How Service Quality effects on Guest Satisfaction in Boutique Hotels: With Special Reference to Central Province

Abstract

Following the aftermath of the civil war, the Sri Lankan tourism industry begins to surge and enters its golden era. However, due to the Easter Sunday attack in 2019 and the COVID-19 global pandemic, Sri Lankan tourism is struggling to perform as well as it did previously. When contemplating the hotel sector, particularly with this COVID-19 impact, the boutique hotel category has become one of the world's and Sri Lanka's fastest-growing segments of the hotel industry. They are comparatively small but exclusive properties designed to cater to privileged clients with an exemplary performance at premium prices. Tourists prefer boutique hotels because they want to spend their vacation in a more private secure setting. Even though guest satisfaction has an effect on hotel performance and previous studies show that service quality has a high impact on guest satisfaction, this study was conducted to investigate how service quality effects on guests' satisfaction in boutique hotels with special reference to the Central Province. The researchers chose four boutique hotels in Central Province and collected data from 100 guests who visited those four boutique hotels. The convenience sampling method was used and a structured questionnaire was used to collect data. The SERVQUAL model was used to evaluate service quality. With the help of SPSS 21.0, descriptive statistics, regression, and correlation were used to analyze the data. According to the findings, the tangibles, assurance, and reliability factors have the greatest impact on increasing guest satisfaction and the researchers recommend that service quality be enhanced by increasing the indicators that influence those dimensions.