The importance of service quality as an instrument for client customization: a methodological and practical approach within the hotel sector

Abstract

Service quality plays an important role in hotel competitiveness, being tools based on this concept a way to differentiate hotels within their sector. The main goal of this work is to develop a tool for client customization. Such a tool can personalize the importance that each client gives to four attributes: customer service, facilities, overall cleanliness and quality-price ratio. A questionnaire was conducted on the opinions of more than fifty thousand clients during a period of twelve months. Our approach makes use of the machine learning methodology known as k-Nearest Neighbor (kNN). Among other important facts, the results reveal that the quality price ratio is assessed by clients as one of the most important attributes in order to provide a positive recommendation of a hotel. Based on the proposed methodology, new recommendation models can be developed with the aim of finding out implicit preferences of customers for future stays.