The future of standardised quality management in tourism: evidence from the Spanish tourist sector

Abstract

As quality management has become more important in the tourist sector, the implementation of standardised quality management systems has become more common in this industry. A forerunner in this development has been the Spanish tourist sector, in which 17 specific quality management standards have been developed over several years in various tourist sub-sectors, including hotels, rural accommodation, restaurants, spas, and travel agencies. The present study, which is exploratory in nature, analyses the diffusion of these standards using a model that has been well attested in the specialised literature, together with a qualitative analysis of three practical cases. The study concludes that the standardisation of quality management in tourism will increase in coming years. The worldwide diffusion of ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 in many service sectors and the findings of the present study with respect to the increasing implementation of the Spanish standards provide an indication of what is likely to happen in the service sector as a whole in most countries.

Keywords:

• quality management
• standardisation
• ISO 9001
• quality management systems
• tourism

Acknowledgements

This article was written as part of a research project titled ‘The integrated management systems (IMS) of the Spanish companies’ (SEJ2006-00682/ECON) financed by the Ministry of Science and Technology within the aid programmed for R&D projects.

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