CUSTOMER SATISFACTION MEASUREMENT IN HOTEL INDUSTRY: CONTENT ANALYSIS STUDY Ivanka Avelini Holjevac University of Rijeka Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management Opatija Opatija, Croatia e-mail: Ivanka.Avelini.Holjevac@fthm.hr Suzana Marković University of Rijeka Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management Opatija Opatija, Croatia e-mail: Suzana.Markovic@fthm.hr and Sanja Raspor University of Rijeka Faculty of Tourism and Hospitality Management Opatija Opatija, Croatia e-mail: sraspor@veleri.hr ABSTRACT One of the biggest contemporary challenges of management in service industries is providing and maintaining customer satisfaction. Service quality and customer satisfaction have increasingly been identified as key factors in the
Knutson (1988) revealed that room cleanliness and comfort, convenience of location, prompt service, safety and security, and friendliness of employees are important. Barsky and Labagh (1992) stated that employee attitude, location and rooms are likely to influence travellers' satisfaction. A study conducted by Akan (1995) showed that the main determinants of hotel guest satisfaction are the behaviour of employees, cleanliness and timeliness. Choi and Chu (2001) concluded that staff quality, room qualities and value are the top three hotel factors that determine travellers' satisfaction. Providing services those customers prefer is a starting point for providing customer satisfaction. A relatively easy way to determine what services customer prefers is simply to ask them. According to Gilbert and Horsnell (1998), and Su (2004), guest comment cards (GCCs) are most commonly used for determining hotel guest satisfaction. GCCs are usually distributed in hotel rooms, at the reception desk or in some other visible place. However, studies reveal that numerous hotel chains use guest satisfaction evaluating methods based on inadequate practices to make important and complex managerial decisions (Barsky, 1992; Barsky and Huxley, 1992; Jones and Ioannou, 1993, Gilbert and Horsnell, 1998; Su, 2004). The most commonly made faults can be divided into three main areas,