Service quality in hospitality industry: a study of homestay in Melaka / Nor Shahrina Mohd Rafien, Zunaidah Ab Hassan and Azhana Othman

The development of homestay industry in Melaka as well as the other states in Malaysia is still new. A lot of promotion activities are done by the Ministry of Culture, Arts and Tourism to introduce the homestay programme locally and internationally. This study focused on the service quality in hospitality industry by referring the homestay industry in Historical Melaka. According to the Ministry of Tourism Malaysia (2010) there are five listed homestays in Melaka. The objectives of this study are to identify consumer’s expectation and perception of each service quality dimensions, to identify the gap between expectations and perceptions of service quality dimensions and also to measure the level of customer satisfaction. There are two types of data collection which are questionnaire and interview. Two hundred questionnaires were distributed to the respondents. Paired sample t-Test and reliability test were carried out based on five service quality dimensions derived from 15 services attributed. The results showed that the best predictor for overall service quality consists of reliability for consumers’ expectation and assurance for consumers’ perception.