Internal service quality in hotel industry – conceptualization and measurement

CITATION

Gjurašić, M. (2019). Internal service quality in hotel industry – conceptualization and measurement. Tourism and Hospitality Management, 25(1), 227-231

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ABSTRACT
In the conditions of global competition, companies are forced to grow and develop, and to maintain their competitive advantage by continuously innovating and delivering value to consumers superior to the competition, whereby the quality of services has a key role. The hospitality industry is different from other similar industries in the area of providing customer service. To provide high quality service, the hotel primarily must have skilled, motivated, and satisfied staff. The knowledge of how to lead employees in the best possible way, how to motivate them, guide them, educate them and achieve the best results to the mutual satisfaction, is best accomplished by applying marketing activities within the company, i.e. internal market orientation. Furthermore, hotels must encourage employees to embrace certain behaviors that go beyond their regular job functions, such as helping customers resolve problems, cooperating with colleagues, preventing unexpected incidents, and paying extra attention to organization. In other words, hotel employees should not only do their jobs but they should also go above and beyond their own obligations towards the hotel and others. This self-initiated and positive employee behavior is called organizational citizenship behavior (OCB). In the literature, there is a lack of theoretical and empirical research and results, which explore the relationship between internal service quality, internal marketing and organizational citizenship behavior.