The study intended to find out how consumers (tourists) perceive service quality and whether they are satisfied with Services offered by hotels in Tanzania. The study was conducted in tourist hotels from Dar-es –salaam Tanzania. The general objectives of the study were to determine overall service quality perceived by tourists in Tanzania hotels and identify dimension that bring satisfaction to the tourist. From the study the researcher used a self-completion questionnaire developed from the SERVQUAL instrument suggested by Parasuraman, Zeithaml, and Berry (1988), and distributed to 150 respondents in Dar-es-salaam, Tanzania to determine their perceptions of service quality in hotel industry and the model used dimensions which include Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Empathy and Price. The researcher used secondary methods of data collection of which were previously gathered by some other researcher such as project reports, books, internet, journal and documentary review. The researcher finds out that the overall service quality was perceived low (-17.4), Meaning expectations exceeded perceptions of services. Thus the actual hotel services offered to tourists in Tanzania are less than what was expected because almost every dimension of service quality brings tourist dissatisfaction. According to research findings and discussion made in this study the researcher recommends that, Tanzanian hotel have to improve performance on all the dimensions of service quality which includes Tangibility, Reliability, Responsiveness, Assurance, Empathy and Price in order to increase tourist satisfaction and enable them maintain high level of competitiveness with other countries.
1. Asubonteng, P., McCleary, K.J. and Swan, J.E. (1996). SERVQUAL revisited: a critical Review of service quality, The Journal of Services Marketing, Vol.10 p.62-81.
2. Beamish, K. & Ashford, R. (2007/2008). Marketing Planning. 1st Edition. Oxford OX2 8DP, UK. Butterworth-Heinemann.
3. Bitner, M. J. & Hubbert, A. R. (1994). Encounter satisfaction versus overall satisfaction versus quality: the customer's voice. service quality: new directions in theory and practice, Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage(In Rust, R.T., & Oliver, R.L. (Eds.), 72-94
4. Buttle, F. (1996). SERVQUAL; review, critique, research agenda, European Journal of Marketing, Vol. 30, Number 1, p.8-32.
5. Cronin, J.J. and Taylor, S.A. (1992), “Measuring service quality: a reexamination and extension”, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 6, July, pp. 55-68.
6. Douglas, L. & Connor, R. (2003). Attitudes to service quality- the expectation gap, Nutrition & Food Science, Vol. 33 Number 4, p.165-172.
7. Eshghi, A., Roy, S. K., and Ganguli, S. (2008). Service quality and customer satisfaction, An empirical Investigation in Indian mobile Telecommunications services, Marketing Management Journal, Vol 18, p. 119-144.
8. Global professional services firm, https://www.tanzaniainvest.com/tourism/pwc-estimate-2017-2021 (accessed 6 September 2018)
9. Kweka, J. (2004), Tanzania economy and tourism development, oxford. UK.
10. Magi, A. and Julander, C. R. (1996). Perceived service quality and customer satisfaction in a store Performance framework, an empirical study of Swedish grocery Retailers, Journal of Retailing and consumer services, Vol. 3, p.33-41
11. McDougall & Levesque (1996, 2000) "Determinants of customer satisfaction in retail banking", International Journal of Bank Marketing, Vol. 14 Issue: 7, pp.12-20, https://doi.org/10.1108/02652329610151340
12. Negi, R. (2009). Determining customer satisfaction through perceived service quality: A study of Ethiopian mobile users, International Journal of Mobile Marketing; Vol.4, Number 1; p.31-38
13. Onyango, E. (2009 ), journal on the Development of tourism industry sector in Tanzania.
14. Parasuraman, A. Zeithaml, V. A. and Berry, L. L. (1988). SERVQUAL: A multiple-item scale for measuring Consumer perceptions of service quality, Journal of Retailing, Vol. 64, p.12-40.
15. Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., and Berry, L. L. (1985). A conceptual model of service Quality and its implications for future research, Journal of Marketing, Vol. 49,
16. Saravanan, R. & Rao, K. S. P. (2007). Measurement of service quality from the customer’s perspective – An empirical study, Total Quality Management, Vol. 18. No. 4, p.435-449
17. Shahin, A. (2005). SERVQUAL and Model of Service Quality Gaps: A framework for determining and prioritizing critical factors in delivering quality services, Department of Management, University of Isfahan, Iran, p.1-10.
18. Tanzania tourism sector survey http://www.nbs.go.tzf (accessed 6 September 2018)
In-Text Citation: (Burhan & Kalinga, 2018)
To Cite this Article: Burhan, A. M., & Kalinga, M. M. (2018). The Service Quality Analysis and Satisfaction of Tourists in Tanzania Hotel Industry. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences, 8(11), 646–659.
Copyright: © 2018 The Author(s)
Published by Human Resource Management Academic Research Society (www.hrmars.com)
This article is published under the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY 4.0) license. Anyone may reproduce, distribute, translate and create derivative works of this article (for both commercial and non-commercial purposes), subject to full attribution to the original publication and authors. The full terms of this license may be seen at: http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode