Innovation means the successful implementing of the generated ideas or products at the organisational level

(Oldham and Cummings, 1996). Specifically, creativity seems to be the seed of all innovation (Amabile et al.,

1996: p.1155). Another argument suggested that creativity is an important input into the substitute-generation

stage of the innovation process (Ford, 1996). Also, creativity is treated as part of the organisational climate or

culture, and this climate or culture could enhance innovation and performance (Swann and Birke, 2005). The

promotion of employee creativity and the generation of new-ideas are considered the key factors which are

necessary to implement innovation (Montes et al., 2003). High levels of employee productivity and creativity

are required for developing new services and products and continuously improving internal processes (Forbes

and Domm, 2004).

However, creativity and innovation concepts are frequently employed interchangeably in the literature (Scott

and Bruce, 1994; Awamleh, 1994; Martins and Terblanche, 2003; Mostafa, 2005). For example, Mostafa (2005:

p.8) introduced one definition for creativity or innovation as a “systematic development and practical

application of a new idea”. Hence, creativity and innovation are very much linked in individuals‟ minds as one

term and they use these terms interchangeably. Some arguments state that creativity and innovation are

fundamentally the same phenomenon, but they take place at various levels of analysis (Ford, 1996). For

example, creativity is the initial phase to the process of innovation, while innovation refers to the successful

implementation of new and useful ideas. Therefore, innovation is an important process for the long-standing

success of an organisation (Amabile, 1997). As a result, the concepts of creativity and innovation are commonly

phrased together because they are linked to each other even though there are some differences in their meanings,

such as creativity being the production of ideas while innovation refers to the application of the produced ideas

(Coveney, 2008).

Other researchers (i.e. West, 2002; Rank et al., 2004; Flaatin, 2007) confirmed that creativity is considered as

one stage of innovation, and that innovation consists of two stages, the idea generation stage and the idea

implementation stage. Specifically, creativity refers to the generation of ideas, whereas innovation implies the

transformation of ideas into new products or services. That means innovation is the implementation of creativity

results, and creativity is considered as a part of the innovation process (Alves et al., 2007). Consequently,

creativity is a desirable outcome which provides many benefits to organisations through transferring ideas to





employees for their own use and serving as a fundamental dimension for organisational innovations (Shalley et

al., 2004).

LITERATURE REVIEW

Innovation is a necessary requirement for organisational effectiveness (Basadur et al., 2002), and for seeking for

new solutions to product problems, as well as new and better solutions to business and customer problems

(Herbig and Jacobs, 1996; Mostafa, 2005). Successful organisations are more dependent on creativity and

innovation than ever (Wong and Pang, 2003a). Service Innovation Performance (SIP) represents two

dimensions, namely Employee Service Innovation Behaviour (ESIB), and New Service Development (NSD).

More specifically, service innovation performance emerged in service organisations to explore individual

innovative behaviour. Innovation is defined as a multistage process, and creativity or generation of the ideas is

only one stage of innovation which is the first stage, the second stage seeking sponsorship and supporters for an

idea, and the last stage producing a model of innovation. Each stage requires different individual innovative

behaviour and different activities, and therefore individual innovative behaviour is critical part in innovation

(Scott and Bruce, 1994). NSD is important for service organisations as a competitive advantage that enables

these organisations to achieve superior performance, and to response to changing customer requirements and

competitive threats. Even the importance of new service development, but the research in that area still very

limited (Matear et al., 2004).

The concept of creativity is different from innovation. Specifically, creativity and innovation are fundamentally

the same phenomenon, but they take place at various levels of analysis and therefore each concept has a

different definition (Amabile et al., 1996). Hence, creativity is the initial phase of the innovation process, while

innovation is the successful implementation of new and useful ideas (Amabile, 1997). Consequently, innovation

is composed of two stages: idea generation and idea implementation. Creativity refers to idea generation,

whereas innovation implies idea transformation into new products or services (West, 2002; Rank et al., 2004;

Flaatin, 2007). Similarly, innovation is the implementation process of creativity results, and that supports

creativity as a part of innovation (Alves et al., 2007).

In the turbulent hospitality industry, innovation has become a strategic weapon for successful hospitality

organisations. Innovations in hospitality are mostly intangible assets. Clearly, service innovations in the

hospitality industry have a wide range starting from complete innovations that produce new services to new

markets, to slight modifications of the present services through simple adapting of existing services (i.e. change

keys to swipe cards), or offering added value to services through providing extra novel facilities (i.e. serviced

apartments) (Ottenbacher and Gnoth, 2005).

The hospitality industry faces the challenges of a turbulent and unstable environment that has forced hospitality

organisations to modify and update their services to meet the change in their customers‟ needs and wants, and

survive in the market. As a result, the implementation of innovation becomes an important technique for

successful hospitality organisations. In the twenty-first century, creativity is considered as a vital factor in the

development process in hospitality (Wong and Pang, 2003b). However, there is little published research about

innovation in the hospitality industry despite the importance of innovation in that industry (Ottenbacher, 2007).

The shortage of creativity research in the hospitality industry refers to the notion that creativity is generally

related to the artistic industries like poetry, music composing, fiction writing, drama, painting, film making, and

so on. The main concern in the hospitality industry was, historically, providing food and accommodation to

travellers, therefore the hospitality concentrated on the routine work in hotels to meet and satisfy travellers‟

needs for both accommodation and food (Wong and Ladkin, 2008).

Individuals with different cultures and backgrounds can produce variations in the need for creativity, and

therefore diverse environmental motivators could be used to motivate individuals to be creative people. Thus, it

is vital to determine the stimulants to creativity in the working environment and how hospitality organisations

can enhance their individuals‟ creativity and so survive in the global competitive environment (Wong and Pang,

2003a). Independent studies have confirmed that creativity is considered to be a consistent and significant

predictor of peak performance at different levels of employment within the hospitality industry (Houran and

Ference, 2006).

Innovation has many benefits, but the major benefit of successful innovation in the hospitality industry is the

competitive advantage that has been achieved by organisations (Ottenbacher and Gnoth, 2005). Innovation in

the hospitality industry can be rapidly imitated therefore continuous innovation becomes a vital element to

reinforce imitation barriers to the competitive market (Harrington, 2004). Successful innovations are not always

clear for managers in the hospitality industry. Creating an organisational culture that encourages creativity, are

vital intangible features of organisations, as well as innovative thinking, and these stands out in innovation

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management (Ottenbacher and Harrington, 2007). The tangible forms of organisational creative outcomes in the

hotel industry such as: improved customer services, product innovations and continuous improvement (Wong

and Pang, 2003b). Hence, hotels need to become innovative in service, processes and procedures through

developing delivery of service to customers, especially with the increasing competitiveness of the market, and

need to concentrate on the quality of products and distinction in service.

The hospitality industry has plenty of options for determining which products and services will add value to

customers. Hotels need to evaluate the value that will be added to service to customers before introducing a new

innovation for a service or product (Victorino et al., 2005). The difference in levels of hotel quality does not

really have an impact on hotel operations, but, the difference between high and low quality hotels is the quality

of the extra services and tangibles. Thus, innovation is considered as a key lever to develop and upgrade

operations at hotels (Wong and Ladkin, 2008). In the service industry, both „novel‟ and „useful‟ are essential

characteristics for identifying a creative idea (Madjar and Ortiz-Walters, 2008).

Despite the importance of creativity and innovation in the hospitality industry, few studies have been conducted

to investigate creativity or innovation in that industry. For example, Ottenbacher and Gnoth (2005) indicated

that innovation was less important than commitment to the service, empowerment, employee training and the

effectiveness of human resources management in German hotels. They indicated that tangible features of service

innovation were associated with successful innovations in the hospitality industry. Similarly, another study was

conducted by Orfila-Sintes et al. (2005) to identify innovation activity in hotels in Spain. The results found that

the higher category hotels (i.e. 3- , 4- and 5-star) have more innovation than the lower category hotels (i.e. 1-

and 2-star). As a result, hotels with 3-star or more have the capacity to differentiate their products and services,

while, the 1- and 2-star hotels showed the lowest rate of innovation since these hotels tend to adopt a „„follow up

behaviour‟‟ that allows them to survive in the market. In addition, highly technological innovation was present

in chain hotels and hotels under management contract. Human capital skills and abilities showed an important

role in successful innovation. The study also found that innovation activity was positively related to

performance as evidenced by the generation of more rents at innovative hotels. However, the literature showed a

shortage of empirical studies in organisational creativity in the hospitality sector, although a few studies

investigated creativity, employee creativity or innovation rather than organisational creativity. Therefore, there

is a need to investigate organisational creativity in the hospitality industry.

Despite the absence of empirical studies in the relationship between creativity and innovation, Heunks (1998)

supported the view that creativity was related to innovation in 200 organisations from six countries in European

Union. He revealed that creativity had a significant positive relationship with product innovation in old

organisations (over 32 years old), but creativity may also foster process innovation. Creativity tended to have

some specific personal backgrounds: risk-taking, challenges and entrepreneurship, whereas, innovation had

other aspects: risk-taking, education, self-confidence, future orientation, leadership, external capital and

information. Consequently, risk-taking is the only personal background that is common to both creativity and

innovation. More comprehensive results are presented by Prajogo et al. (2004), who argued that creativity and

idea generation had a significant and positive relationship with both product innovation and process innovation

in manufacturing and non-manufacturing organisations based on managerial perspectives, but had a stronger

relationship with product innovation than with process innovation. The study also found that process and

product innovation are strongly related to each other. As a result, organisations need to develop creativity in

order to promote process and product innovation.

Some scholars (i.e. Forbes and Domm, 2004; Montes et al., 2003) claimed that high levels of employee

creativity was necessary for implementing innovation, developing new services/products and continuously

improving internal processes. Swann and Birke (2005) showed that creativity is considered to be a part of the

organisational climate or culture that could enhance innovation. Several empirical evidences were provided by

other studies that confirmed the relationship between creativity and innovation in general rather than service

innovation performance in particular. For example, Amabile (1988) argued that employee creativity-relevant

skills significantly impact on innovation within organisations. Amabile (1997) confirmed the role of creativity to

creating innovation. Furthermore, Miron et al. (2004) argued that creativity positively affected innovation at the

implementation stage, thus creativity had a significant positive relationship with innovation.

Bharadwaj and Menon (2000) investigated the impact of creativity mechanisms on innovation within a large

number of manufacturing and service organisations in the US. They revealed that the presence of both

individual and organisational creativity mechanisms led to the highest level of innovation. The study suggested

that a high level of organisational creativity mechanisms with a low level of individual creativity mechanisms

led to significantly superior innovation performance than low levels of both individual and organisational

creativity mechanisms. They provided empirical evidence that organisational efforts at creativity had a positive





impact on innovation. Forbes and Domm (2004) claimed that high levels of employee productivity are required

for developing new services and products and continuously improving internal processes. While, Hu et al.

(2009) found that Employee Service Innovation Behaviour (ESIB) was significantly and positively related to

New Service Development (NSD).


The current study aims to explore the relationship between employee service innovation behaviour and new

Service development in the hotel industry. In order to fill the gap in the literature, the present study suggests a

proposed model as shown in Figure 1.

Figure 1: A Proposed Model of the Study

Source: The Researcher

In the study model, the hypothesis was developed to test the relationship among the variables, and Figure

1displays the following hypothesis:

H1: Employee service innovation behaviour is positively related to new service development.

Variables’ Measurements: Innovation instrument is comprised of two parts. The first part will explore

employees‟ perceptions of service innovation performance (i.e. employee service innovation behaviour, new

service development) at their hotel, this part contained 14 statements to investigate innovative environment in

order to measure service innovation performance. All items in this scale were adapted from Hu et al.‟s (2009)

instrument using a six-point Likert scale ranging from 1 “Strongly Disagree” to 6 “Strongly Agree”, which

describe two dimensions:

1. Employee Service Innovation Behaviour (ESIB) contained six statements (Sip1, Sip 3, Sip 5, Sip 7, Sip 10,

Sip 13).

2. New Service Development (NSD) contained eight statements (Sip 2, Sip 4, Sip 6, Sip 8, Sip 9, Sip 11, Sip

12, Sip 14).

Finally, the second part contained ten statements about demographic profiles (gender, age, nationality, social

status, and education), hotel name, experience, organisational position, department and monthly salary, which

were developed by the researcher.

Sample: The target population contains all employees who work at Jordanian resort hotels around the Dead Sea,

Gulf of Aqaba and in Petra, since all Jordanian resort hotels are located in these locations. A purposive sampling

was used to obtain only four- and five-star resort hotels, which have appropriate characteristics that meet the

purpose of this study (Zikmund, 2003). Around 22 four- and five-star resort hotels are considered as destination

resort hotels in Jordan were selected to participate in this study which had a total number of 4,179 employees in

2011 (Jordanian Ministry of Tourism, 2011). The sampling frame in this study contained all line employees. The

researcher will approach the subjects in this sampling frame through a contact with their Human Resource (HR)

managers. Furthermore, a random sampling technique will be selected to choose the study participants in order

to obtain a representative sample for population (Sekaran, 2003), and to ensure that selecting the sample will be

at random from sampling frame (Saunders et al., 2009).

Data Collection: The study scales were adapted from the western context based on English versions, while the

study context used the Arabic language. Hence, it was necessary to conduct two pilot tests, one on the English

version and another on the Arabic version. The first pilot study was conducted in English version with people

speaking and understanding English language very well, ten employees working in five-star resort hotels in

Jordan were asked to complete the study‟s questionnaire. The majority of respondents completed the

questionnaire without any confusion or need for more clarification. Based on the respondents‟ evaluations, the

researcher modified and developed the statements of questionnaire in order to be understandable and applicable

in the hotel industry.

Employee Service innovation Behaviour

New Service Development H1




On the other hand, since Arabic is the mother language of the people in Jordan, and due to the fact that not all

employees in the resort hotels could understand the English version, the questionnaire was translated from

English into Arabic by the first qualified person who is speaking English fluently, after that questionnaire was

translated back from Arabic to English by another fluently bilingual person, and then examined to assess the

appropriateness of the translation. This translation was conducted in order to identify and modify inconsistency

between English and Arabic versions (Zikmund, 2003). The second pilot study was conducted by administrating

the questionnaire after the completion of translation and back-translation from English to Arabic, to ten

employees working in five-star resort hotels in Jordan, who agreed to complete the questionnaire in Arabic

version. Thus, ten questionnaires were distributed to employees. The respondents found few misleading words

and unclear statements, and they suggested modifications to some statements. Then, the researcher changed

misleading words and modified some statements regarding respondents‟ feedback in order to avoid ambiguous

statements and misunderstanding those statements.

The research population is made up of all employees in 17 four- and five-star resort hotels in Jordan. This

research used a cross-sectional approach to collect data. Thus, data were collected via a self-administrated

questionnaire. More clarification, 630 questionnaires were distributed to all employees. A total of 346

questionnaires were returned, a response rate of 53.9%. However, as 14 questionnaires were invalid due to

incomplete data, the researcher obtained 332 usable questionnaires. The quantitative data were analysed by

using Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) 21.0 for windows.

RESULTS

Characteristics of the Participating Hotels: This study provides a brief description of the participated hotels

characteristics such as hotel classification, hotel affiliation and hotel management as shown in Table 1.

Table 1: Characteristics of the Participating Hotels (N=17)

Characteristic Number of hotels Percentage

Hotel Classification:

Five –star

Four-star

12 5

71% 29%

Hotel Affiliation:

International chain

Independent hotels

11 6

65% 35%

Hotel Management:

Management contract

Managed by owners

14

3

82%

18%

Demographic Characteristics of Employee Sample: The current study provides a brief description of the

demographic characteristics of the participated employees such as gender, age, nationality, social status,

education level, participants‟ departments and experiences, and monthly salary as shown in Table 2.

Table 2: Demographic Characteristics of Employee Sample (N=332)

Characteristic Percentage

Gender:

Male

Female

83%

17%

Age:

25 years or less

26-35

36-45

46-55

56 years or more

25.3%

59% 13.9%

1.5%

0.3%

Nationality:

Jordanian

Non-Jordanian

96%

4%

Social Status:

Single

Married

Divorced

Widow(er).

52.4% 21.3%

2.7%

1.2%

Education Level:

Less than secondary education

Secondary school graduates

Undergraduate degree

Postgraduate degree

14.2%

31.9%

51.8 %

2.1%

Department:




Front office and housekeeping

Food and beverage

Finance & sales and marketing

Personnel and training

Engineering and maintenance

Other departments

30.7%

40.7% 13.6%

6.3 %

3.9% 4.8%

Experience:

Less than one year

Between 2 and 4 years

Between 5 and 7 years

More than 8 years

18% 44.9%

29.8%

7.3%

Monthly Salary:

Less than JD 300

Between JD 300-449

Between JD 450-600

More than JD 600

45.2 %

39.8%

10.2 % 4.8%

A total number of employees participated in this study was 332. Most participants (83%) were males since

Arabic culture restricts females to work in resort hotels. The majority of participants (84.7%) age 35 years or

less that represents most employees were young people. But most of participants (96%) were Jordanian, and

more than (52.4%) were single. However, (51.8%) of employees were undergraduate degree holders that

indicate most employees were educated people. Most participants (40.7%) are working in food and beverage

department as the main department in hotel. The highest number of participants (44.9%) was 2-4 years of

service since some unskilled jobs in resorts need inexperienced people. Most participants (45.2%) had monthly

salary less than JD 300.

Scales purification: This study adapted existing western scales, which showed good reliability and validity

results through different contexts in previous researches. However, it was necessary to purify these scales due to

this study was conducted in Jordan as a non-western country. Factor analysis carried out through two ways:

exploratory to discover the set of variables underlie the common factors of measurement scales, and

confirmatory to confirm the structure of measurement scales.

Exploratory Factor Analysis: Exploratory Factor Analysis (EFA) was conducted in order to reduce the

number of items in each scale due to poor loadings or cross loadings, as well to establish the factors underlying

each construct in the innovation survey. An assumption analysis was necessary to check the suitability and

factorability of obtained data for exploratory factor analysis and construct validity. Table 3 shows, the results of

factor analysis assumptions for creativity instrument based on three criteria as suggested by Hair et al. (2010),

which are: correlation matrix (r =0.30 or greater), Kasier-Meyer-Olkin (KMO) (0.60 or above), and Bartlett‟s

Test of Sphericity (significant at P <0.05).

Table 3: Factor Analysis Assumptions for Creativity Instrument

Service Innovation Performance

ESIB NSD

Correlation Matrix >.30 >.30

(KMO) 0.862 0.910

Bartlett‟s Test of Sphericity .000 .000

As can be seen from Table 3, a correlation matrix revealed that all constructs have many correlation coefficients

with a value of 0.30 and above, (KMO) value ranging between 0.862 and 0.910, which are above the 0.60

recommended cut off point, and Bartlett‟s Test of Sphericity reached statistical significance for all variables

(p=.000). These results confirmed the construct validity for all scales of creativity instrument, and therefore

using factor analysis was acceptable.

Based on the previous results, the 14 items of the innovation questionnaire representing two constructs of

service innovation performance were subjected to EFA. Principle Components Analysis (PCA) using SPSS

version 18 was performed for each scale separately, all items in scales were used in EFA before eliminating any

item for maximizing reliability. A factor loading of 0.40 was used as the cut-off point in this study.

1. Employee Service Innovation Behaviour: Employee Service Innovation Behaviour (ESIB) was

represented by six items in the original scale. Factor analysis was conducted using varimax rotation to test

the underlying structure of ESIB as shown in Table 5.

Table 5: Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis (ESIB)

Scale N of Items Item Item Loading N of Factors Eigenvalue % of Variance Cumulative %




Component

ESIB 6 Sip1

Sip3

Sip5 Sip7

Sip10

Sip13

.743

.833

.835

.699

.760

.785

1

3.626 60.431 60.431

As can be seen from Table 5, one extracted factor obtained Eigenvalue was highly greater than 1, with a high

percentage of variance 60.431%. ESIB items showed very high factor loadings were ranged from 0.699 to

0.835. Consequently, the factor analysis confirmed that the items in ESIB scale formed a single factor.

2. New Service Development: Table 6 shows the results of exploratory factor analysis for eight items of New

Service Development (NSD) scale representing one initial dimension

Table 6: Results of Exploratory Factor Analysis (NSD)

Scale N of Items Item Item Loading N of Factors Eigenvalue % of Variance Cumulative %

Component

NSD 8 Sip2

Sip4 Sip6

Sip8

Sip9 Sip11

Sip12

Sip14

.788

.811

.816

.837

.788

.820

.805

.759

1

5.162 64.530 64.530

Table 6 shows, one extracted factor obtained Eigenvalue greater than 1, with a percentage of variance was

64.530%. NSD items had high factor loadings exceeding 0.40 ranged from 0.759 to 0.837. These results

confirmed one-dimensional structure of NSD.

Confirmatory Factor Analysis: Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) aims to test hypotheses based on previous

studies or on relevant theory. Factor loadings for the variables are hypothesized, and then proceeds to fit these

loading in the target matrix (Kline, 1994). Confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) was conducted to confirm the

underlying structures of each construct. The goodness of fit tests assess by different fit indices, are: Normed

Chi-Square (X²/df); PCLOSE; Tucker Lewis Index (TLI); Normed Fit Index (NFI); the Comparative Fit Index

(CFI); the Incremental Fit Index (IFI); and the root mean square error of approximation (RMSEA) (Joreskog,

1993; Kline, 2005).

1. Employee Service Innovation Behaviour: The six observed items of ESIB scale were initially subjected

to CFA as specified by EFA. The initial results of ESIB model revealed that X²/df and RMSEA had high

values and greater than the recommended values. As a result, this model was not accepted, and therefore the

second run was necessary to improve the model fit. The results of second run after deleting two items

(Sip7, Sip10) from ESIB scale. However, the results showed that CFI, IFI, NFI and TLI greater than the

recommended 0.90, RMSEA and X²/df had high values but still within the acceptable level, and PCLOSE

value was 0.082 which is greater than 0.05. As a result, the modified ESIB model had the good fit.

2. New Service Development: The NSD scale was subjected to CFA, the initial results of NSD model

revealed that X²/df, RMSEA had high values and greater than the acceptable values, as well TLI, PCLOSE

had values less than the recommended values. Therefore, four items (Sip2, Sip6, Sip8, Sip11) were deleted

from NSD scale to obtain an acceptable model. The results of second run found that all fit measures had

excellent values, specifically, the values of CFI, IFI, NFI and TLI were one or close to one and greater than

the recommended 0.90, RMSEA value was 0.020, PCLOSE value was 0.574, and finally, X²/df was 1.132.

Consequently, the good fit for NSD model was confirmed.

Reliability and Validity of the Creativity Instrument: The research instrument has to be valid and reliable for

data collection, and therefore it was necessary to examine reliability and validity for each scale in the innovation

instrument. Innovation instrument made up one part. Innovation service performance was developed consisted

of two scales (i.e. employee service innovation behaviour, new service development). These scales were

evaluated for reliability and validity, and some items were eliminated to maximise scale reliability.

1. Reliability Test: Reliability refers to the extent to which measurement scales provide a consistent result.

This study used Cronbach‟s alpha as a reliability coefficient. The acceptable value of Cronbach‟s alpha

should be above 0.70 as suggested by Nunnally (1978) or at least above 0.60 as recommended by DeVellis




(1991). An internal consistency analysis was conducted using the SPSS programme for each scale, and

overall scores of scales. Following, are the reliability results of each scale used in the innovation

instrument.

A. Employee Service Innovation Behaviour Scale: Table 8 revealed the reliability results of ESIB

scale, which includes four items.

Table 8: ESIB Scale Reliability

N of

items

Cronbach's

Alpha

Item-Total

Correlation

ESIB 4 .849

Sip1: At work, I seek new service techniques and methods. .678

Sip3: At work, I sometimes come up with innovative and creative ideas. .764

Sip5: At work, I sometimes propose my creative ideas and try to convince

others.

.710

Sip13: Overall, I consider myself a creative member of my team. .606

Table 8 pointed out that ESIB scale had an acceptable alpha reliability coefficient (α =.849), with inter-item

correlation greater than (.50). This scale is therefore accepted as a measure of ESIB.

B. New Service Development Scale:The internal consistency of NSD was estimated using the

Cronbach‟s alpha as shown in Table 9.

Table 9: NSD Scale Reliability

N of

items

Cronbach's

Alpha

Item-Total

Correlation

NSD 4 .841

Sip4: All departments and units in this hotel interact well to develop new business. .611

Sip9: Our team is professional in developing new services or new products. .674

Sip12: The new services developed by our team are effective with respect to timing, resources and process.

.753

Sip14: The hotel‟s current manpower is sufficient for the new services that have to

be developed.

.667

As can be seen from Table 9, NSD scale had an acceptable alpha reliability coefficient (α =.841), and inter-

item correlation ranged from 0.611 to 0.753. Therefore, there was no need to drop any item from the scales of

creativity instrument to improve its reliability. As a result, creativity instrument had an acceptable internal

consistency because Cronbach‟s alpha scores were above the recommended 0.60 level, and therefore the

reliability for creativity instrument was good and acceptable for this work. Accordingly, the study‟ scales were

judged to be reliable.

2. Validity of Scales: The scales of innovation instrument had content validity due to the study used valid and

reliable scales were all derived from an extensive review of the literature and have being used previously, as

well detailed evaluations by academicians and practicing managers, for instance, innovation instrument has

been piloted two times by experts of practitioners and academics as discussed earlier to ensure content

validity.

Construct validity was confirmed for each scale separately by using assumptions of factor analysis to ensure the

suitability of gathered data for factor analysis. The results indicated that all constructs have many correlation

coefficients with a value greater than 0.30, (KMO) value ranging between 0.862 and 0.91, which are above the

recommended value 0.60, and Bartlett‟s Test of Sphericity values for all constructs were significant at the level

(P=.000). These results confirmed that all scales of the innovation instrument had construct validity.

Another type of validity, criterion-related validity, was conducted for innovation instrument separately.

Furthermore, criterion-related validity for innovation instrument was a measure of how well scale of ESIB is

related to measures of NSD (the criteria). Bivariate correlation (Pearson) analysis was conducted for testing

criterion validity by investigating the interrelationships between the independent and dependent variable sets:

ESIB(predictor set) and NSD (the criterion set). The Bivariate correlation coefficients are listed in Table 10.




Table 10: Bivariate Correlation Matrices

Mean SD ESIB NSD

ESIB 4.45 1.03 1.000

NSD 4.33 1.07 .721** 1.000

** Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed), N=332

As can be seen from Table 10, the correlation within innovation scales (criterion set), between the predictor set

and criterion set were significant at the level (P=.000). As a result, this confirmed that innovation instrument had

criterion-related validity. Based on the above results, the scales of innovation instrument had the three types of

validity: content validity, criterion-related validity, and construct validity. Consequently, the scales in this

instrument are valid and reliable for the further analyses.

Distribution of the Study Dimensions in Creativity Instrument: After confirming the reliability and validity

of the instrument scales, descriptive analysis was conducted for extracted dimensions and overall scales. Due to

this study used different scales, and therefore each scale has a different midpoint. Table 11 shows descriptive

statistics, including, mean, standard deviation, Skewness and Kurtosis.

Table 11: Distribution of the Dimensions of the Creativity Instrument

Scale Scale Extracted

dimensions

Mean SD Skewness* Kurtosis* N of

Items

Service Innovation 1-6 ESIB 4.45 1.03 -.808 .629 4

NSD 4.33 1.07 -.615 .095 4

*The cut point between -1 and 1. SD: Standard Deviation.

Innovation instrument was used to measure three main scales, these scales were measured based on employees‟

perceptions. Two scales, ESIB and NSD, were used to measure service innovation performance. More

specifically, the results revealed that employees perceived themselves as being highly oriented in their

behaviour toward service innovation (mean=4.45, SD=1.03). Finally, employees felt they could provide new

service development (NSD) (mean=4.33, SD=1.07).

On the other hand, the distribution of collected data is supposed to be normal for statistical analysis. Two

statistical measures, Skewness and Kurtosis, can be used to measure the normality of variables. Table 11 found

that all variables in the innovation instrument are normally distributed. The values of Skewness and Kurtosis

ranged between -0.808 to 0.629 fell within a range of acceptable values which are -1.0 to +1.0. These results

confirmed the normality of data, and therefore the data are ready for further statistical analyses.

Correlation Analysis: A correlation analysis will be used in this study to test the relationship between

independent and dependent(s). A correlation coefficient was conducted among innovation behaviour and new

service development. The results as shown in Table 10 indicated significant correlations were between ESIB

and NSD, were (r =.721).

Testing the Hypotheses: The current study tested the hypothesis by using a linear regression analysis. The

results of correlation analysis revealed that there were very high significant correlations between all variables of

this study, since the significant level was (P<.05). Hence, a linear regression model was necessary to conduct in

order to indicate the impact of ESIB on NSD as dependent variables.

H1: ESIB is positively related to NSD.

In this study, ESIB as one dimension of service innovation was proposed to have a positive relationship with the

second one (NSD). This hypothesis was tested by a liner regression analysis, and the results are presented in

Table 14.

Table 14: Linear Regression for Impact of ESIB on NSD

Independent Variable Dependent Variable: NSD

R R² F β t Sig.

ESIB .721 .520 357.594 .721 18.910** .000

The regression results showed that ESIB is a good significant predicator of NSD as shown in Table 14, ESIB is

positively related to NSD (β = .721, P<0.01). More specifically, ESIB explains (R²) 52 % of the variance in

NSD. However, the overall statistical results indicated that ESIB positively influenced NSD. Accordingly,

hypothesis 1 is accepted which confirmed the positive relationship between ESIB and NSD.

DISCUSSION




Service Innovation Performance (SIP) was measured by using Hu et al.‟s (2009) scale which was developed

from previous scales (i.e. Scott and Brue, 1994; Matear et al., 2004) for measuring SIP in the hotel industry.

More specifically, the SIP scale consisted of two main scales: the Employee Service Innovation Behaviour

(ESIB) scale (6 items) which was originally developed by Scott and Brue (1994) as „individual innovative

behaviour‟ scale using a five-point Likert-type scale ranging from 1 “Not at all” to 5 “To an exceptional degree”

at a research and development (R&D) centre in the US; and the New Service Development (NSD) scale (8

items) which was originally developed by Matear et al. (2004) using a five-point Likert scale ranging from 1

“Strongly disagree” to 5 “Strongly agree” at service organisations in New Zealand.

Contrary to previous studies, Hu et al. (2009) developed SIP, ESIB and NSD scales, in higher-class hotels in a

non-western context, Taiwan, and they used a six-point Likert scale ranging from 1 “Strongly disagree” to 6

“Strongly agree”. From this, they confirmed that the SIP scale is a reliable and valid instrument for measuring

service innovation performance, more specifically in the hotel industry.

Employee Service Innovation Behaviour (ESIB) was measured by six items representing one initial dimension

using a six-point scale ranging from 1 “strongly disagree” to 6 “strongly agree”. The results of EFA in the

current study confirmed that the items of ESIB clearly formed a single factor, as these items showed high item

loadings which ranged from 0.699 to 0.835. Based on the above results, the uni-dimensionality of the ESIB

scale was supported in this study. Moreover, the results of first run of CFA revealed that the ESIB model was

not accepted, and therefore two items (Sip7, Sip10) were dropped from the ESIB scale. The results of the second

run of CFA indicated that fit indices CFI, IFI, NFI and TLI had values greater than the recommended 0.90,

PCLOSE = 0.082, whereas RMSEA and X²/df had high values were 0.10, 4.319 respectively, falling within the

range of the acceptable values. These results confirmed that the ESIB model had a good fit. Furthermore, the

ESIB scale had an acceptable reliability shown by Cronbach‟s alpha being .849 and there was no need to drop

any item to maximise the reliability of the scale, and inter-item correlations for the items ranged from 0.606 to

0.764. The ESIB scale had content validity and construct validity. This scale is therefore accepted as a measure

of ESIB.

Scott and Bruce (1994) confirmed the validity and reliability of the innovative behaviour scale, including six

items, as Cronbach‟s alpha coefficient was (α=0.89). These results were supported by Hu et al. (2009) who

found that all items of ESIB were loaded strongly into one factor with a range of 0.65 to 0.83, and also that

ESIB had a high Cronbach‟s alpha coefficient (α=0.92) indicating a reliable and valid instrument to measure

employee service innovation behaviour in the hotel industry. Chen et al. (2010) confirmed that Scott and

Bruce‟s scale is a reliable scale; they found that the innovative behaviour scale had a high Cronbach‟s alpha

coefficient .88. Similar results were obtained by Vinarski-Peretz et al. (2011), who indicated a Cronbach‟s alpha

for this scale of (α=0.92).

The mean score for ESIB in this study was measured, and found to be (4.45). This indicated that employees in

the sampled hotels had ESIB. These results were supported by Scott and Bruce‟s (1994) findings by using a

five-point scale; they found that R&D professionals rated their ESIB moderately (mean=3.20). In the hotel

industry, Hu et al. (2009) found that employees at higher-class hotels in Taiwan showed ESIB evidenced by the

mean score of ESIB being (4.18).

New Service Development (NSD) was measured by eight items representing one initial dimension using a six-

point scale ranging from 1 “Strongly disagree” to 6 “Strongly agree”. In this study, the results of exploratory

factor analysis for items of the NSD scale indicated that all items were loaded on one factor, and therefore NSD

was confirmed as a one-dimensional scale with high item loadings ranging from 0.759 to 0.837. The results of

the first run of CFA revealed that the NSD model required some improvement due to the values of some fit

indices being less than the recommended values, and therefore four items (Sip2, Sip6, Sip8, Sip11) were deleted

from the NSD scale. On the other hand, the results of the second run confirmed an excellent fit for the NSD

model, with fit measures CFI, IFI, NFI and TLI having excellent values which were greater than the

recommended .90, and other fit indices RMSEA=.020, PCLOSE=.574, X²/df= 1.132 fell perfectly within the

range of acceptable values. This study confirmed that the NSD scale is a reliable scale since it had Cronbach‟s

alpha of (α=0.841), and there was no need to drop any item to improve the scale‟s reliability. For all items, the

item-total correlations ranged from 0.611 to 0.753. Validity was confirmed for the NSD scale in terms of

content validity and construct validity. Thus, the NSD scale was confirmed as a valid and reliable scale.

Matear et al. (2004) used 17 items that were derived from previous studies to measure “new service

development” representing four dimensions, namely, people, process, organisational support and

implementation. They confirmed through exploratory factor analysis that NSD was measured by two




dimensions, organisational support and implementation, and each dimension had four items. Cronbach‟s alpha

coefficient for NSD was (α=0.764). Furthermore, Hu et al. (2009) confirmed the uni-dimensionality of the

NSD scale due to all items being loaded strongly into one factor with a range of 0.63 to 0.90, and they also

confirmed the reliability of the NSD scale since it had a high Cronbach‟s alpha coefficient (α=0.94). As a result,

the NSD scale was a reliable and valid instrument to measure new service development in the hotel industry.

In this study, the mean score for NSD was measured and was found to be (4.33). This indicated that the sampled

hotels had NSD. These results were consistent with Hu et al.‟s (2009) findings, suggesting that employees at

higher-class hotels in Taiwan rated NSD moderately as the mean score of NSD was (4.03). The findings of this

study were consistent with most scholars (e.g. Amabile, 1988; Heunks, 1998; Bharadwaj and Menon, 2000;

Montes et al., 2003; Prajogo et al., 2004; Forbes and Domm, 2004; Miron et al., 2004; Swann and Birke, 2005)

who argued that organisational creativity had a significant and positive relationship with innovation. Those

scholars claimed that creativity was necessary for implementing innovation, and developing new service. As a

result, organisations need to develop creativity in order to promote innovation. The current study confirmed Hu

et al.‟s (2009) findings; they found that Employee Service Innovation Behaviour (ESIB) was significantly and

positively related to New Service Development (NSD).

CONCLUSIONS

In developing countries like Jordan there is a shortage of creativity studies in general, and particularly in the

hospitality industry. This study attempts to fill that gap by identifying the impact of organisational creativity on

service innovation performance at Jordanian resort hotels. Specifically, individuals with different cultures and

backgrounds show some differences about the need for creativity at work. Therefore, organisational creativity

can vary based on individuals‟ achievements because each individual has a different level of creativity.

Creativity can vary from a slight change at work to total change, whereas innovation refers to the successful

implementation of creativity.

As a result, organisational creativity can impact service innovation performance at hotels. The researcher

concluded that organisational creativity in hotels had a positive impact on both employee service innovation

behaviour and new service development. This study also determined the relationship between employee service

innovation behaviour and new service development in the hotel industry.

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BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGIES IN EMERGENCY

MANAGEMENT: THE CASE OF HOTELS

Ahmad Rasmi AlBattat1 and Ahmad Puad Mat Som

2

1 School of Housing, Building and Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

2 Sustainable Tourism Research Cluster, Universiti Sains Malaysia, Penang, Malaysia

[email protected]

Abstract

The hospitality industry is susceptible to emergencies and disasters and must be managed in order to

mitigate potential impacts. This paper explores biometric technology and their potential usage in the

hospitality industry. This paper reviews the viable biometric technologies and further with a discussion of

their applications in the hospitality industry to enhance security and increase operational efficiency.

Tracking employees and hotel guests may bolster emergency management response time by locating

individuals, ensuring secure areas, and aiding individuals in evacuation procedures. In this study, various

scenarios in which biometrics can be used are explored. The paper concludes with a discussion on the

urgent need for biometric technologies to be installed the hospitality industry to reduce errors and

eliminate potential terrorist activities.

Keywords: Hotel, Biometric Technology, Emergency Management, Mitigation, Planning

INTRODUCTION

Hotel emergencies and safety procedures have become a highly topical issue, especially in the aftermath of

several disasters affected hospitality industry in recent decades. Biometric technologies gained high acceptance

and recognition through Hollywood blockbuster films, and then the increase of security threats gave this

technology widely potential acceptance in science and other research scholars. Meyersa and Millsb (2007)

asserted that the service industry could be enhanced by using biometric technologies to improve safety.

Installing biometrics in the service industry can reduce the cost, likelihood of guest theft, terrorist activities, and

improve operational efficiency and security. Biometric technologies may utilize the safety measurements to

identify and verify the human`s identity (Find Biometrics, 2007). The rapidly expanding industry of biometrics

changes security from physical access, such as door locks, to security formats such as computer passwords and

manual screenings to prevent terrorists and criminals access. Several types of biometrics are now available and

many could be used in the service industry, such as in hotels and aviations. The Economist (2003) mentioned

seven biometric technologies in the market that could be used in the service industry (See Figure1). Reports also

mentioned that biometrics has experienced exponential growth since September 11th

, 2001 until 2007 (See

Figure2).

Figure 1: Biometric Market Share Percentage.

Source: (Economist, 2003)





Figure 2: Biometric Booming 2002-2007.

Source: (Economist, 2003)

Many companies use biometric technology in addition to standard password systems as a layer of additional

identity verification. Some biometrics systems are expensive and sacrifice some measure of personal privacy.

To verify personal face, finger, or iris, hotels must have personal data in files in the verification systems which

can be stolen or made public. But biometric technologies are becoming increasingly popular both as a

standalone security system or added security. This study explores four biometric technologies: face recognition,

fingerprint recognition, hand geometry, and iris scan. An overview of these four technologies and potential

usage in the hotel industry will be discussed.

EMERGENCY, DISASTER IN HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM

In the last few decades, the tourism industry globally, particularly Southeast Asia, has been subjected to several

disasters and emergencies that have caused problems with arrivals and revenue, loss of lives, and multiple

challenges to the governments, public and private sectors (Prideaux, 2004). Emergency situations have been

categorized into natural and man-made disasters. Richardson (1993) asserted that man-made disasters are known

as socio-technical disasters and have four types: technical disasters, transport failure, stadia failure, and

productivity failure.

Since 1970s, scholars from a variety of areas adopted different approaches, statistical data, and case studies to

determine best practices and management styles when dealing with emergencies (Faulkner, 2001). Specific

research was conducted in the tourism industry, including aviation (Henderson, 2008), political unrest

(Lehrman, 1986), terrorist activities in particular destinations such as Northern Ireland (Witt & Moore, 1992)

and Egypt (Aziz, 1995). The Asian financial crisis (Prideaux, 1999) and the event of September 11 generated

further studies in all research fields (Pizam, 2002). The range of topics confirms that the tourism industry faces

great vulnerability to disasters and emergencies (Santana, 2004). In their book, Faulkner et al. (1998) conclude

that tourism is marked by dynamic chaos and turbulence, extracting Faulkner and Russell (1997) who apply the

chaos and complexity theories in tourism. They argue that the dynamism of tourism requires a new paradigm

which can accommodate constant change. Change is evinced in natural and man-made disasters that influence

the tourism industry, alongside shifts in demands and product innovation in supply. The matter which leads

emphasize the importance of emergency management and preparedness, and devices used to mitigate the effect

of any hazard event (Henderson, 2003). This led the researchers to search for why, since two decades hotels

have not used biometric technology when dealing with guests. Experts argue that it is impossible to use when

book the rooms from the websites. However, it could be used in the hotels and resorts, especially when the guest

arrived and check-in procedures.

BIOMETRIC TECHNOLOGIES: THE CURRENT USAGE IN TOURISM AND HOSPITALITY

Facial Recognition: Facial Recognition is accomplished using cameras to capture a person‟s image and

compare it with a stored template. Templates are data used to represent the measurements and compare

subsequent images (National Information Assurance Partnership, 2003). By using these template systems that

include the top of the lip, the bottom of the nose, and the distance between the eyes. This method used

commercially since 1990‟s and gained more attention after September 11 terrorist attacks (National Center for

State Courts, 2003). In hospitality Spangler (2004) mentioned that facial recognition was used by the Borgata




Hotel Casino in the United Stated to identify card cheaters and unwanted guests, they used more than 2,000

cameras to compare images of guests with over 1,500 databases (See Figure 3).

Figure 3: Facial Recognition System Software.

Source: (Kroeker, 2002).

Fingerprint Recognition: The fingerprint is the most commonly known biometric (Jarvis, n.d.). Fingerprint

recognition gained popularity based on the assumption that fingerprints are unique, static, and easy to use. The

propagation of fingerprint recognition helped in solving and providing evidence for criminal cases around the

world. The Biometric Institute (n.d.) defined it as “the use of the ridges and valleys found on the surface tips of

a human finger to identify an individual.” By placing a finger on a scanning device, that acquires an image of

the fingerprint, it is then stored for future use. The Waldrof Towers hotel in New York City installed a

fingerprint recognition system for in-room safes in November 2003 from Elsafe, the global market leader in in-

room security. Hospitality Upgrade (2003) explained the goal of the installation by providing additional guest

security and loss prevention efforts. By placing the finger on the scanner A LED light would flash to indicate

successful enrolment and the safe can then be used (ElSafe, n.d.) (See Figure 4).

Figure 4: Finger Print Scanner System.

Source: (Kroeker, 2002)

Hand & Two-Finger Geometry: Hand & Two-Finger Geometry is used primarily to verify utilizing

measurements such as, three dimensional size, shape, and angles in conjunction with a pin number for a one-to-

one match. This geometry is unique in that the person presents his pin number or data card with squeezing the

pins (See Figure 5). Since 1995, Disney World theme parks, in Orlando, FL, United States utilized this solution

(Davis, 1997) in order to increase the security of annual membership passes for individuals over the age of 10

(Levin, 2001). So, the need arises to use a durable, reliable, and quick solution like finger geometry system.

Wayman (2000) claimed that since the implementation, Disney has had over 20 million transactions.




Figure 5: Hand & Two Finger Geometry Measurements.

Source: (Ross et al., n.d.).

Iris Recognition: The National Center for State Courts (N.D.) theorized in the 1930‟s that iris patterns were

unique and defined it as recognition use feature patterns of the iris for recognition. By capturing an image of the

iris, that image is processed that image using the system which takes a hundred of points of the iris and

compares it to the database for identification. The system is very easy to use; it involves looking into the camera

for a few seconds while the system captures the iris. The iris recognition system did not require any additional

identification cards. The system is reliable and fast enough to do one-to-many match with a high probability, it

can ever detect coloured contacts, eye surgery, and monitors pupil movement to enhance security. A summary

of the pros and cons of the discussed biometrics is presented in (See table 1).

Table 1: Summary of biometric Technologies

Biometric Pros Cons

Face Recognition Can be used covertly

Easy to use

Dual Purpose – can be used as a

security camera

Environmental conditions can

greatly affect matching

Personal features can result in high

failure rates

Finger Print Easy, Fast, Reliable, & well known

One-to-many Matching

Long life span

Suitable for many environments

Degradation of fingerprint: elderly,

manual labor, drying of hand, cut

Requires physical interaction

Not suitable for all environments

Hand Geometry Minimal privacy concerns

Fast & Reliable

Hard to produce

Not static

Awkward & Obtrusive

One to One matching

Iris Easy, Fast, & Reliable

One-to-Many matching

Multi-purpose

Longest life spam

Environment attributes may cause

the camera to not acquire the image

Source: (Meyersa & Millsb, 2007)

DISCUSSION

Theories of disaster management assume that events move through several stages of actions until they reach the

final disaster. Turner (1976) identified seven stages and Fink (1986) four. These stages can be summarized into

three broad stages of pre-disaster, disaster, and post-disaster. Faulkner (2001) presented a tourism disaster

management framework, presenting elements related to pre-event, prodormal, emergency, intermediate, long

term/recovery and resolution stages. The conceptualization would be appropriate to hospitality studies after

some modifications to the process proposed by Henderson (2003) mentioned in the (See figure 6).

A pre-event stage, when hotels can implement preventive measures to ensure maximum safety and security,

should be the ongoing standard practices in the hospitality industry. Biometric technologies can increase

emergency preparedness and security, and reduce the chance terrorists have of using false names and stolen

passports to check-in the hotels and pursue their terrorist activities. Guests have to spend some time in the

reception area to complete the check-in procedures and sign some forms. This is enough time to check all guests

using biometric technologies. Hotels may use face recognition, fingerprints and iris recognition to identify the

passport holder who wants to check-in, which give more accurate, reliable, and perform one-to-many matches.

Governments should use these biometric technologies when issuing passports and uploading them onto the

Interpol network, and in connecting it with all related organizations, hotel companies and airports.




Figure 6: Stages in Hotel disaster management.

Adopted from (Henderson, 2003)

Cassedy (1991) clarified that tourism and hospitality organizations have been already displayed their plans and

prepared themselves for disasters and emergencies; while, aviation‟s must plan for emergencies and install

necessary technologies to secure passengers and crew (IATA, 1998). Experts in disaster management, stress the

necessity of establishing a task force to recognize potential terrorist zones, devise preventive measures, and

formule coping policies when dealing with disasters. Biometric technology may be the wave of future security

to hospitality and tourism companies. Furthermore, biometric technologies and its usage may exceed the

experts‟ imagination.

Considering all scenarios, as a guest in a hotel or resort upon arrival you check-in by providing you essential

information and placing your finger on a scanner that capture your fingerprint while a camera captures your

facial image and iris pattern. The hotel employee informs you that the only key you required to use in the room

and hotel facilities is your finger and iris. After check-in, guest may proceed to the elevator using his finger to

access the floor where his room located. The room door is equipped with iris scanner that captures his iris and

identifies that he is the same user for the room the matter will allow him to open the door. After viewing the

room, guest may decide to park his rented car by placing his finger on the scanner to open the parking gate

which allows him to park his car without the need for a paper ticket. After having some rest guest decide to use

the business centre to check his mails, he can simply access the computer using his registered fingerprint. In the

evening, guest may decide to use the gym facilities and have access by his iris. On the way back to his room,

guest may but soft drink from vending machine using his iris.

The application of biometrics in the hotel and tourism is indeed viable. Biometric technologies have the

potential opportunity to enhance safety and security and increase efficiency. With regards to fingerprint, face

recognition, and iris recognition, may provide a good opportunity to assist local and federal agencies to prevent

crime and terrorism (Chin, 2003). For example, the federal government related agencies may send biometric

data of terrorists to the hotel and tourism agencies to add to database that will „red flag‟ the terrorist if they

attempt to check-in to the hotel or resort. In addition, loge created by biometric recognition systems will help

assist with tracking and reducing theft by employees and guests as well as misusage of a hotel property (Tinari,

2003). The tracking of guests and employees may help emergency management response time by locating

individuals on the premises and ensuring areas are secured and clear. For instance, in the case of fire emergency

it will be easier to locate individuals aiding in evacuation procedures.

Biometric technologies may improve information technology security while reducing IT costs. Biometric

technologies may reduce cyber-crimes using hotel computers, by having unique guest accounts rather than

anonymous access. Furthermore, the employees and guest biometrics would become the password, eliminating

the need for changing passwords. This may improve operational efficiency and increase security. Housekeeping

may be more efficient by knowing the guest entry and exit real time, and then show the vacant rooms by using

portable devices to update the room status. Record keeping of employees can be tied into the biometric system

to eliminate redundant systems, increasing the security and reliability of employee time cards. Biometric

technologies may improve competitive advantage by offering distinguishable services, thereby increasing guest

loyalty and satisfaction as well as attracting new guests.

CONCLUSION

Hotel emergencies and safety procedures have become a highly topical issue in recent years, biometric

technologies gained high acceptance and consideration with the growth of security threats spread to technology,

science, and other research scholars. Several types of biometrics are now available in the market and many

could be used in the service industry such as hotels and resorts. Man-made disasters affected the hotel industry




known as socio-technical disasters that can occur in four types: technical disasters, transport failure, stadia

failure, and productivity failure. As mentioned by many scholars, disaster management can be categorized into

three major stages; pre-disaster, during-disaster, and post-disaster. Hotels may implement preventive measures

to ensure maximum safety and security. Biometric technologies may used as the ongoing standard practices in

the hospitality industry to increase the preparedness and security, reducing the chance of terrorists using fake

passports to check-in and pursue their terrorist activities. Governments may use biometrics when issuing

passports and upload it on the Interpol network, and then connect it with all related organizations, hotels,

tourism companies and airlines.

Further research needs to be conducted on the impact of biometrics in hotel and tourism industry. Hospitality

organizations may have a logical approach for implementing biometric technologies to improve service quality,

customer relation, and employee efficiency. Further, hospitality organizations should be aware of guest‟s

privacy, attitude towards, and trust factors that may surround the use of biometric technologies. Privacy may be

an obstacle for organizations to overcome, particularly since this technology is not widely used in customer

markets.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to extend their appreciation to the Universiti Sains Malaysia for the Research University

Grant under the Sustainable Tourism Research Cluster (STRC) entitled 'Tourism Planning' [Grant No.

1001/PTS/8660013], and for USM fellowship Scheme which made this study possible.

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EXPLORING CRUISE PASSENGERS’ DEMOGRAPHICS, EXPERIENCE

AND SATISFACTION WITH CRUISING THE WESTERN CARIBBEAN

David Mc.A Baker, PhD.

Associate Professor of Hospitality Management,

Department of Business Administration

Tennessee State University, Avon Williams Campus

College of Business, Suite J-405

330 10th

Avenue North

Nashville, TN 37203-3401

[email protected]

Abstract

Each year millions of people vacation aboard cruise ships, some carrying thousands of passengers and crew

members. These ships are small, floating cities that offer many options for food and entertainment and calling

at various ports in the Caribbean. This study aims to explore cruise passengers experience and their

satisfaction. Exploratory factor analysis was performed and revealed that the "environment factor" had the

most influence on cruise passengers’ experience. Subsequently, a multiple regression was conducted to

identify variables that affect passengers’ satisfaction; clean unpolluted environments and sun-sea-sand

continue to be the top variables affecting tourists’ satisfaction in the Caribbean. Based on these findings

recommendations are made to the cruise companies and Caribbean governments in order to have more

effective marketing campaigns and to retain and/or attract cruise passengers through the offering of positive

means in the cruise experience.

Key words: Caribbean cruise, demographics, experience, satisfaction, cruise passengers

INTRODUCTION

The cruise industry is the fastest-growing category in the leisure travel market. Since 1980, the industry has

experienced an average annual passenger growth rate of approximately 7.2% per annum. A record of just about 20

million passengers in the world cruised in 2011, with 11.6 million North American guests. Coupled with an annual

occupancy percentage that exceeded 103% in 2011, this annual passenger growth for 2011 shows an industry where

demand continues to surpass supply, even in trying economic environments. In 2011 alone, 12 new ships debuted

from Cruise Lines International Association (CLIA) member lines, with guest capacities ranging from 162 to 3,652

passengers sailing the world‟s waters for the first time. According to the Florida Caribbean Cruise Association

(FCCA), the industry‟s growth is headlined by the Caribbean, which continues to rank as the dominant cruise

destination, accounting for 39.8% of all itineraries in 2011, versus 41.3% in 2010, 37.02% in 2009, 37.25% in 2008,

41.02% in 2007 and 46.69% in 2006. Passenger numbers continue to remain consistent and high for the Caribbean,

despite other rising cruise destinations. Carnival Cruise Lines is the largest cruise line in the world based on

passengers carried (3.8 million in 2009), and is the flagship brand of Carnival Corporation & plc. A total of six new

ships will be added this year 2013 with a gain in passenger capacity of 14,074 including the 3,600 passenger Royal

Princess, the 4,010 passenger Norwegian Breakaway, 2,192-guest AIDAstella and 3,502 berth MSC Preziosa.

Looking out further, 13 more new cruise ships will add 39,297 lower berths or 8.9% to passenger capacity by the

end of 2015 and is expected to generate $3.2 billion more in annual revenue for the cruise industry. The worldwide

cruise passenger market can be seen in Table 1.

Despite the increasing research interest on cruising, there is rather limited research on cruise visitors‟ experience in

Caribbean ports of call. To address past research negligence, this study attempts to provide a better understanding

about cruise passengers experience and satisfaction. There are about 32 islands in the Caribbean that are populated.

Many of them have developed their infrastructure and service sectors. The main cities where the cruise ports are

located offer a wide range of tourist attractions, shopping, entertainment, restaurants and bars. The Caribbean also

builds its distinctive image and identity on its sun, sea, sand. The history of the region dates back to the middle of

the 15th century and its known for its rich cultural history. The region has a wide diversity of resources that are

suitable for tourism, each at varying degrees of development or attractiveness. Tourism products in the cities range

from cultural heritage attractions, urban visitor resources and recreational and health resources. In terms of its

architecture, the Caribbean has retained a number of historic buildings and areas that represents its past, duty-free

shopping, dining and entertainment in the Caribbean are also emerging to become a price competitive shopping





destination with international quality. The main cities have developed many shopping centers including new retail

formats such as hypermarkets, duty-free shopping outlets and discount stores located at the cruise ports. Parks,

recreational facilities and the rain forests have also been promoted to attract eco-tourists from the recreational and

leisure segments.

While the development of the cruise business signify an extremely successful business model, the cruise sector also

faces several significant challenges, such as an exceptionally competitive commercial environment, concerns about

over-capacity, concerns about the marine environments and the destinations ability to cater for new larger ships.

Similarly, while destinations seek to embrace the industry's expansion, they also have to manage the often-diverse

needs of communities at the same time as protecting the local environment and minimizing any costs associated with

being a sustainable cruise destination (Lester & Weeden, 2004). Of further consideration here is the relationship

between the number and size of vessels, with effective port planning and collaborative harbor expansion hugely

important for managing cruise activity, especially in popular destinations (McCarthy, 2006). Moreover, the

industry's continued investment in resort-style ships highlights the enclave nature of these leisure spaces (Wood,

2000), calling into question whether it is the ship or the destination that is important to passenger satisfaction.

Indeed, while destinations are integral to the cruise concept and remain a prominent factor in consumer decision-

making when selecting a cruise vacation (CLIA, 2008), it is argued by some that itineraries and ports of call are

playing a reduced role in the overall consumer experience (Keynote, 2008).

Table 1. Worldwide Cruise Passengers Market

Year North America Europe Rest of the World Total Cruise Passengers % Growth Worldwide

2000 4,364,470 1,947,780 901,750 7,214,000 22.94%

2002 5,882,000 2,162,500 605,500 8,650,000 19.91%

2004 6,328,300 2,824,200 1,307,500 10,460,000 20.92%

2006 7,263,630 3,241,620 1,500,750 12,006,000 14.78%

2008 9,546,295 4,260,330 1,972,375 15,779,000 31.43%

2010 11,144,705 4,973,670 2,302,625 18,421,000 16.74%

2012 11,616,000 6,284,000 2,160,000 20,060,000 8.90%

Source: Cruise Line International Association, Florida Caribbean Cruise Association, Cruise Market Watch

LITERATURE REVIEW: CRUISE PASSENGERS EXPERIENCE

The typical Caribbean cruises make calls at different ports in the islands. All places and landscapes are individually

experienced, as it is the individuals alone that see them through the lens of their attitudes, experiences, and

intentions and from their unique circumstances (Lowenthal, 1961). Places are differentiated because they involve a

concentration of intentions, attitudes, purposes and experience. Steele (1981) notes that experience of place can

never really be described as simply a function of its physical attributes. According to Steele (1981), the types of

place experience are; immediate feelings and thoughts, view of the world, occupational experience intimate

knowledge of one spot, memories and fantasies, recognition or newness, personal identification with someone‟s

“spot”, sense of accomplishment or blockage caused by the setting, sense of enjoyment, fun, or displeasure. Steele

(1981) further elaborates that an individual describes a place through these elements: 1) Physical features,

immediate surrounding with physical elements; physical features affect feelings as well as activities 2) Social

features, individual‟s relationship with other people and social institutions; the social context helps to determine the

impact of the physical setting 3) The degree to how people differentiate places, the links between place and activity,

and the expectation of finding certain people in certain places indicate how a physical location becomes a „place‟

rather than simply a location (Canter,1977)

Place in tourism holds a wide range of meaning as it does not only interact and relate to the locals of that particular

place, but also experienced by visitors that come to the place. Relph (1976) argues that „an inauthentic attitude to

place is nowhere more clearly expressed than in tourism, for in tourism, individual and authentic judgment about

places is nearly always subsumed to expert or socially accepted opinion, or the act and means of tourism become

more important that the places visited. He notes that it seems for many people, traveling is less to experience unique

and different places than to collect those places, especially on film. This phenomenon is due the „mass culture‟ that

is a result of designs that are formulated from above by manufacturers, governments, and professional designers

guided and communicated through mass media. Hence, products and places that are the same or similar are created.

Hall and Page (1999) also describe tourist experience as the result of the tourist ability to tolerate behavior of others,

context and pattern of activities, motivation, expectation, perception, level of use and social situations. As described

by Ryan (1995), the tourist experience is influenced by several different factors, which area: travelling experience,




destination attributes, the nature of attractions with individuals or certain groups, individual‟s responsive mechanism

and personal factors. The character of place is part and parcel of the destination attributes. They are the elements,

both tangible and intangible, that offer the experience to the tourist. The tourist‟s personal factors, on the other hand,

influence their beliefs or become the basis of what is considered important to them, in any aspects.

Therefore understanding the experience and behavior of cruise passengers as they undertake activities in urban

destinations is foundational to understanding the ensuing impacts that occur and how key elements of the cruise

experience can serve the visitors‟ needs and meet their expectations. Experience and behavior issues are also linked

to economic and spatial considerations of the tourism industry through product delivery and the economic benefits

realized from visitors. Similarly, visitor experience and behavior will influence governance and planning issues that

guide infrastructure and management aspects at the Caribbean destinations. Designing places, whether it is for

public or private uses, is about the interaction of places and people. In tourism, designing tourist attractions or

destinations is ultimately about the interaction of places and tourists. It is a matter of harmonizing the needs of the

developers with the demands of the users. Designing tourist attractions is not just about designing buildings, cruise-

ports and physical spaces, but what is also vital is the way the tangible elements of the attraction is designed that

will shape the intangible visitor experience (Swarbrooke, 2002). Gunn (1994) suggests that travelers go to any

destination because of its special qualities of place, as every destination possesses a varied set of geographical

factors, traditions, relationship to markets and host characteristics. Numerous literatures have suggested the

importance of place-making or creating a sense of place in building an identity for the attraction (Gunn, 1994;

Canter, 1977; Bell, 1999; Potteiger et al., 1998).

Currently, research that deals with landscape architecture and tourism is still at its infancy stage. In her study,

Zakariya(2006) found that the primary factors that attract tourists to visit gardens are comfort and beauty of the

gardens. Comfort and beauty include cleanliness, comfortable surroundings, ample facilities, nice scenery,

architecture, landscape and aesthetic values. Additionally, in a study conducted by Asra (2005), only several

landscape elements were found to be most important to the tourists. For example, provision of landscape elements

such as gazebo, entrance, signage, jetty, lighting, walkway, rubbish bin, information board, map and design concept

was considered one-dimension elements that must be present in order to satisfy the needs of the tourists. These

studies have highlighted some of the important findings that share the common ground between the field of

landscape architecture and tourism, where physical design meets tourist experience and satisfaction. It is all about

creating a place for tourists that they can enjoy and experience, place making is the retention of the essence of the

place while giving it new physical and psychological meaning (Gunn, 1994). In creating places for tourism, it is

important to focus on the characteristics of the place that appeal to the tourists, as the environment created will

influence the value of the experience gained by the tourists. Therefore, a high degree of tourist satisfaction is

expected to be generated from a distinct and positive tourist experience.

THE PORT OF CALL AND CRUISE PASSENGERS’ EXPERIENCE

Vacation cruises are defined as “the transportation of pleasure-seeking travelers on ocean voyages offering one or

more glamorous ports of call (Kendall, 1986). These ports of call are destinations serving multiple functions that

consist the primary reasons for travellers to choose specific cruises. According to Henthorne (2000) cruise lines

select particular ports providing their customers with positive in port experiences and “are willing to change

itineraries and drop specific ports of call if an inordinate number of customers experience dissatisfaction (p.247).”

Thus, as dissatisfactory aspects decrease the probability of a cruise to be perceived as enjoyable by passengers

increases, this in turn will affect future return intentions (Duman and Mattila, 2005). In the words of Gabe, Lynch,

and McConnon (2006): “cruise vacations typically expose passengers to multiple ports, and characteristics of the

travellers and their experience in a given port may influence the likelihood of a return visit (p. 282).” Typically,

cruise passengers derive benefits from participating in activities while on a port of call, mainly because activities

provide novelty or change to daily routine, relief from stress and the possibility to escape from personal problems

and/or difficulties (Andriotis, Agiomirgianakis, and Mihiotis, 2007). In other words, activities provide travelers with

opportunities for certain physical, mental, and psychological rewards (Ross and Iso-Ahola, 1991), and therefore play

a vital role on tourists‟ overall satisfaction (Euthimiadou, 2001). Along with the economic effects associated with

cruise passengers and crew member expenditures, the ports of call provide the cruise passengers with a very

important part of the entire cruise experience and satisfaction.

CAPTURING EXPERIENCES

Tourists take photographs of their experiences for a number of reasons. Images convey the experience of the person

who captured it because the image provides a record of how they saw and interpreted the world, the people and




places in it and the meanings and associations that their experience conjured up (Markwell 2000). Photography is

often used as proof that the experience was had (Markwell 1997). That is, it is a way in which a person can

communicate an experience they have had in a particular place and time to an audience in another place and time

(Crang 1997). The image becomes a keepsake and memory of the experience; it ties the images to the real world as

proof to second and third parties or to the traveler themselves (Crang 1997; Van Dijck 2008). In doing so the

photograph forms part of their process of communication and identity formation (Van Dijck 2008). While recording

or collecting experience is one dimension of photography, Sontag (1978) also points to the more phenomenological

nature of the tourists‟ photographic experience. Photography records also shape the cruise experience. Seeking

opportunities for the „shot‟ changes the nature of the encounter, a change from the visual, aural and visceral toward a

more technically mediated encounter. Sontag (1978) further suggests that doing something, a type of working at

experience, also „appeases the anxiety which the work-driven feel about not working when they are on vacation and

supposed to be having fun‟ (p. 10).

The purpose of analyzing tourist images is to try and understand the types of experiences that tourists have for as

Sontag (1978, p. 3) notes „photographs really are experience captured‟. This idea draws from the notion of the

„circle of representation‟ (Jenkins 2003). According to Jenkins, the idea of visual images circulating within a culture

and becoming imbued with particular meanings is an important part of the experience, associations and values are

not new and although it is referenced in different terms, it is common across a number of disciplines. At the centre

of this circle are the images projected through advertising such as an image of the Old San Juan Fortress in Puerto

Rico, Dunns River Falls Ocho Rios in Jamaica, Harrison's Caves in Barbados, Brimstone Hill Fortress National Park

in St.Kitts and Bath Springs in Nevis. When people visit the destination in which they have previously seen the

advertised image they are likely to capture their own image of that attraction, through the medium of photography.

Knowledge gained from understanding the importance of, and meanings given to, the images people capture can

inform marketing campaigns that suit the types of experiences marketers know people will enjoy and want to take

home with them. However, the meaning intended by the photographer and the meaning the observer derives from

the image may be different. Clearly the observer can only interpret „implied meaning‟ from an image. This implied

meaning is both personally and culturally determined from the experience.

FACTORS AFFECTING THE CRUISE EXPERIENCE

There are many factors that affect the cruise passenger experience, more specifically the food and beverage on the

ship and at the destinations; entertainment, customer service, tours, itinerary and shopping are some of the strong

predictors of the cruise experience and the subsequent overall satisfaction. According to the literature, low-

experience individuals, who are focused on developing social and interpersonal relationships, are particularly

attentive to interactions with other individuals in order to understand role demands and expectations (Rapp,

Ahearne, Mathieu, & Schillewaert, 2006). In addition, because customers interact with other customers in a

relatively tightly coupled manner, they contribute more cooperative and collaborative efforts and receive more social

rewards (Seers et al., 1995). However, as customers gain experience, they are better able to evaluate the different

service offerings given by the organization (Bell, Auh, & Smalley, 2005). In other words, high-experience

customers will be able to assess and evaluate beneath the layers of the organizational offerings. Therefore, they tend

to refocus their attention from social concerns to organizational issues such as service quality, loyalty programs,

value for money and economic benefits. For these reasons, it is expected that customer experience will affect the

relative importance of the social exchange relationship in influencing the cruise experience and satisfaction.

The highly subjective and individualistic nature of the tourist experience is gaining appreciation in recent years. It

was recognized that tourism experience was not something that could be “stage-managed” by the service provider

(Morgan 2007), but rather that tourists aided in the production of their own experiences through their personal

characteristics, social identity, and the agendas they brought with them to the tourist encounters (McIntosh and

Siggs 2005). This means that service providers could not sell a pre-orchestrated experience to the customers. What

they can do is set the stage for tourists to create their own experiences (Morgan 2007). This implies that the tourist

experience is influenced by a wider range of factors in addition to those under the direct control of the service

providers (Baker and Crompton 2000; Cole, Crompton, and Willson 2002). These include the social-psychological

state that a tourist brings to a site (e.g., mood, disposition, and needs), extraneous events (e.g., climate and social

group interactions), and program or site attributes. Although an exhaustive list of these factors may be impossible,

social interaction between unacquainted fellow tourists on a cruise ship could be one factor that deserves further

exploration. This echoes the marketing literature on customer compatibility management (CCM) and observable oral

participation (OOP), which recognizes the impact of unacquainted customers on customer experience and

satisfaction.




Cruise passengers experience encompasses all aspects of the end-user's interaction with the tourism company and its

services, transportation, the airport and sea ports and the climate to name a few. Interactions refer to multiple

channels, touch points, etc. A good cruise experience can assure the following advantages to the cruise company:

increased sales, increased tourist satisfaction, product/service differentiation, valuable competitive advantage,

improved brand perception, increased market share. Tourists will choose from the multitude of deals present on the

tourism market. The cruise purchased will be the one that maximizes the value in relation with the costs involved in

searching the products, coupled with the limited mobility, knowledge and income they possess. As a consequence,

customers will appreciate whether the deal reaches the expected value level, which will influence the satisfaction

and the probability to buy in the future. The two most important things for delivering the best tourist experience are:

a great product that emotionally connects with the tourists and fulfills a basic need or desire; and a deep

understanding of the traveler not just demographics but also psychographics, an understanding that allows the firm

to anticipate what they need better and sooner than they know themselves.

METHODOLOGY

Questionnaire design

Given the scarcity of data on most aspects of cruise visitors‟ experience in the Caribbean this current study was

conducted. Following discussion with travel agents on issues related to cruisers experiences, hospitality and tourism

professors, a review of past studies, such as Duman and Mattila (2005) and Qu, Wong & Ping (1999), Andriotis and

Agiomirgianakis (2010), a self-completed questionnaire was designed. The cover letter provided information about

the general purpose of the study, detailed instructions for administering the questionnaires, the data collection

procedure and a request to fully complete the questionnaire. The questionnaire comprised of three sections and was

pilot tested (n=50) with cruise passengers a year earlier, their comments were used to revise and clarify the

statements in the survey, the final version was then edited. The first section contained questions about respondents‟

profile utilizing socio-demographic variables (age, gender, marital status, education, income, employment status and

geographic origin), travelling party and major source of information used to book the cruise. The second section

asked respondents to indicate their level of satisfaction, while the third section dealt with attributes which affect the

cruise experience, a 5-point Likert type scale, ranging from “5=extremely satisfied” to “1=very dissatisfied” was

used to assess respondents agreement with a set of statements.

The population of this study consisted of cruise passengers who were aboard the cruise ship Carnival Imagination on

a 4 nights cruise to the Western Caribbean from the port of Miami stopping in the Florida Keys and Cozumel

Mexico in October 2009. The ship was full to capacity with about 2052 cruise passengers and 920 crew members. It

is very difficult to gather information about cruise passengers therefore this sample of passengers does not represent

a probability sample but was a convenient sample of 218 participants. This represents approximately 10.6% of the

2,052 passengers on board the ship during this particular cruise. In more detail, the researcher and fifteen students

from a tourism class undertook the four nights excursion on this cruise ship. The students were trained in class on

how to solicit participation from cruise passengers. The reason for this was to observe activities and behaviours of

passengers on board and at the destinations and to enable the researcher and students to experience directly the

ways in which passengers were experiencing the cruise.

In an attempt to understand the influences on cruise passengers experience and the relationships with cruisers‟

satisfaction this study was conducted aboard a ship cruising the Western Caribbean. A number of statistical

procedures were carried out for this paper using the statistical package SPSS version 19 and Microsoft Excel 2010

from Microsoft Corporation for statistical analysis. First, descriptive statistics (frequency distributions, percentages,

standard deviations and means) were calculated where appropriate. Second, an exploratory factor analysis was used

to discover simple patterns in the pattern of relationships among the variables. The factor analysis results attempts to

discover the unexplained factors that influence the cruise experience. Third, a multiple regression analysis was

conducted to identify the extent to which different quality variables affect cruise passengers satisfaction.

RESULTS AND DISCUSSIONS

The results of this study are consistent with recent trends. The demographic and travel characteristic profile of

respondents are presented in Tables 2. The typical cruise passenger used to be older, wealthy and predominantly

North American.




Table 2. Demographic profile of Cruise Passengers (N=218)

Country of current residence (N=218) Frequency(N) Percent(%)

USA 168 77.1

Canada 22 10.1

Australia 9 4.1

Europe 10 4.6

Other 9 4.1

Age

18-24 38 17.4

25-34 51 23.4

35-44 45 20.7

45-54 44 20.2

55-64 20 9.2

65-74 16 7.3

75 and older 4 1.8

Gender

Missing 9 4.1

Male 98 45.0

Female 111 50.9

Education

High School 25 11.5

College 68 31.2

BS Degree 76 34.9

MS Degree 39 17.9

PhD Degree 8 3.6

Other 2 0.9

Household Income

Missing 28 12.8

<$50,000 70 32.1

$50,000-$79,000 65 29.8

$80,000-$120,000 46 21.1

$120,000+ 9 4.1

Major Source of Information

Cruise company brochure 10 4.6

Cruise company website 49 22.5

Travel Agent 43 19.7

Other travel websites 24 11.0

Friends/relatives 71 32.6

Advertising: TV, Newspaper, Magazines 20 9.2

Other sources 1 0.4

Cruise booking method

By phone with Cruise Company 52 23.9

Cruise company website 66 30.3

Travel Agent 50 22.9

Other travel websites 48 22.0

Other method 2 0.9

Have you been on a cruise prior to this voyage?

Yes 138 63.3

No 73 33.5

Missing 7 3.2

What type of shore excursions did you participate in?

Island Tour 38 17.4

Rainforest Tour 18 8.3

Beach 96 44.0

City tour 23 10.6

Other 38 17.4

Missing 5 2.3

Would you recommend a Caribbean cruise to someone?

Yes 205 94.1

No 9 4.1

Missing 4 1.8

Today, the cruise market caters for all types of needs, ages and purchasing abilities. Cruising has become more of a

leisure product than a transportation mode. The stereotype of a cruise passenger has been changed to a highly




segmented market. In our study, 41% (89) of the respondents were age 34 or younger, 21% (45) at age 35-44, 20%

(44) at age 45-54 and 16% (36) 55years and older. Moscardo at el. (1996) showed that cruising had a clear

marketing advantage with its all-inclusive product which minimized any inconvenience for customers to almost

zero. He further stated that the product was seen by passengers as highly beneficial. The Cruise Lines International

Association (CLIA) 2011 market profile study indicated that of the current total US population of about 304,130,000

people, not quite half 44% (132,947,000) were prime cruise candidates of age 25years and older with annual

household incomes of $40,000 and higher. In our study, see Table 2., 32% (70) of the respondents had annual

incomes of $50,000 or less while about 55% (120) had incomes of more than $50,000 annually.

In the CLIA 2011 study, of the target population, 55% (73,121,000) of the people did take a cruise before, and

somewhat fewer than half of those (32,838,000) did so within the past three years with 60% repeat cruisers. In our

study this was the first cruise experience for about 34% (73) of the respondents, while almost 63% (138) indicated

they had previously been on a cruise. Respondents major sources of information used to book the cruise were the

cruise company web site 23% (49) and talking to friends and relatives 33% (71). However when the time came to

actually book the cruise, respondents prefer to use the cruise line company either by telephone or the cruise line web

site, 54% (108), using travel agents for booking accounted for 23% (50) while others prefer other travel web sites

like Travelocity, Orbitz, Expedia, Kayak etc., 22% (48). The two main types of shore excursions for those

passengers who left the ship were going to the beach and taking an Island tour. The CLIA study indicated that a

majority of cruisers still book at least some of their cruises with travel agents, although that proportion declines to

68% in 2011 from 74% in 2008. Some portion of the decline is attributed to consumer confusion regarding online

resources used and travel agents. With continued travel agency adoption of online resources, some customers

attribute an online planning/booking when in fact that online resource is sourced to a travel agency. Overall, 45% of

travelers most frequently name the Caribbean as their cruise destination of choice.

In order to obtain the evaluation on the cruise experience from the cruise passengers, it was necessary to employ the

factor analysis to summarize the perception items specifically, see Table 3. Before the factor analysis, 11 items

regarding their impact on the experience were tested by the KMO and Bartlett‟s test of sphericity to check their

reliability. The result showed that the value of approx. Chi-Square was 1811.622 and P-value was 0.000, which was

smaller than 0.001, which is to say, the data could be adopted for the factor analysis. The value of KMO was 0.927,

indicating the factors were correlated significantly. This study adopted the exploratory factor analysis, the initial

factors were then rotated using varimax rotation to explore the dimensionality in the data set. Finally the three

factors explained 88.056 percent of cumulative variance and the reliability alpha were 0.891, 0.863 and 0.840,

higher than the 0.5 (Nunnally, 1987), indicating the study results were highly reliable.

The first factor "the environment" had strong comprehensiveness and with an Eigen-value of 7.003, it was the only

factor with an Eigen-value bigger or equal with 1. Not surprisingly, the "Caribbean relaxing destinations" was

evaluated highest on this factor (M=3.84, SD=1.10). Cruise passengers felt that the Caribbean had the best beaches

in the world (M=3.25, SD=1.22); good safety and security (M=3.60, SD=1.08) and clean and unpolluted

environments (M=3.67, SD=1.12) were the other impact items within the first factor. This indicating that cruise

passengers had the highest expectation on this aspect of the cruise experience and from the results, factor 1 strongly

influenced this experience, see Table 3. To satisfy this customer category, island destinations should consider

additional resources to maintain or improve the "environmental" variables. In this regard, Caribbean destinations

need to ensure that the islands reflect this market positioning opportunity well. They should place more emphasis on

environmental cues when designing advertising and promotional activities thus using this success in their marketing

campaigns.

A regression analysis was conducted on the key 11 determinants of satisfaction of the cruise experience to determine

their relative importance in contributing to level of satisfaction of cruise passengers. In this study, overall

satisfaction level is used as the dependent variable, which allows us to explain the relationship between the

dependent (satisfaction level) and the independent variables (the 11 determinant variables). Dependent variable was

a Likert-type item with 5 response choices; there were eleven Likert-type independent variables also with 5 response

choices each included in the analysis.




Table 3. Exploratory Factor Analysis on the Influences of the cruise experience (N=218)

Impact variables Factor loading Eigen-value Variance % Mean SD

F1 The Environment

7.003 82.324

Relaxing destination 0.876

3.84 1.10

Best beaches in the world 0.739

3.25 1.22

Good sense of safety & security 0.783

3.60 1.08

Clean unpolluted environments 0.783

3.67 1.12

F2 Exploration

0.742 3.502

Adventure & excitement 0.787

3.69 1.09

Natural landscape & scenery 0.807

3.72 1.06

Unique history & culture 0.753

3.57 1.30

F3 Food and Beverage

0.705 2.23

Great food on the ship 0.778

3.48 1.30

Great food on the islands 0.835

3.57 1.23

Great beverage on the ship 0.83

3.67 1.26

Great beverage on the islands 0.798

3.66 1.20

Table 4. lists those 11 items and the resulting statistical significance associated with each. As can be seen in Table

4, five of these items were statistically significantly related (at p< .05) to cruisers‟ satisfaction associated with the

cruise experience: “The Caribbean - best beaches in the world”; “Clean unpolluted environments”; “The availability

of great food on the islands”; “The availability of great beverages on the cruise ship” and “The availability of great

beverages on the islands.” Together, these variables explained roughly 18% of the variability in respondents‟

satisfaction of the cruise experience. The multiple correlation coefficient is 0.425, this indicates that the correlation

among the 11 items independent variables and the dependent variable (satisfaction) is positive. Qu et al. (1999)

indicated that the major travel motivation factors of cruise ships were escape from normal life, social gathering, and

beautiful environment and scenery; moreover, tourists report a high satisfaction level with food, beverages,

facilities, quality, and staff performance on board cruise ships. The results of this regression are consistent with Qu

et al. (1999) findings. From the tourists‟ point of view, the main reasons to purchase this kind of trip are

entertainment and trying out the cruise experience. It is clear that satisfaction of the cruise experience involve

quality variables on the cruise ship as well as the island destinations themselves.

Table 4. Regression Analysis on Satisfaction of the Cruise Experience

Independent variables Regression Coefficients Std. Error t-value P-value

Intercept 2.839 0.226 12.555 0

Relaxing destinations 0.037 0.095 0.385 0.7

Best beaches in the world 0.174 0.065 2.696 .008*

Good sense of safety & security -0.014 0.078 -0.18 0.858

Clean unpolluted environments 0.127 0.077 1.644 .102*

Adventure & excitement 0.042 0.08 0.527 0.599

Natural landscape & scenery 0.042 0.086 0.482 0.631

Unique history & culture -0.036 0.076 -0.477 0.634

Great food on the ship 0.042 0.062 660 0.51

Great food on the islands -0.101 0.08 -1.269 .206*

Great beverage on the ship 0.116 0.079 1.47 .143*

Great beverage on the islands 0.11 0.083 1.47 .143*

Multiple R-squared: 0.18 *Variables statistically significant

F statistic: 4.121 with 11 and 207 degrees of freedom; the p value is 0.00




CONCLUSION

Today, the cruise market caters for all types of needs, ages and purchasing abilities. Cruising has become more of a

leisure product than a transportation mode. The stereotype of a cruise passenger has been changed to a highly

segmented market. The results of this study can be very useful to cruise lines companies as well as other

stakeholders such as the Caribbean Islands governments tourism units and destinations management companies.

Tourists who travel on these cruise ships to this region can now be classified into at least three main market

segments; baby boomers born 1946-1964, generation X born 1965-1980 and generation Y born 1981 and after.

There are differences in beliefs about food, dress, motivation, lifestyles and loyalty to name a few, however, all

these market segments are present on the cruise ship at the same time. The cruise companies and the destinations

must meet or exceed these different market segments needs, wants and desires. The Caribbean model of the sun, sea,

sand persists because the beach is one of the main activities in which tourists intend to engage. An exploratory factor

analysis discovered the unexplained factors that influence the co-variation among multiple observations. These

factors represent underlying concepts that cannot be adequately measured by a single variable. The results of the

analysis revealed that the factor "the environment" had strong comprehensiveness and strongly influenced the cruise

experience. Further, a regression model was used to examine the relative importance of each of the eleven

determinant variables and ascertain the satisfaction levels of cruise passengers. Sun, sea and sand - the best beaches

in the world and clean unpolluted environments were the most influential variables on cruise passengers‟

satisfaction. Success in the cruise business depends on understanding the major influences on the cruise experience

along with the key variables that determine customer satisfaction, ensuring that the business meets or exceeds

customers‟expectations.

Real positive customer experience comes from tourism companies that show they care about the customer.

Companies that have a memory (so travelers don't have to tell their story repeatedly) and really provide ongoing

value to a traveler understand that travelers are truly the most valuable entity of any business in the hospitality

industry. Those companies treat their customers as not only their only source of revenue, but as a scarce, valuable

resource. When companies work this way we are more likely to see really terrific tourists‟ experiences. The future

cruise tourism industry will be an exciting global market of growth demanding leadership, partnership and

professional management to handle: the fast development of technology, where all traveling starts on the Internet;

destination development; customer orientation; leadership and management. Cruise companies and destination must

understand that providing the tourists with a superior experience is the only sustainable advantage that the business

may have in this highly competitive cruise industry. This paper brings to light factors which affect cruise marketing

with respect to the cruise passengers experience and levels of satisfaction. However, the conclusions drawn should

be analyzed with an awareness of the limitations faced. The results of this study need to be cautiously generalized

because the sample is limited to one cruise ship; however, it is important for managers of cruise companies and

island destinations to use this kind of information for marketing promotion to attract customers. Future research

might explore samples from a number of cruise ships.

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CUSTOMER PERCEPTIONS OF SERVICE QUALITY IN LUXURY

HOTELS IN PETRA AND AQABA, JORDAN

AN EXPLORATORY STUDY Ala`a Nimer Abukhalifeh, Ahmad Puad Mat Som

Ph. D Fellow & Researcher, Tourism Business and Marketing (Hotel Management)

Institute of Postgraduate Studies (IPS), School of Housing, Building, and

Planning, Universiti Sains Malaysia (USM), Penang Island, Malaysia.

[email protected]

Abstract

The aim of the study is to assess customers perception of service quality in luxury hotels, in both, Petra

(The iconic tourist attraction) and Aqaba (The commercial capital) on the Red Sea in Jordan and to help

the hotel management identify how guest perceive the services and compare their performance against

clients expectation. The study used a survey and interviews to accumulate information using SPSS

version 20.0 for data analysis. The study sample consists of 271 participants of hotel guests at four- and

five- star hotels in Petra and Aqaba. Findings results show that, for responses relating to front office,

room service and in-house cafe´/restaurant, the importance score is statistically significant to and higher

than the performance rating. Overall, the results indicate significant difference guest expectations and

actual experiences, thus highlighting managerial implications.

The current study cannot claim to be wholly conclusive as it is limited to a small sample size from only

two cities of Jordan. From a practitioner’s perspective the study provides an opportunity to recognise, in

ranking order, features that are considered important by the guests staying in luxury hotels of Petra and

Aqaba as well as to identify the areas of disparity in service quality.

It is observed that this is a significant study regards to its contribution to the literature and hotel

managers who plan to improve their performance and competitiveness through guest satisfaction.

Keywords: Hotel Service quality, Guest Satisfaction, Hotels, Jordan, Marketing.

INTRODUCTION

The Importance of Tourism To The Socio-Economic Development of Jordan: Jordan experienced a steady

increase in tourism during the first decade of the 21st century. “Over eight million visitors in 2010 of which 4.55

million were overnight visitors, a 20.3% increase in overnight visitors on 2009. Tourism revenue reached more

than 2.423 JD billion which contributed 12.4% to the national GDP. Direct employment reached 41,900 in 2010

and is estimated to support more than 150 thousand families (MOTA, 2011-2015, P.21)

This increase in travel has impacted occupancy ratios and average room rates in Jordan. Several international

hotel chains Kempinski, Marriott, and InterContinental Hotel Group etc. see this as an investment opportunity

and have announced major investment plans in Jordan (JTS, 2011). The growth in international tourism

generally and domestic tourism specifically have contributed in generating interest in Jordan. This interest has

led to studying perceptions of people who use tourism and hotels facilities, particularly luxury hotels for the

purpose of the current study. Based on participation and purpose of this study the term “luxury hotels” is used

for five- and four-star hotels (Jordan Hotel Association, 2012)

To develop a background and theoretical framework for the current study, a literature review relating to service

quality in hotels was undertaken. The review shows that service quality in hotels continues to be an area of

wider global research. Its strong significance is related to customer satisfaction and repeat business, which are

determinants of profitability of business according to several studies. Service quality, customer perceptions of

quality, service failures, and service competitiveness, have long been studied. However, for the current study

reference is made to the literature of about the last 15 years.

O’Neil et al., (1994) mentioned in their study that international demand for products and services no longer

happens automatically but has to be created. In proposing that businesses typically lose 50% of their customers

every five years, Mack et al., (2000) highlighted the need that businesses should talk to their customers,

understand their expectations and make efforts to retain them and sustain profits. Links between service quality

and business profits have long been apparent as indicated by (Baker & Crompton 2000; Zeithaml & Bitner

2000; Chu & Choi, 2000; Mohsin, 2003; Bates et al., 2003; Mohsin & Ryan, 2005; Han & Ryu, 2012; Ma et al.,

2013). It is also recommended that irrespective of efforts positioned into producing quality service, it is the

perceptions of customers that really matter (Getty & Getty, 2003). For this reason, there seems to be a need to

study hotels’ customer perceptions (Wall & Berry, 2007). The current study makes such an effort and surveys

luxury hotel customers in Petra and Aqaba. The survival of hotels in the current competitive environment where





most hotels have quite similar luxurious physical facilities much depends on delivery of service quality aiming

to result in customer delight. Pallet et al., (2003) advice that quality has to be visioned, initiated, planned,

delivered, monitored and sustained. They explained that quality problems and key staff issues in hotels often can

be solved with a common “People and Quality” strategy which involves placing customer needs in the heart of

the whole process; seeking suggestions from staff; developing corporate quality and people philosophy; training

and empowering staff; benchmarking and reviewing (Pallet et al., 2003, p 349).

Examining service quality across small, medium and large hotels in Scotland, Briggs et al., (2007) make a note

of major inconsistencies in service quality performance across the sector. The study further suggests that

most customers are not in fact overly demanding and are satisfied with a personal service that represents

value for money and provides accurate information. The main difference between excellent and poor service for

them relates to the absence of the personal touch and how staff deal with their complaints (Briggs et al., 2007;

Brewster, 2012). Taking into consideration the Irish hotel industry, Keating and Harrington (2003)

recommended that many quality programmes fail from lack of commitment on the part of senior and middle

management, and front-line employees. The authors further suggested that the management of quality in

contemporary hospitality organisations is lacking in involvement, communication and teamwork dimensions.

Similarly investigating the service quality in China’s hotel industry, Tsang and Qu (2000) find that tourists’

perceptions of service quality provided in the hotel industry in China were consistently lower than their

expectations and those managers overestimated the service delivery, compared to the tourists’ perceptions of

service quality. In this manner it is noted that several studies of service quality in hotels continue to be

undertaken in different parts of the globe.

Thus, the literature and research places significant emphasis on service quality, customer satisfaction and its

linkage with business profits. In view of this – what is the current situation in the hotels in Jordan? Are hotel

guests satisfied with the services they receive? Is there a “disparity” or significant difference between their

expectations and their actual experience from services offered by the hotel? Is a country like Jordan with a large

trained workforce able to meet hotel guests’ expectations? Is the traditional Jordanian hospitality embedded in

the service attitude of hotel employees? Does the traditional Jordanian hospitality culture (Yick & Ho, 2009),

Bedouin Culture possess any role in contemporary hospitality? How is the traditional Jordanian culture

influencing the service to guests in luxury hotels currently? Such questions became the impetus for the current

study.

Petra and Aqaba Read were chosen due to support provided in data collection by a local Petra Hotel Association

and Aqaba Special Economic Zone Authority. The large number of luxury hotels eased selection when

approaching and obtaining management consent to participate in the study, although it was quite a challenging

task in Jordan. Only 10 hotels out of 18 agreed to participate and they were between in the five-star and four star

category. They were selected as major touristic destinations in the Kingdom attracting the majority of visitors

(international and domestic) and hosting 16, 2% of the classified hotels in the country.

METHODOLOGY

According to the Jordan`s statistical Report from MOTA (2012) Petra and Aqaba account for 60% of hotel

rooms in the five- and four-star categories. Accumulating data from all hotels in Petra and Aqaba was beyond

the scopes of the current exploratory study.

The study offers an opportunity to determine a largely under researched area of service quality, customer

perceptions and their actual experience of luxury hotels in Jordan. The study also offers a possibility to compare

and contrast with other similar studies undertaken with other destinations in the country

The main objective of this study is to consider:

Understanding the general expectations and factors of importance for customers who stay in various

luxury hotels in Petra and Aqaba Read Sea Jordan.

Comprehend customer actual experience and evaluation from the stay – how did the hotel perform

aligned with a perception of importance of relevant factors?

Disparity between the specific and overall components of importance and actual stay experience.

QUESTIONNAIRE CONSTRUCTION AND SAMPLE

Peterson and Wilson (1992) confirm that customer satisfaction appears most typically to be measured through

surveys. Surveys provide formal feedback to a firm and send a positive signal to customers that the firm is

interested in them. This framework approach is undertaken in the current study. Management of different luxury

hotels in Petra and Aqaba, Jordan, were approached to explain the reason of this study and achieve their consent

to participate. The retention of anonymity in the research report aided the acquisition of approval to administer

the survey to guests staying in the participating hotels. The study was undertaken at different five and four star




hotels willing to participate. The methodology involved surveying guests in the hotel lobby, restaurants, bar,

room service or other convenient location within the hotel. During the survey any comments made were

illustrious and further explanation was presented where necessary while participating guests filled the survey

questionnaire. Some guests chose to take the survey and return it to hotel reception later. Guest had the option to

withdraw from their participation at any stage of the survey. Front office, room service restaurant were chosen

for the study as being most representative of guest contact and service delivery process demonstrating maximum

moments of truth opportunities where the service provider comes in direct contact with the guest.

A questionnaire was structured for this study with input from local hotel managers and individual items were

selected and modified based on studies such as Lockyer (2000), Mohsin (2003), Mohsin & Lockyer (2010)

along with Mohsin and Ryan (2005). The questionnaire comprised three sections. The first section gathered data

on importance attributed to different features of front office, room service and in-house cafe´/restaurant by

guests. The second section required an evaluation of how the establishment performed in the opinion of guests,

as per the listed features of front office, room service and in-house cafe´/restaurant (Namkung, & Jang, 2010).

The third section accumulated demographic details in terms of gender, age, type of trip (business or holiday) and

country of residence. The study uses a Likert scale of 1 to 7, where 7 represents highest importance or

agreement with the statement and 1 represents lowest importance or unacceptable level of service offered; 0

represented no opinion, and was excluded from the analysis. A useable sample of 271 participants resulted over

a period of almost two months.

THE RESULTS

The convenience sample comprised of Jordanian and international respondents and consists mainly of 168 male

respondents (62.0%) aged 31-40 (39, 5%) years followed by those aged 41-50 years (29.5%). The items, as

previously noted, were derived from a sequence associated with guests checking in and using hotel facilities

prior to departure.

For reliability statistics the Cronbach Alpha for all the Importance and Performance questions was 0.854. While

Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin measure of sample adequacy was 0.819 As suggested by (Ryan, 1995; Hair et al., 1998;

Pallant, 2010). the usual “rule of thumb” of a minimum of five respondents per item used in a scale meant the

sample size was found to be adequate. Such scores justified undertaking additional analysis. Additional analysis

involves descriptive statistics for the two sections of importance and performance evaluation and factor analysis.

DESCRIPTIVE STATISTICS

Descriptive analysis of front office features ’scores for importance showed that respondents consider

“important” seven out of nine items listed, i.e. mean score is over 6 from the maximum possibility of 7:

(1) Value for money of the hotel;

(2) Receiving confirmation on reservation;

(3) Making a reservation;

(4) First impression of the hotel;

(5) First contact with the hotel staff;

(6) Helpful and friendly staff; and

(7) Furnishings in the room.

Respondents consider three items from room service feature scores for importance in the hotels in Petra and

Aqaba, Jordan, with mean scores of over 6 from the highest possible score of 7:

(1) Overall quality of food;

(2) Value for money for room service; and

(3) Overall selection of beverages.

In case of in-house cafe´/restaurant in hotels in Petra and Aqaba, all eight importance features scores were above

6 from the highest possible score of 7:

(1) Timely service;

(2) Quality of service;

(3) Quality of the restaurant food;

(4) Appearance of the staff;

(5) Value for money of the restaurant;

(6) Dealing with complaints;

(7) Product knowledge of staff; and

(8) Ambience of the restaurant.




After recognising the importance scores and ranking given by the respondents staying in hotels in Petra and

Aqaba, the next step was to analyse the actual experience or performance scores attributed by the

respondents to different features of front office, room service and in-house cafe´/restaurant.

IMPORTANCE-PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

Front Office the importance-performance technique has been widely used in tourism academic literature. It is

defined as a model of reasoned action by Sheppard et al., (1988). Recently, Ryan and Cessford (2004) disagree

that, in the context of measuring visitor satisfaction with sites of New Zealand Conservation Estate, there is

indeed much merit in asking a simple question such as “To what degree are you satisfied with your visit?”, and

response analysis of the importance-evaluation matrix diagrammatically conveys important information to

managers who can proceed to act upon such research. Major parts of the survey in the recent study include sets

of importance-performance type questions. Paired sample t-test was used to determine the difference, if any,

between importance-performance.

The front office showed statistically significant difference in all the nine areas assessed when comparing

importance and actual performance of service quality.

Prominent areas with a mean difference of over 6, indicating a larger disparity between expectation and actual

experience based on service performance, in ranking order given by the responding guests are as follows (See

Table I):

(1) The value for money of the hotel (mean difference 1.7).

(2) The furnishings in the room (mean difference 1.13).

(3) Receiving confirmation on reservation (mean difference 0.91).

(4) Ease of making a reservation (mean difference 0.80).

The above features are perhaps reasonably easy to deal with provided the hotel management recognise the

significance attributed to them by the respondents. The difference existing between scores of importance and

performance as illustrated in the table identify managerial implications in those areas. If the hotels do not seek to

meet the current attributed importance by the guests can they ever be able to work towards exceeding the

importance expectation and achieving “customer delight” through their performance?

Room Service. The importance-performance analysis showed that in all room service responses the

importance is higher than the performance and the difference is statistically significant (See Table I).

Prominent areas with a mean difference of over 6, indicating a larger disparity between expectation and actual

experience based on service performance, in ranking order given by the responding guests are as follows (see

Table 1):

(1) Value for money for room service (mean difference 1.57).

(2) The overall quality of food (mean difference 4.27).

(3) The overall selection of beverages (mean difference 1.29).

Here again the scores illustrate difference between importance and performance which has managerial

implications in improving quality. Cafe´/restaurant (in-house). Comparison of importance and actual

performance of in-house cafe´/restaurant reflects a similar experience showing statistically significant difference

in all eight areas assessed. All eight areas except one, showed mean difference of over 6, indicating a larger

disparity between expectation and actual experience based on service performance. The following is the ranking

order (See Table 1):

(1) Quality of the restaurant food (mean difference 1.25).

(2) The quality of service (mean difference 1.29).

(3) Dealing with complaints (mean difference 2.47).

(4) Timely service (mean difference 1.68).

(5) The appearance of the staff (mean difference 1.05).

(6) Value for money of the restaurant (mean difference 1.58).

(7) Product knowledge of the staff (mean difference 1.63).

Table (1) illustrates that overall in almost all cases importance was rated more highly than performance and the

mean score difference was higher than “6” indicating statistically significant disparity. It leaves a disturbing

situation that participating respondents” expectations were not met which usually impacts service quality

perceptions of customers.




Table 1: Importance and Performance

The survey participants were also asked to rank five features using a five-point scale, where 1 represented being

not important and 5 represented very important in the selection of a hotel. Each number was to be used only

once. Table 2 lists the responses in descending order of mean. The purpose was to compare responses of

Jordanian and international hotel guests with findings of other studies by other researchers (Lockyer, 2002,

2003; Al Khattab & Aldehayyat, 2011). Cleanliness of the hotel (mean ¼ 4:56) is listed as the most important

followed by value for money (mean ¼ 4:62). Results indicate similarities when compared.

Table 2: Ranking Descriptive Statistics

One-Sample Statistics

Feature N Mean Std. Deviation Std. Error Mean

Cleanliness Of The Hotel 271 4.56 .497 .030

Value For Money 271 4.62 .517 .031

Location 271 4.65 .477 .029

Friendliness Of The Staff 271 4.66 .476 .029

Outside Appearance Of The Hotel 271 4.72 .476 .029

FACTOR ANALYSIS

Factor analysis was undertaken as it identify underlying dimensions within a list of separate items was found

suitable for the Importance data though here also couple of items loaded heavily into more than one factor such

as “prompt response from the order taker” and “staff presentation and manners”. Exploratory factor analysis was

undertaken using Principal Component Analysis with Varimax rotation. The KMO was 0.905, which indicates

suitability for analysis (Table 3).

The five underlying factors which emerge from this analysis could be classified and named as:

(1) Hotel ambience and staff courtesy – which accounted for impression of the hotel, room conveniences and

front office staff courtesy (variance 28.974%).

(2) Food and beverage product and service quality – this factor accounted for quality and promptness of service

(variance 6.022%).

(3) Staff presentation and knowledge – this factor shows product knowledge, complaint handling and

presentation of staff (variance 5.258 %).

One-Sample Statistics

Items Importance

Mean SD

Performance

Mean SD Mean Difference

Front Office

The Value For Money Of The Hotel 6.25 .587

4.55

1.070

6.251

The Furnishings In The Room 6.07 .525 4.94 .913 6.074

Receiving Confirmation of Reservation 5.96 .470 5.05 .566 5.963

Making a Reservation 5.87 .438 5.07 .574 5.875

Helpful And Friendly Staff 6.21 .525 5.38 .954 6.207

First Contact With The Hotel Staff 5.94 .404 5.04 .739 5.945

First Impression Of The Hotel 6.21 .481 6.23 .931 6.207

The Check In And Out Of The Hotel 6.03 .547 6.00 1.054 6.026

Room Service

Value For Money For Room Service 6.34 .525

4.77

.713

6.336

The Overall Quality Of Food 6.10 .518 1.83 2.441 6.100

The Overall Selection Of Beverages 6.28 .568 4.99 1.151 6.284

Prompt Respond From Order Taker 5.98 .590 5.16 1.107 5.978

Prompt Room Service If Used 6.11 .569 1.76 2.443 6.114

A Variety Of Items On The Menu 6.26 .622 5.16 1.058 6.262

In house cafe/Restaurant

Quality Of The Restaurant Food

6.53

.595

5.28

1.345

6.528

The Quality Of Service 6.21 .563 5.01 1.120 6.214

Dealing With Complaints 6.21 .613 3.74 2.109 6.214

Timely Service 6.45 3.741 4.77 .903 6.446

The Appearance Of The Staff 6.24 .528 5.19 .812 6.240

Value For Money Of The Restaurant 6.30 .599 4.72 1.033 6.299

Product Knowledge By Staff 6.17 .611 4.54 .881 6.173

Ambience Of Restaurant 6.20 .526 5.52 .910 6.196




(4) Reservation services – this factor reflects on all reservation services of the hotel including reservation for

rooms and restaurant seating (variance 4.88%).

(5) Overall value for money – it accounts for overall value impression of the hotel facilities (variance 4.50%).

The above factors have a strategic meaning in identifying the features considered important by the customers.

The features range from simple “courtesy” to “overall value for money”. Jordan despite its traditional

hospitality culture stating (Jordan`s Bedouin Culture) runs the risk of developing an average and casual

service attitude. Such a practice in hotel industry could result in dissatisfaction of customers and few or no

repeat visits. The resulting factors from the analysis reflect on the existing attitude and importance of guests

staying in the local hotels, thus providing some insights for current hotels managers to consider when

planning their services.

Table 3 Factor Analysis: Rotated Component Matrix

CONCLUSION AND DISCUSSION

A review of literature suggests that quality continues to be an issue to debate and research. Hotels worldwide

give importance to service quality as it reflects their standard and creates a positive image of their product and

service. Analysing the response of two hotel managers on Does quality impact on hotel performance? Claver et

al., (2006) discover that quality management system can have a positive effect on such areas as service quality,

employee morale, reduction in working costs and waste, and customer satisfaction, which in turn can have a

strong effect on sales and competitive position. Comparing the satisfaction among Asian and Western travellers

with service quality in Hong Kong hotels, Choi and Chu (2000) recommend that Asian travellers’ overall

satisfaction is primarily derived from the value factor, whereas their Western counterparts are influenced by the

room quality and consider service quality as the most important factor.




Hotels in Jordan also take a similar come within reach of giving importance to service quality as per discussions

with different hotel managers during the survey administration. What is the impression of the hotel guest in

Petra and Aqaba Read Sea? The current study attempts to seek answer to this question. The responses and

opinions of 271 participants about the quality of products and services offered by the five star hotels in Petra and

Aqaba Read Sea, Jordan are representative of the population of similar hotel guests in Petra and Aqaba Read

Sea. The information was accumulated to determine – general importance perceptions of customers who stay in

luxury hotels in Petra and Aqaba, Jordan, their evaluation from the stay; any disparity between the specific and

overall components of importance and the experience of their actual stay.

The analysis of the results of the descriptive statistics shows statistically significant differences between

importance and performance evaluations of the guests in every area within front office, room service and in-

house cafe´/restaurant that needs constructive measures on the part of hotel managements. There was not a

single feature in any of the areas studied where the evaluation of performance of the property exceeded the guest

importance perception. Though statistical significance was noted in importance-performance analysis of all front

office features, some areas had a mean difference of over 6 such as – the value for money of the hotel; the

furnishings in the room, receiving confirmation on reservation and making a reservation (See Table I). The

results suggest significant efforts need to be undertaken from simple gestures of first contact on arrival to check

in and out efficiency to improve and reflect on service quality being offered to match, if not exceed, the

importance perception of the guests staying in local hotels.

The situation with respect of room service was no different; statistical significance was noted in importance-

performance difference analysis of all room service features assessed in the study. Some areas had a mean

difference of over6 such as: value for money for room service; overall quality of food and overall selection of

beverages. The in-house cafe´/restaurant showed the worst results where statistical significance was noted in all

eight features of importance-performance analysis and all but one feature i.e. ambience of the restaurant had a

mean difference of less than 6. Some areas with a mean difference of over 6 are: quality of food; quality of

service; dealing with complaints; appearance of staff, etc. The importance performance analysis (IPA) matrix in

Table (4) summarises areas of disparity and suggests managerial implications.

Table (4): Importance Performance Analysis Matrix

Component Matrix

Rotated Component Matrix Component

1 2 3 4 5 6

First Impression Of The Hotel .242 -.394 .354 .237 .066 .469

Helpful And Friendly Staff .570 -.147 .186 -.083 .222 -.231

First Contact With The Hotel Staff .439 .046 .384 -.296 .241 .007

Your First Impressions Of The Hotel .175 -.436 .438 .445 .004 .131

The Check In And Out Of The Hotel .361 .197 -.016 -.607 -.075 .299

The Furnishings In The Room .537 -.155 -.199 .236 -.262 .072

A Variety Of Items On The Menu .788 -.202 -.140 .056 .020 -.073

The Overall Quality Of Food .767 -.178 -.375 .134 .081 -.074

The Overall Selection Of Beverages .832 -.151 -.223 .041 .037 -.022

Quality Of The Restaurant Food .801 -.045 -.234 .070 -.008 .047

Value For Money Of The Restaurant .575 .170 -.083 -.095 -.175 -.023

Prompt Room Service If Used .269 .788 .251 .257 -.050 -.174

Prompt Respond From Order Taker .443 .239 .089 -.001 .091 .462

Product Knowledge By Staff .571 .349 .123 -.144 .192 .035

The Appearance Of The Staff .593 -.037 .230 -.189 -.275 -.029

Dealing With Complaints .280 .506 -.090 .209 .229 .291

Timely Service .696 .239 -.118 -.134 .064 -.123

Receiving Confirmation of Reservation .459 -.091 .254 -.168 -.219 .200

Ambience Of Restaurant .314 -.354 .324 -.154 .017 -.430

Making a Reservation .463 -.168 .451 .047 -.216 -.130

The Quality Of Service .794 -.134 -.248 .183 -.082 -.061

Value For Money For Room Service .229 .748 .253 .310 .026 -.195

Value For Money .118 -.259 .008 -.012 .751 -.050

IMPLICATIONS FOR MANAGEMENT

As discussed by Lockyer (2005a, b) the factors that impact on the repeat business in a hotel are very complex.

To gain an understanding of these factors a factor analysis was undertaken which resulted in five underlying

factors. The model in Figure 1 takes these five factors and suggests their impact on the selection of repeat

business by guests. The model also introduces what is referred to as “Modifiers” which as suggested could

modify the factors and thus influences the repeat business. For example the factors in selection are modified

by gender by purpose etc. Five factors based on the importance data are being called - hotel ambience and staff;




food and beverage product and service quality; staff presentation and knowledge; reservation services and

overall value for money. Overall the results indicate statistically significant differences in importance and

performance evaluation responses of the hotel guests. The study put forward to practitioners to record in ranking

order features that are considered important by hotel guests and their actual experience evaluation of those

features. An outcome of this finding points to the areas of disparity in service and product quality of the hotels.

Managerial implication is to recognise disparity and undertake measures to improve with an approach of trying

to exceed the expectations of the guests to build customer loyalty and repeat business. Developing a

commitment to service quality is often a challenge faced by any service organisation, studying customers’

attitude, seeking feedback and accumulating that information to analyse along with research helps to identify

areas of disparity in importance performance evaluation, thereby helping to develop appropriate actions and

strategy to address such disparity. Something this study has attempted to facilitate.

Figure (1): Factor Impacting Repeat Business

IMPLICATIONS FOR LITERATURE

In response to the question – what has this study to contribute to the literature? It is observed that research in

service quality of luxury hotels in Jordan is sparse; the current study has been the first attempt to measure the

service quality perceptions of guests staying in luxury hotels in Petra and Aqaba Read Sea. In that sense, the

research has some value as it provides material to other local and international researchers for a comparative

study of service quality perceptions of luxury hotel guests with other such studies undertaken in different

parts of the world. Most luxury hotels worldwide can easily compete with physical evidence and comforts, but,

it is the service in the hotel that makes the difference. Moreover, it needs to be explored how hotels are working

to achieve “customer delight”? This is possible through continuous research and contribution to literature and

this is something this study has attempted to undertake.

The current study cannot claim to be wholly conclusive as it is limited to a small sample size from only 2 city of

Jordan and there could be subjectivity in responses. Additional study with a larger sample size accumulated

from different cities of Jordan is suggested.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT

The authors would like to extend their appreciation to Universiti Sains Malaysia for the university's fellowship

scheme that helps make this study and paper possible. The authors are also grateful for the kind assistance and

the constructive suggestions of the anonymous reviewers (Analysis Part) which helped strengthen this paper.

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