Evaluation of key factors for service experience: A comparison of tourism factories and international tourism hotels

Abstract

When building successful service experience, service providers have to consider multiple factors from a multi-element standpoint. This study aims to establish a new conceptual model for key factors affecting service experience and determine the influential key factors using a multi-perspective and multi-criteria methods. This study uses an analytic network process (ANP) to calculate the degree of influence exerted by the criteria and factors of the service experience and conducts in-depth interviews to validate the results of the ANP, improving the reliability of the results of the study and increasing its practical reference value. Results from tourism factories and international tourist hotels find five main criteria that affected service experience: employee, customer, service environment, information technology, and knowledge creation. The results reveal that employee and service environment are the most important criteria. Therefore, tourism factories and international tourist hotels must invest resources in training and managing employees to equip them with specialized knowledge needed to deliver high-quality service experience. Tourism factories and international tourist hotels also need to pay attention to service environments, and by building an environmental ambience, they allow customers to receive an aesthetically pleasing and comfortable service experience. Future researchers can extend this study’s architecture and results, incorporate other important criteria and factors, and consider the interdependent relations between multiple key factors to further improve the key factors affecting service experience.