Introduction
In recent years, increased attention has been paid to the management of the growing field of hospitality and tourism business, which have been widely recognized as very important sectors of the Hotel industry. According to Kandampully, Mok & Sparks (2001), they are: (1) the tourists; (2) the businesses providing the goods and services that the tourist market demands; (3) the government of the host community; and (4) the host community. The different kinds of operations required from such businesses share the management problem of providing customer satisfaction. As tourism and hospitality are the most wide-ranging industries, in the sense that it demands products from the many sectors of the economy and employs millions of people in different sectors, the careful management of its business activities require the knowledge of the environment in which it operates on. With this, this research paper will focus on the assessment towards the level of satisfaction among guests/customers of Burj Al Arab in Dubai, UAE.
Statement of the Problem
This paper seeks to investigate and evaluate the satisfaction of customers of Burj Al Arab. Apparently, the discussion pertain to the satisfaction of the customers was facilitated.
Specifically, the following questions shall be answered:
1. What is the overall satisfaction level of customers/guests to the services/facilities/products offered by Burj Al Arab?
2. With respect to gender of Hotel customers/guests, is there any significant difference of perceptions towards services, facilities and prices that Burj Al Arab offers?
3. Is there any significant correlation between the satisfaction of customer to the services and prices they offer?
Hypothesis
This study shall test the following null hypothesis:
Methodology
The study intends to investigate the perception of Burj Al Arab customer/guests regarding the service and product satisfaction. Thus, this study will determine the level of satisfaction among subjects. For this study, primary research and secondary research will be used. Moreover, the descriptive research method will be utilized. In this method, it is possible that the study would be cheap and quick. It could also suggest unanticipated hypotheses. Nonetheless, it would be very hard to rule out alternative explanations and especially infer causations. Thus, this study will use the descriptive approach. This descriptive type of research utilizes observations in the study. To illustrate the descriptive type of research, Creswell (1994) guided the researcher when he stated: Descriptive method of research is to gather information about the present existing condition. Primary research is conducted using questionnaire surveys that are sent to the randomly selected Burj Al Arab customer/guests. Here, the questionnaires will be used to collect quantitative data and the interviews will be used to provide qualitative insights into the data collected. Apparently, secondary data are based from the recent literatures related to consumer/ customers’ behavior.
Sampling Technique
The general population for this study is composed of Burj Al Arab customer/guests. Basically these respondents are asked regarding the current status of services and products offered by Burj Al Arab and their personal views about product and service satisfaction.
Measurement
First, the respondents shall fill out a self-administered questionnaire. Ideally, the respondents will grade each statement in the survey-questionnaire using a Likert scale (Barnett, V. 1991), with a five-response scale wherein respondents will be given five response choices.
The equivalent weights for the answers will be:
Range Interpretation
4.50 – 5.00 Strongly Agree
3.50 – 4.49 Agree
2.50 – 3.49 Uncertain
1.50 – 2.49 Disagree
0.00 – 1.49 Strongly Disagree
The researcher opted to use the questionnaire as a tool since it is easy to construct having the rules and principles of construction are easy to follow. Moreover, copies of the questionnaire could reach a considerable number of respondents either by mail or by personal distribution. Generally, responses to a questionnaire are objectified and standardized and these make tabulation easy. But more importantly, the respondents’ replies are of their own free will because there is no interviewer to influence them. This is one way to avoid biases, particularly the interviewers’ bias. The researcher will also use graph and charts for data presentation.
Instrumentation
For validation purposes, the researcher will initially submit a sample of the set of survey questionnaires and after approval; the survey will be conducted to five respondents. After the questions were answered, the researcher will ask the respondents for any suggestions or any necessary corrections to ensure further improvement and validity of the instrument. The researcher will again examine the content of the interview questions to find out the reliability of the instrument. The researchers will exclude irrelevant questions and will change words that would be deemed difficult by the respondents, too much simpler terms.
Data Collection Plan
The researcher will exclude the five respondents who will be initially used for the validation of the instrument. The researcher will also tally, score and tabulate all the responses in the provided interview questions. Moreover, the interview shall be using a structured interview. It shall consist of a list of specific questions and the interviewer does not deviate from the list or inject any extra remarks into the interview process. The interviewer may encourage the interviewee to clarify vague statements or to further elaborate on brief comments. Otherwise, the interviewer attempts to be objective and tries not to influence the interviewer’s statements. The interviewer does not share his/her own beliefs and opinions. The structured interview is mostly a “question and answer” session. This study assumes that the survey used is an effective measurement tool to identify the satisfaction level among Burj Al Arab customer/guests. This study also assumes that each participant will honestly ad thoroughly answer each question.
Statistical Treatment of the Data
When the entire survey questionnaire have been collected, the researcher will used statistics to analyze all the data; and will be assisted by the SPSS in coming up with the statistical analysis for this study. Because of this research design, the results of the data gathered were limited to the determination of satisfaction level among customers. Thus, other possible findings in the field of consumer/customer satisfaction and business performance are also analyzed.
Comparisons were drawn between the overall responses to the questions and the differing responses (Creswell, 1994) the following statistical formulae will be also used:
1. Percentage – to determine the magnitude of the responses to the questionnaire.
n
% = ——– x 100 ; n – number of responses
N N – total number of respondents
2. Weighted Mean
f1x1 + f2x2 + f3x3 + f4x4 + f5x5
x= ———————————————;
xt
where: f – weight given to each response
x – number of responses
xt – total number of responses
The researcher will be assisted by the Statistical Package for the Social Sciences (SPSS) in coming up with the statistical analysis for this study. SPSS is one of the most widely available and powerful statistical software packages that covers a broad range of statistical procedures, which allows a researcher to summarize data (e.g., compute means and standard deviations), determine whether there are significant differences between groups (e.g., t-tests, ANOVA), examine relationships among variables (e.g., correlation, multiple regression), and graph results (e.g., bar charts, line graphs) (Kirkpatrick and Feeney, 2003). For this paper, correlation and t-test statistics will be used to evaluate the hypothesis indicated in this paper.
Correlation
To determine the relationship between the perceptions of the respondents, the use of correlation statistics was employed. The strength of the linear association between two variables is quantified by the correlation coefficient (Guilford & Fruchter, 1973). Given a set of observations (x1, y1), (x2,y2),…(xn,yn), the formula for computing the correlation coefficient is given by:
Where:
= Correlation between X and Y
= Sum of Variable X
= Sum of Variable Y
= Sum of the product X and Y
N= Number of Cases
= Sum of squared X score
= Sum of squared Y score
The correlation coefficient always assumes a value between -1 and +1. The values +1 or -1 indicate a perfect correlation, where all points would lie along a straight line. A positive correlation indicates a positive association between variables (increasing values in one variable correspond to increasing values in the other variable), while a negative correlation indicates a negative association between the variables (increasing values in one variable correspond to decreasing values in the other variable). A correlation value close to 0 indicates no association between the variables.
Since the formula for calculating the correlation coefficient standardizes the variables, changes in scale or unit of measurement will not affect its value. For this reason, the correlation coefficient is often more useful than a graphical depiction in determining the strength of the association between two variables.
In addition, if the correlation index of the computed rxy is not perfect, then it is suggested to use the following categorization (Guilford & Fruchter, 1973):
rxy Indication
between ± 0.80 to ± 1.00 : High Correlation
between ± 0.60 to ± 0.79 : Moderately High Correlation
between ± 0.40 to ± 0.59 : Moderate Correlation
between ± 0.20 to ± 0.39 : Low Correlation
between ± 0.01 to ± 0.19 : Negligible Correlation
T-test
The t-test is the most commonly used method to evaluate the differences in means between two groups. For example, the t-test can be used to assess the difference in test scores between a group of patients who were given a drug and a control group who received a placebo. Theoretically, the t-test can be used even if the sample sizes are very small (e.g., as small as 10; some researchers claim that even smaller n’s are possible), as long as the variables are normally distributed within each group and the variation of scores in the two groups is not reliably different. As mentioned before, the normality assumption can be evaluated by looking at the distribution of the data (via histograms) or by performing a normality test. The equality of variance assumption can be verified with the F test, or the more robust Levene’s test. If these conditions are not met, differences in the means between two groups can be evaluated using one of the nonparametric alternatives to the t-test.
The p-level reported with a t-test represents the probability of error involved in accepting our research hypothesis regarding the existence of a difference. Technically speaking, this is the probability of error associated with rejecting the hypothesis of no difference between the two categories of observations (corresponding to the groups) in the population when, in fact, the hypothesis is true.
Then, using the standard “template” for our inference test, we have:
Conclusion
This research study has a broad range of topics regarding satisfaction of the customers in the region with respect to the perception of customer. Although the focus is on the perception of the respondents, other considerations such as the needs of the respondents, effect of the services provided to the customers, and other general information about satisfaction and atmosphere effect to the business are discussed. The outcome of this study is limited only to the data gathered from books and journals about promotional strategies, business setting, customer satisfaction, and quality service and from the primary data gathered from the result of the questionnaire survey and interview conducted by the researcher.
As the research was completed in a limited period of time other factors and variables are not considered. This might have an impact on the results of the study.
References:
Barnett, V. 1991, Sample Survey principles and methods. Hodder publisher. ISBN: 0340545534
Creswell, J.W. 1994, Research design. Qualitative and quantitative approaches. Thousand Oaks, California: Sage.
Guilford, J.P., & Fruchter. B. 1973, Fundamental Statistics in Psychology and Education, 5th Edition. New York: Mc Graw-Hill
Kandampully, J, Mok, C & Sparks, B 2001, Service Quality Management in Hospitality, Tourism and Leisure, The Haworth Press, Inc., New York.
Kirkpatrick & Feeney 2003, A Simple Guide to SPSS for Windows. Wadsworth.
Survey Questionnaire
The researcher is conducting a study on the perception of customers/guests on the services/products/facilities provided by Burj Al Arab Hotel in Dubai, UAE. To enable the researcher to make the necessary conclusions and recommendations for this study, it would be very much appreciated if you answer all the items in the questionnaire.
Information given will be treated in strictest confidence.
Thank you.
Part 1. Demographic Data
Direction: Please fill up in all the necessary information about yourself. Don’t leave any item unanswered.
a. Age ________
b. Sex
Male ( ) Female ( )
c. Civil Status
Single ( ) Married ( ) Separated ( ) Widow/Widower ( )
d. Educational Attainment
Elementary ( ) High School ( ) College ( ) Graduate ( )
e. Occupation ____________________
f. Country of Origin: ____________
g. Purpose of the Visit: _____________
h. Length of Stay in the Hotel: ____________
Part I. Rate of Services, Facilities, and Price in the Hotel
Rate the following statements/attributes using a modified Likert scale with the following interpretations: Very Satisfied- 5; Satisfied- 4; Neutral- 3; Slight ly Satisfied- 2; Not Satisfied- 1.
1. Menu Variety
5
4
3
2
1
2. Value for price paid
5
4
3
2
1
3. Promptness of service
5
4
3
2
1
4. Quality of service
5
4
3
2
1
5. Quality of food
5
4
3
2
1
6. Quality of beverage
5
4
3
2
1
7. Overall, how would you rate our staff’s hospitality? (Friendliness, courtesy, responsiveness)
5
4
3
2
1
8. Overall, how would you rate our hotels’ public areas?
5
4
3
2
1
9. Overall, how would you rate the value for the price paid?
5
4
3
2
1
10. Overall, how would you rate the hotels ability to provide a relaxing atmosphere?
5
4
3
2
1
11. When you return to this area, what is the likelihood that you would stay at our hotel?
5
4
3
2
1
12. Décor
5
4
3
2
1
13. Cleanliness
5
4
3
2
1
14. Condition of Room
5
4
3
2
1
15. Housekeeping Services
5
4
3
2
1
Part II. Customer Satisfaction
Rate the following statements using a modified Likert scale with the following interpretations: Very Good- 5; Good- 4; Satisfactory- 3; Not Satisfactory- 2; Not Good- 1.
A. Services
1. How will you rate the reservation services of the hotel compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
2. How will you rate the housekeeping of the hotel compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
3. How will you rate the usherettes and the bellboys of the hotel compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
4. How will you rate the attitudes of the staff on guests and hotel visitors compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
5. How will you rate the management compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
6. How will you rate the waiters and the food attendants compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
7. How will you rate the customer service compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
B. Facility
1. How will you rate the rooms of the hotel compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
2. How will you rate the lobby and the function room of the hotel compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
3. How will you rate the comfort rooms compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
4. How will you rate the dining room, restaurant and the bar compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
5. How will you rate the comfort and the luxury of the room compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
6. How are the amenities of the hotel compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
7. How will you rate the facilities of the hotel compared to other hotels compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
C. Price
1. How will you rate the accommodation fee per room and per person compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
2. How will you rate the hotel fees and prices compared to other hotels compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
3. How will you rate the prices of the prices of the services compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
4. How will you rate the prices of the food and the drinks compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
5. How will you rate the reservation and service fees of the hotel compared to other hotels?
5
4
3
2
1
***Thank you***
Credit:ivythesis.typepad.com
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