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The Development and Service Quality Management of Hotel Business in Lao PDR

国際協力論集

22(2/3)

85-103

神戸大学大学院国際協力研究科

2015-01

2015-09-01

Lao PDR is selected as the World Best Tourism Destination for 2013 by European Council on Tourism and Trade. Enriched with natural and cultural spots under the slogan of “Simple Beautiful”, Lao PDR attracted more than 3.2 million visitors in 2012 or a half of its population, which has increased by over 3-folds as compared to 2005. This achievement suggests that the boom in hotel industry will be continuing in the following years. This paper aims to review the historical development and to examine the service quality management in hotel business in Lao PDR. The study finds that the recent development of hotel business in Lao PDR can be devided into three phases as of Prior to 1986, 1987 to 1999, and from 2000 until the present. About 40% of hotels in the country concentrates in the Vientiane Capital. The birth rate is especially high in recent years. Domestic private firms still dominate the majority of the total, whereas foreign investment and joint venture show a fast growing. As a result of sharp increase in the number of tourists, the hotel business has outstandingly expanded in recent years. The boom in hotel industry would urge for a higher competition in the market. Based on the interview to 136 tourists both local people and foreigners from six hotels located in Vientiance capital in 2013, the study employs the famous SERVQUAL model to measures the service quality by the gap between customers’ expectation and actual perception in five dimensions. The findings show that there are small differences between expectation and perception in service quality in general, but significant dissimilarity between domestic and foreign customers are observed. Precisely, customers have a high expection on emphathy, assurance, tangibility, responsiveness and reliability, respectively ranging from 4.050 to 3.971. After received the services, customers express their high perception on reliability, tangibility, empathy, assurance and responsiveness, respectively ranging from 4.000 to 3.915. The outcomes suggest that hotel business in Lao PDR should pay more attentation on the management of assurance, responsiveness and emphathy, in order to minimize the gap in service’s expectation and customer’s perception.

Lao PDR

紀要論文