Factors Affecting the Decision of a Customer While Booking a Hotel Using the SERVPERF Scale

Abstract

In today’s highly competitive market when it comes to having a competitive advantage over others, providing superior service quality to the customers is the most important criteria for any industry. To provide superior service quality, it is a must for businesses to recognize the factors contributing to the customer perception towards service quality. The primary purpose of this study was to decide the factors influencing the decision of a customer while booking a hotel using performance only scale SERVPERF. The SERVPERF scale aims to measure the customer perception regarding the services offered. The performance only scale comprises of 22 service quality items under four factors, namely, Tangibility, Reliability, Assurance – Responsiveness, and Empathy. A primary survey was floated which was validated in person before floating to check the reliability of the questions asked in the survey. The data collected was analyzed using supervised classification technique – Logistic Regression to determine the factor that has the highest contribution in customer perception for the decision making while booking a hotel. The study and the overall findings depicted that the highest contributing factor among all the dimensions’ is tangibility as the model has the highest accuracy and precision, followed by Empathy. Hotel operators and Hotel managers can focus their major efforts in these two factors to provide superior service quality based on the customer perception to have a competitive advantage in the market to maximize their overall sales in this service industry.