Tourism Service Quality: A Dimension-specific Assessment of SERVQUAL*

Abstract

In the ever more competitive nature-based tourism market, service providers must maintain every edge to remain competitive. Owing to the customer-oriented service endeavours, tourism enterprises, either private or public, need to improve their service offerings so as to retain or improve their market share. To help service providers identify their strengths and weaknesses, the most widely accepted measurement scale for service quality is the SERVQUAL instrument. One of the criticisms levelled against the SERVQUAL scale is its inappropriateness as a generic measure for all service settings. Empirical research as to the dimensionality of service quality within a professional service environment, in particular, tourism sector, is scant and this study, therefore, is aimed to extend the line of research in service quality measurement. Based on data gathered from 320 tourists, the study brought to light four interpretable service quality dimensions for tourism services: Assurance, Tangibility, Responsiveness and Reliability. The overall quality of tourism services as provided by the Kashmir Valley to its tourists is slightly satisfactory. However, management has to improve upon Reliability and Responsiveness where the SERVQUAL scores were relatively low to improve the overall quality of tourism services.