GUESTS’ SATISFACTION IN HOTELS OF KASHMIR VALLEY: AN EMPIRICAL ASSESSMENT

Abstract

As the level of competition intensifies, service organizations find their offerings becoming similar to one another’s specifications. Under such circumstances, service quality and customer satisfaction becomes the only way to differentiate services from those of the competitors. In hotel industry also customer satisfaction is largely hooked upon quality of services. Hotels which are able to understand and satisfy customer’s needs make greater profits than those which fail to understand and satisfy them. However, quality cannot be increased unless it is measured. In view of the strategic and growing importance of customers’ satisfaction for corporate success and growth, an attempt has been made in the present study to measure guests’ satisfaction in hotels of Kashmir Valley. Based on data gathered, with the help of a self-developed and statistically-tested research instrument, from one hundred fifty nine (159) respondents representing one hundred seven hotels (107) of different categories, the study concludes that respondents are overall satisfied with the hotel services but overall improvement is needed in all dimensions of hotel services particularly on Reliability and Responsiveness to make hotel services more effective and efficient.