Factors Influencing Organizational Responses to Guest Complaints: Cases of Hong Kong and Northern Cyprus

Abstract

Every business aims at providing perfect service and satisfying their customers to the fullest extent. However, mistakes and failures are frequent occurrences in service businesses as is the case in hospitality industry. Customers' evaluations of organizations' responses to their complaints in service encounters are important elements of customer satisfaction and long-term loyalty. Thus, this study attempts first to find out the current complaint-handling practices in the hotel industries of two tourist destinations, namely Hong Kong, an internationally recognized tourism and business center, and Northern Cyprus, a developing island state. Then, factors influencing organizational responses to guest complaints in these two locations are highlighted. Expectantly, this study will provide some useful insights about the important phenomenon that is mostly studied from the customers' point of view. To do so, self-administrated questionnaires were sent to all members of major hotel associations in both locations. Results revealed that “guest focus and commitment” is found to be the most influential variable over the organizational responses. Furthermore, the “prejudgments towards guest complaints” variable was found to have a significant negative relationship with organizational responses in both locations. Discussion of the findings, implications, and limitations are given.

KEYWORDS:

• Complaint management
• current practices
• hotels
• Hong Kong
• Northern Cyprus