Customer complaints and complaint behaviours in Turkish hotel restaurants: An application in Lara and Kundu areas of Antalya

Abstract

The aim of this study is to investigate the level of relationship between the complaints and complaint behaviours of the customers who benefit from the services offered by hotel restaurants and to determine if the complaint behaviours show a difference according to the nationalities. The data necessary for the determination of differences or similarities between the main complaints gathered as a result of literature study (price and payment, tastiness and quality, equipment and atmosphere, staff and service) and complaint behaviours (neutral and switch, private responses, voice responses, third party responses), were collected through questionnaire method from 1,148 customers (Turkish, Russian, German and Dutch) and analyzed. Pearson coefficient of correlation was used for the determination of factors related to complaint behaviours and one way ANOVA test was used for the comparison of factors in terms of nationalities. As the result of analysis, a relationship between the customer complaints and complaint behaviours was found and it is determined that customer complaint behaviours show basic differences between the customers coming from different countries such as Turkey, Russia, Holland and Germany. In the light of results, the reasons for the differences between customer complaints and complaint behaviours were discussed and some recommendations were made in order to contribute to hotel/restaurant managers.   Key words: Customer complaint, complaint behaviour, customer satisfaction, nationality.