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 Villarreal Camacho (1983) reported that consumers did not complain because they were not 
familiar with the complaint channels or complaint system. Some research suggested that the high 
educated people more often complain than the low educated one because they are more familiar 
with the complaining channel (Han et al, 1975 and Landon, 1977), except the case of Mexican-
American in which the complainants seem have a lower educated level (Babacus et al, 1991).  
However, in any situations, a hotel should provide guests with accessible complaint channels as a 
way to encourage them to complain.  
Guests in different culture have different complaining behaviors. According to Becker, 2000, 
Americans enjoy complaining about dissatisfying service. They feel that they have responsibility 
to complain and it will help to improve the service quality. In other low power distance countries 
or in the low context cultures, guests also more often complain to the hotel or the third party than 
the high power distance countries or the high context cultures.  
 
In other research, Patterson et al, 2006 stated that Asian guests were less complains for fear of 
“losing face”. They responded less actively to dissatisfaction than Western guests. They often 
use word-of-mouth communication or boycotts rather than contact with the hotel management or 
authorities. This has happened frequently in the high power distance countries or high context 
cultures because they want to maintain the group harmony and to protect the service providers 
avoid of “loosing face”. Moreover, in those countries, the cooperation, reasonableness and 
understanding of others are the most admired virtues (Gannon 2001). Therefore, the consumers 
in those countries often suppress their true feeling for the goodness of the group or for a 
relationship. It is revealed clearly in Japan, the country has group conformity pressure and the 
concept of “losing face” (Lee, 1990). In addition, when the guests from higher power status 
complaint about the service quality, they prefer to deal the problem with employees who also 
have high status or position (Patterson, 2006). Consequently, in Asian countries, the low level of 
expressed customer satisfaction should not be considered equal to the high level of customer 
satisfaction. 
 

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CHAPTER 5: RESEARCH GOAL AND METHODOLOGY 
In this chapter, it reports the reason for study of the subject and the research goals. As described 
before, the research objective is to evaluate the customer satisfaction and service quality in the 
hotel industry. Besides, this session provides the methodology of research which includes 
approach of the research, how data has been collected, who is the participants and construction 
of survey questionnaire. 
5.1 Research goals 
 
The primary objective of the study is to develop a reliable statistic profile of the hotel sectors and 
the attitude of the hotel guests. It contains the overview of the industry, the analysis of demand 
and supply characteristics and the quality attributes. The previous chapters have set an overview 
about the hotel industry; its history and its growth trend; different research about impact of 
culture and gender on customer satisfaction. They also provide three models which are 
SERVQUAL, HOLSERV and LODGING QUALITY INDEX to analysis the customer 
satisfaction and service quality in the hotel industry. Besides, intensive questionnaire interviews 
aim to collect the statistic data about customer expectations, customer perceptions based on 
different cultures and gender.  
There are different hotels for different people. Even you are rich or poor, you live in a big city or 
on a mountain, you are a man or a woman; you can find a hotel suitable to your demand and your 
budget. After a slowdown period, hotel industry has shown the growth again from 2009 together 
with the various demands of customers. To satisfy those demands, there is more and more 
requirement for the hotel professionals. The study about hotel industry was chosen, because: 
 
Hotel is an service sector which is very popular nowadays 
 
There is lack of standard about difference between men and women in their expectation to 
the hotel. 
 
There is lack of best practices and identity about the impact of culture on the customer 
satisfaction in the hotel services. 

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The aim of this study is to gain an insight into the hotel industry and the quality attributes of 
hotel services in different continents. They include: 
 
Gain understanding of the scope of hotel industry 
 
Identification of profile of critical service quality components in the hotel services 
 
What are the expectations of customers to the hotel services? 
 
How do customers evaluate the services? 
 
How to measure the customer satisfaction and service quality in the hotel industry? 
 
Are there differences in perception and expectation of male and female customers from 
different cultural background to the hotel services?  
 
Will guests continue to choose the hotel or introduce to others if they are satisfied with the 
service quality of the hotel? And 
 
How can the hoteliers improve the customer satisfaction to gain the excellent service? 
5.2 Overview of approach 
A questionnaire for the hotel guests has been developed based on the components of the service 
quality in the hotel industry classified in the LODGING QUALITY INDEX. Moreover, it is 
supported by the marketing elements. 
SERQUAL (Parasuraman, 1988) approach has been the most popular method for choosing 
because it is quite complete measure for all the service industry. It covers all ten factors of 
quality of the hotel services. However, it still has some weakness as referred in chapter 2; 
consequently, it is not a perfect choice. 
HOLSERV scale (Hunter and Gerbing, 1982; Parasuraman 1991) is a simpler method compared 
to SERQUAL. HOLSERV is a customized version of SERQUAL; it is one column questionnaire 
so it is easier to answer each question. However, to develop this questionnaire, it will be such a 
long survey that it is difficult to collect a large number of respondents if HOLSERV is applied. 
Therefore, the LODGING QUALITY INDEX (Getty and Thompson, 1994) has been chosen to 
develop the questionnaire. LODGING QUALITY INDEX not only solved some weakness of 
SERQUAL but also very specific for the hotel industry.  
The questionnaire is a complete survey of 23 questions covering mostly hotel services, offerings 
for men and women together and separately. At the end of questionnaire are the questions about 
demographic profile. 

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