1.3.Research Objectives

• To identify common reasons for guest complaints in high-end hotels in UK.
• To evaluate different approaches used in handling complaints in high end hotels in UK.
• To explore the benefits of effective guest complaint handling in the short and long term.
• To ascertain management strategies which will improve guest complaint handling and improve guest satisfaction?

1.4.Rationale of Study

The goal of the hospitality industry is to increase the satisfaction level of customers. However, no matter how good the place is, there is a possibility of getting complaints from guests.  This project has been carried out to evaluate the reasons and impacts of guest complaints and to provide methods of handling those complaints. It has become more crucial for hotel management to focus on effectively managing customers’ complaints. The power of consumers has been increased due to the development of the internet economy. Nowadays it has become easier for consumers to raise their voices against companies. The defection of customers is increased due to a high level of transparency in markets and fewer switching costs (Breitsohl et al. 2010). Due to the advancement in technologies, the level of interaction among guests and management of hotels has increased. Now consumers can easily file their complaint against any aspect within hotel that they dislike. In order to build better reputation of hotels, the management has to ensure effective management of complaints (Ekiz et al. 2012). This project contributes to hospitality managers and employees in improving the service. The findings of this research are intended to help management in understanding the importance of customers’ complaint management for improving the reputation of hotels.

 

 

CHAPTER 2: LITERATURE REVIEW

2.1. Introduction

This chapter is about review of different previous researches undertaken for analysing the impact of customers’complaint management on reputation of hotels. This chapter actually includes analysis of theoretical data that has been collected from different articles, books and internet sources. In this chapter, first of all some theories related to the topic are reviewed and then findings of previous researches are critically analysed,

2.2. Theoretical Underpinning

In previous researches, the study of customer complaint behaviour is done from normative managerial perspective (Cook, 2012). For providing an overview of complaint behaviour, in this section some theories related to complaint behaviour are reviewed.

The research on complaint behaviour is done in light of conventional marketing theories. The conventional view of marketing is usually dependent on transaction-oriented perspective. In a transaction, a product is delivered to customer and money is paid by customers in return of the product. If customers feel dissatisfaction with a product, then they may get involved in various complaint activities after buying that product, for example seeking redress and in the end receiving their money back (Chen, Shie and Yu, 2012).

2.2.1.Performance theories

According to Andreassen and Streukens (2013) in context of customer complaint behaviour, different theories are applied under performance theories. The most common applied theory is expectation-disconfirmation theory. According to this theory, it is argued that there is a relationship between satisfaction and size of disconfirmation experienced by a customer. The disconfirmation is relevant to initial expectations of customer. It is suggested by expectation-disconfirmation theory, it is suggested that if experience of customer is worse than expected then customer perceive service quality as poor and then that customer starts complaining. This theory has been criticised on the basis of empirical and conceptual reasons. The major area of criticism is linked with the dependence on gap score that are deduced through calculation like, the difference in between expected service and assumed service of customers.

Dependent over the exploratory research and criticism research, the development of standard-dependent tolerance was done (Berry and Parasuraman 1991). Poiesz and Bloemer (1991) recommended that it would be appropriate to expectations like a zone then being discrete points over scale. At the similar time, Berry and Parasuraman (1991) recommended that tolerance zone need to intervene in between desired level of customer and the service level that is considered as satisfied one by the consumers. The tolerance zone is the performance limit that is considered accepted by the customer. The important approach of this zone is that consumer accepts all of