A Taxonomy of Quality Standard Adoption: Its Relationship with Quality Management and Performance in Tourism Organizations In Spain

Abstract

This work aims to identify quality standard adoption levels and their relationship with quality management practices and performance (customer, employee and social results, and organizational performance) in tourism organizations in Spain. This work uses 279 tourism organizations in the following subsectors: hotels, travel agencies, restaurants, and rural accommodations. The work applies cluster and regression analyses. Results show three levels of adoption and a lower degree of development of the continuous improvement dimension. Organizations with a significantly lower level of development of the quality standard have started to integrate the quality requirements in their daily practices to some extent and where continuous improvement practices are little developed. These organizations have significantly lower results than those organizations with higher adoption of quality. The results also indicate that a greater level of adoption of a quality standard leads to a higher development of QM practices. These results are interesting for managers, destination managers, and the wider tourism professional community. It contributes to supplementing previous studies about taxonomies of quality standard adoption in the particular case of tourism organizations in Spain and may serve as a starting point for further research on that topic.