Introduction: Service excellence in Asian tourism and hospitality

Today, hardly anyone would deny the relevance of customer satisfaction for businesses. Customer satisfaction can lead to customer loyalty, and loyal customers contribute to business success. In fact, the cost of keeping a customer is only a fraction of the cost of acquiring a new one, and customers become more profitable for a business the longer they remain customers. However, the relationship between satisfaction and loyalty is getting weaker. Customers are willing to switch more quickly, especially due to the easy availability of information on alternative providers via the Internet. As many businesses achieve customer satisfaction, it ceases to be a differentiator. Sometimes, customer loyalty is purely calculative—for example, because of low prices—and there is no deeper emotional bond with the provider. Therefore, businesses are increasingly adopting an orientation towards not just satisfying, but delighting their customers (Gouthier 2013). This introductory chapter identifies the current stage of scholarship regarding service excellence in the tourism and hospitality field. The primary drivers for creating customer experiences are drawn on, to conceptualize a management system for achieving customer delight as the definition of service excellence. A number of existing studies are reviewed, before presenting the highlights of the various chapter contributions of this book. The concluding chapter toward the end of the book addresses the future practice of service excellence in the industry, drawn from the themes found in the chapters. Future research areas are also identified, to benefit scholars and practitioners

Managing customer expectations: a study of two four-star hotels in Malaysia and Singapore

Successful management of customer expectations is an extremely important factor in achieving customer satisfaction. A hospitable culture and user-friendly technology are required to meet customers' expectations. While technology can have a major impact on customer satisfaction, the various cultural backgrounds of guests also have a significant influence. In the paper, the hotel guests’ cultural backgrounds were studied to understand this aspect's influence on their expectations and satisfaction. Three major cultural factors, namely brand identity (domestic vs. foreign), customers’ native language, and their country of residence, were observed and analyzed to determine guests' expectations. The research study used a qualitative design to analyze the data, collected from field observations at two hotels: a Singapore hotel and another in Malaysia. Reviews were also collected from hotel booking websites, in order to understand how the hotels satisfy guest expectations