Service quality in leisure and tourism

Service Quality in Leisure and Tourism

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Service Quality in

Leisure and Tourism

Christine Williams

Department of Tourism and Leisure Management

University of Central Lancashire

Preston

UK

and

John Buswell

Faculty of Environment and Leisure

University of Gloucestershire

Cheltenham

UK

CABI Publishing

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CABI Publishing is a division of CAB International

CABI Publishing

CAB International

Wallingford

Oxon OX10 8DE

UK

Tel: +44 (0)1491 832111

Fax: +44 (0)1491 833508

E-mail: cabi@cabi.org

Web site: www.cabi-publishing.org

CABI Publishing

44 Brattle Street

4th Floor

Cambridge, MA 02138

USA

Tel: +1 617 395 4056

Fax: +1 617 354 6875

E-mail: cabi-nao@cabi.org

©CAB International 2003. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may

be reproduced in any form or by any means, electronically, mechanically, by

photocopying, recording or otherwise, without the prior permission of the

copyright owners.

A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library, London, UK.

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Williams, Christine, 1951–

Service quality in leisure and tourism / Christine Williams, John

Buswell.

p. cm.

ISBN 0-85199-541-1 (alk. paper)

1. Tourism. 2. Leisure industry. 3. Quality assurance.

I. Buswell, John. II. Title.

G155.A1W488 2003

910′.68′4--dc21

2002010655

ISBN 0 85199 541 1

Typeset by AMA DataSet Ltd, UK.

Printed and bound in the UK by Cromwell Press, Trowbridge.

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Contents

Introduction vii

Part 1: Understanding Quality in Leisure and Tourism1

1. The Leisure and Tourism Product 3

2. Quality as a Goal 19

3. The Consumer 26

4. Concepts of Quality in Leisure and Tourism 38

5. Customer Satisfaction 59

6. The Leisure and Tourism Experience 68

Part 2: Designing Quality 83

7. Characteristics of Service 85

8. Service Design 93

9. Capacity Management and Organizational Performance 117

Part 3: Achieving or Delivering Quality 131

10. Quality and Culture Change 133

11. Quality Management Systems 148

12. Quality Management Tools and Techniques 159

13. Measurement of Quality 170

14. Quality and Human Resource Management 190

Conclusions 205

References 209

Index 223

v

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Introduction

The past 20 years have seen a total change in

the way the leisure experience is delivered

and consumed

(LIW News, 1999)

The careful management of the tourist

experience is an absolutely vital and complex

requirement . . . service quality will continue

to be a major component of the future shape

of tourism provision

(Page et al., 2001)

Leisure and tourism managers need to know

more than how to manage, and even how to

manage quality. There is a product involved

and the service shapes the way it is delivered;

quality management is also the process of

ensuring that it is delivered with as few

mistakes as possible and as close as possible

to customer requirements. Knowledge and

understanding of the consumer and of the

concepts of leisure and tourism, including the

way they are consumed and experienced, are

becoming increasingly important and even

represent the difference between success and

failure. They are integral to service quality,

and its management, in leisure and tourism

and help to contextualize the application of

quality management tools and techniques to

the specific contexts addressed by this book.

The book’s approach incorporates sev￾eral important elements:

• While its substance is certainly factual, in

order to inform, it also raises issues, dif￾ferent views and theories, and attempts

to present a structured and ordered

overview of the study of service quality

in its specific application to leisure and

tourism from an academic perspective.

• Its essence, therefore, lies in the nature

of the leisure and tourism product

and, particularly, the consumption

experience.

• It emphasizes the human dimension

and the characteristics of both consumer

behaviour and organizational response.

• A distinctive feature is a synthesis of

the human and social elements with the

more mechanistic aspects of service

quality.

The book acknowledges the growing

literature that enables the practitioner and

the student to develop their knowledge and

understanding of trends and issues in leisure

and tourism management and in consumer

behaviour, and the very concepts and theories

that help to define the fields of enquiry. The

book also recognizes the great strides made

in the last decade in developing the subjects of

service management, service operations man￾agement and service quality. There are many

excellent texts and journals in both areas.

However, the aim of this text is to integrate

key points and principles from both areas

to establish the particular requirements of

managing service quality in an industry that

has some distinctive features and challenges.

The book’s approach is to offer an under￾standing of the underpinning theory of

service quality as well as informing the reader

of the practical application of service quality

management tools and techniques in the

vii

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context of the leisure and tourism industry

and its specific demands. A diverse range of

quality management tools and techniques are

included. Some will be applicable to many

organizations (e.g. ISO 9000 2000), while oth￾ers have been devised for a specific service

provision (e.g. QUEST for leisure centres).

Case studies are used throughout the

book that draw on a range of contexts

and organizations in leisure and tourism, and

further reading can be selected from the list

of references at the end of the text.

The book is divided into three parts: (1)

Understanding Quality in Leisure and Tour￾ism; (2) Designing Quality; and (3) Achieving

or Delivering Quality. It is expected that

practitioners and students will access the

various sections as and when required rather

than reading them in their entirety. The three

parts link with other aspects of management,

service operations management/service

management, marketing and human resource

management. They reflect the importance

of combining a deep knowledge and under￾standing of consumers and their lifestyles

with management skills and the ability to

identify and meet customer requirements.

Part 1: Understanding Quality in

Leisure and Tourism

Part 1 sets out to establish the background to

service quality in leisure and tourism and,

particularly, to develop an understanding

of the concepts and theories that underpin

the application of quality management

methods, tools and philosophies. Chapter 1

contextualizes the development and diversity

of the leisure and tourism industry and its

products, and shows how it is increasingly

driven by consumer requirements and the

competitive edge. Chapter 2 outlines the

theoretical developments in service quality

that have influenced the thinking behind

such customer-led strategies. Chapter 3

briefly outlines the typology of consumer

characteristics and motives, which needs to

be understood in order to appreciate fully the

complex nature of service quality in leisure

and tourism and the role of the consumer

or customer. Chapters 4 and 5 extend this

understanding by examining the concept of

quality and the core theories that shape

our understanding of service quality and cus￾tomer satisfaction, especially the theories of

the original quality management proponents

such as Juran, Deming and Crosby. The

validity of these ideas and theories in the

context of the leisure and tourism industry

is appraised. The final chapter in Part 1

builds on the work of the earlier chapters

in evaluating the distinctiveness of leisure

and tourism services, which lies in their

experiential consumption and complex mix

of motives and attributes.

Part 2: Designing Quality

While Part 1 establishes the challenges facing

leisure and tourism managers in achieving

service quality, Part 2 examines the skills and

techniques of translating the understanding

of consumers, quality and the nature of

leisure and tourism experiences into appro￾priate products and services. This section will

enable the reader to understand the complex￾ity of designing a service package to meet

customers’ expectations. The characteristics

of services such as perishability and hetero￾geneity pose questions for the management

of service quality, and are discussed in

Chapter 7, as is the issue of whether a leisure

and tourism service is customized or stand￾ardized. Such characteristics are not always

apparent to the customer or to the observer of

leisure and tourism services.

It can also be difficult for some people to

comprehend that a quality product or service

is nothing to do with it being a five-star hotel,

for example. Customer satisfaction can be

achieved whether a room costs £30 or £1000

per night. Low cost is no excuse for poor

service design or delivery. Chapter 8 tackles

an underdeveloped aspect of the literature on

service quality in leisure and tourism services.

This aspect is concerned with ‘doing the right

thing’ as well as ‘doing things right’ but is

based on understanding the concept of the

product/service, its features, attributes and

identified standards and the system required

viii Introduction

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to deliver products and services. The service

design process is complicated for the reasons

outlined in Part 1 and in Chapter 7, and

the techniques and tools for analysing and

refining this process are evaluated in Chapter

8. Service design raises questions about the

flow of people through the service process

and its relationship with the deployment of

resources. The final chapter in Part 2 considers

some fundamental issues of managing

capacity in leisure and tourism operations

and their implications for service quality. The

uneven demand for, and usage of, facilities

and services require an understanding of

aspects such as yield management and queu￾ing and how they can be managed to achieve

both productivity and customer satisfaction.

Part 3: Achieving or Delivering Quality

The first two parts focus on topics that are not

always considered important, but without

that background knowledge it is difficult to

make informed judgements on the selection

of the most appropriate service quality man￾agement techniques for a particular scenario.

Service quality and its delivery have to be

designed, but where customer expectations

also include ‘right first time’ and overall reli￾ability, there are wider implications for the

achievement of service quality. Part 3 takes

the management of service quality beyond

the design of services into the management

of systems and procedures and the overall

philosophy of organizations in their approach

to quality.

Chapter 10 highlights the importance of

organizational culture to the achievement of

quality but also reflects on the difficulties in

changing the culture so that quality manage￾ment is embedded in all areas and functions of

the organization.

The next two chapters investigate the

introduction and implementation of specific

service quality management systems, tools

and techniques in all sectors of the leisure and

tourism industry. Whilst there is awareness in

the industry of some of these tools and meth￾ods, the debate that should surround them has

not always taken place. Most of these elements

are concerned with quality improvement but,

to be effective, require knowledge and under￾standing of what customers really think.

While Part 1 demonstrated the complexity of

customer requirements and expectations,

Chapter 13 examines the difficulty of measur￾ing them and the extent of customer satisfac￾tion and the scope of methods such

as SERVQUAL and the critical incident

technique.

Part 3 concludes with a chapter on quality

and human resource management, emphasiz￾ing the key role that staffing plays in the

delivery of service quality. It highlights how

staff and their interaction with customers

(which is central to many contexts) can be

managed and enhanced and returns to the

exposé of the features and attributes of the

leisure and tourism product in the very first

chapter.

Introduction ix

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Part 1

Understanding Quality in Leisure

and Tourism

Introduction

The first six chapters identify the context of managing quality in the leisure and

tourism industry and establish a conceptual framework, which reflects the different

management environments of the public, commercial and voluntary sectors. Parts 1

and 2 represent the more familiar, mechanistic aspects of service quality and

quality management; the tools, techniques and methods of quality management

are important and these sections of the book address these requirements.

However, it is also necessary to examine the concept of quality in services, particu￾larly leisure and tourism services, in order to develop an understanding of the context

in which the application of tools, techniques and methods occurs. As Chapter 1 points

out, many of the issues and concerns are no different than those of the global service

sector. Aspects such as competitive edge, changing demographics and consumer

expectations, technological developments and a dynamic external environment apply

across the board. It is also necessary to define and understand the nature and scope of

the leisure and tourism industry and its range of products and services and this is the

purpose of Chapter 1.

Part 1 is also concerned with establishing the distinctiveness of leisure and

tourism, and their challenges for the management of service quality, and the last

chapter takes this understanding further and explores the experiential properties

of leisure and tourism. It concludes that leisure and tourism services are concerned

not merely with products and services but with offering and enhancing a consumer

experience, whether in a theme park, a holiday resort or a health club.

Chapters 2 to 4 illustrate the progression in understanding these characteristics

and provide the link from Chapter 1 to Chapter 6. Chapter 2 highlights the strategic

issue facing all leisure and tourism organizations, which is the competitive edge and

the need to develop consumer-led strategies. Many quality theorists conclude that

the only goal to aim for is continuous improvement to satisfy internal and external

consumers as well as other stakeholders. The chapter debates the underpinning

theories to such strategies and concludes that the key is the understanding of

consumers and their characteristics.

1

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Chapter 3 provides a wide-ranging framework for understanding the leisure and

tourism consumer as well as other stakeholders involved. The leisure and tourism

industry contains a wide range of interested groups, irrespective of the sector, and

their interrelationships are an important factor in understanding the dynamics of

managing service quality. It is sometimes difficult for practitioners to recognize the

importance of each group or stakeholder, and the need to prioritize their needs and

wants. It can involve conflicting and dialectical views and interests and such tensions

have to be managed and reconciled. For example, customers want lower costs (as in

package holidays) whilst employees may want higher wages and salaries.

Quality enhancement is increasingly being viewed as the key concept in the

service quality and service management literature and Chapter 4 is concerned with

the underpinning theories of service quality and quality management. The chapter

describes the two schools of service quality management (North American and

Scandinavian) and provides a critical appreciation of the origins of quality theory in

the manufacturing sector. The chapter also highlights the recent emergence of service

quality literature and emphasizes the need to be critical and informed, as practitioners

and academics, in synthesizing and analysing all concepts and theories.

One significant strand of the recent literature has been the examination of

what service quality really means to the customer and has provided an important

paradigmatic development in the subject. The terms ‘service quality’ and ‘customer

satisfaction’ are central to such an emerging theoretical framework and, although

there is an aetiological dimension to debate, it has pragmatic implications for the work

of the practitioner as well as the discourse of the academic. The meaning of each term is

important but so too is the relationship, perhaps symbiotic, between the two terms and

the chapter offers some pragmatic viewpoints. For example, it has been suggested that

there has been an overreliance on quantitative measures (e.g. answering the telephone

within a certain number of rings) rather than a focus on the qualitative impact on

individual customers, or that customers can be satisfied without, perhaps, quality

really being achieved. In other words, it is not easy to define what is meant by quality –

especially in the context of leisure and tourism services, which offer a product with

distinctive features and attributes (as the final chapter illustrates).

In such a way, Part 1 provides the opportunity to connect theory with practice

and to demonstrate that the successful management of quality in leisure and tourism

services demands an informed knowledge and understanding of key concepts and

theories. On completion of Part 1, the reader will have an in-depth understanding

of the nature of the leisure and tourism industry, the environment within which

it operates and the influence of this on the ability to theorize service quality practice,

and as Parts 2 and 3 indicate, the ability to deliver and achieve service quality.

2 Part 1: Understanding Quality in Leisure and Tourism

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1

The Leisure and Tourism Product

In order to examine service quality in leisure

and tourism, it is useful to consider the

nature of the leisure and tourism industry

and, indeed, developments in the leisure and

tourism product. The leisure and tourism

industry is no different from any other in that

the main strategic issue facing all organiza￾tions is achieving customer-perceived service

quality.

The Leisure and Tourism Industry

The leisure and tourism industry grew inexo￾rably in the second half of the 20th century

and for many nations, both industrialized

and developing, represents a key element of

the national economy figures. Annual expen￾diture on leisure and tourism in the UKin

2001 was £64.2 billion (Office for National

Statistics, 2002) with 3.5 million people

employed in 223,000 businesses (ILAM,

1998). It is an industry with a major impact on

the quality of life of people and communities.

It is a global industry embracing both

cross-cultural development and the rise of

multinational corporations that are a part of

this development. It is an industry that covers

a wide range of contexts and opportunities.

It is an industry that invokes passion and

emotion in people because of its perceptual

nature and its human interaction. It repre￾sents both participation and consumption; it

can be passive or active, creative or vicarious,

educationally and culturally enriching or

merely entertaining. It invites scrutiny and

criticism since we can all relate to its

purposes and functions and are acutely

conscious of any shortcomings because of

their immediacy and their impact on feelings

of well-being.

Several key reports and studies pub￾lished in recent years have illustrated the

importance of quality for the future of the

industry. One such report was published

by the UKgovernment (DCMS, 1999, p. 4) and

set out its aspirations for tourism (including

aspects of leisure):

The Government is ambitious for Britain

and British tourism. We are proud of what

this country has to offer and want to make

the most of it . . . We will only achieve this if

we can guarantee a consistent high-quality

experience for tourists whether from home

or abroad.

©CAB International 2003. Service Quality in Leisure and Tourism

(C. Williams and J. Buswell) 3

On completion of this chapter it is expected that

you will be able to:

• contextualize the growing importance of

service quality within recent developments

in the leisure and tourism industry;

• understand the nature of the leisure and

tourism product and its implications for the

management of service quality;

• analyse trends and issues in leisure and

tourism markets that have implications for

service quality;

• appreciate the relationship between service

quality and product and service develop￾ment in the leisure and tourism industry.

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The report contains a 15-point action plan

of the Department for Culture, Media and

Sport (see Box 1.1), which encapsulates many

trends and developments in the tourism

industry and highlights in particular chang￾ing expectations of tourists, the importance

of sustainability, technology and training

and the impact of recognized grading and

classification schemes.

The report also suggests that as the tourist

market becomes more experienced and dis￾cerning, greater importance will be attached

to quality and value for money. Furthermore,

as competition grows around the world,

British tourism must raise its standards in

facilities and service in order to compete.

The report recommends the regeneration

of traditional resorts, improving the range

and quality of visitor attractions, improving

the quality of tourism accommodation and

developing new products, which promote

Britain’s culture, heritage and countryside.

The Relationship between Leisure

and Tourism

A perennial issue is the scope and extent of

the leisure and tourism industry and how it

is defined. The relationship between leisure

and tourism (Fig. 1.1) is an important factor

in establishing the parameters of the industry

and the perspectives from which it can be

analysed. Clearly, much of the tourism sector

is concerned with the actual circulation and

movement of people and the hospitality

associated with overnight stays. An economic

perspective is important because of the

impact on towns and cities and, indeed,

4 Chapter 1

Box 1.1. Government plan for tourism. (Source: DCMS, 1999, p. 5.)

Fifteen action points are at the core of our plan and together they form the basis of a coherent strategy to

make our industry a world leader. They are:

• a blueprint for the sustainable development of tourism to safeguard our countryside, heritage and

culture for future generations;

• initiatives to widen access to tourism for the 40% of people who do not take a long holiday;

• more money for a more focused and aggressive overseas promotion programme to bring in more

overseas people;

• new Internet systems to deliver more worldwide tourist booking for Britain and to provide

information on attractions and travel options;

• new computerized booking and information systems to make it easier for people to book

accommodation and travel;

• a major careers festival and image campaign to raise the profile, and promote the image, of careers in

the hospitality industry;

• a hospitality industry programme to sign up 500 employers to work towards Investors in People

standard to help raise the quality of training in the industry;

• a new strategic national body for England to provide leadership to the English tourism industry;

• a new grading scheme for all hotels and guesthouses to give holidaymakers and business travellers

consistent quality they can rely on;

• new targets for hotel development in London and further £4.5 million for marketing to exploit its

potential as a premier location for business travellers and holidaymakers and as a gateway to Britain;

• more integrated promotion of our wonderful cultural, heritage and countryside attractions to enable

visitors to enjoy a full range of what Britain has to offer;

• the development of innovative niche markets such as film tourism and sports tourism, to unlock the

full potential of Britain’s unique cultural and natural heritage;

• encouraging the regeneration of traditional resorts to allow leisure and business visitors to enjoy

high-quality amenities and services;

• more central government support for the regions to give each part of the country better resources to

develop their own identity and strengths; and

• a high-profile annual Tourism Summit bringing together industry and government to monitor prog￾ress, plan future action and keep all sides working in partnership towards the same objectives.

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