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Internal and external drivers for quality certification in the service industry: Do they have different impacts on success?

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Abstract

This paper presents the results of a study of hotels that are certified for quality management to identify the reasons for seeking quality certification. The authors analyse whether internal or external drivers for seeking certification have different impacts on benefits and the use of quality tools in the hotel industry. The analysis groups hotels according to the importance of their internal reasons for certification, and uses cluster analysis to identify the significant differences between groups of hotels. The findings for the 32 hotels analysed show that hotels that pursued certification for internal reasons develop better quality tools and have increased levels of benefits.

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Acknowledgments

The authors wish to express their sincere thanks to Professor Dr. José Millet Roig, Editor of Service Business, and to the anonymous reviewers for their assistance; their constructive criticisms and suggestions helped us to improve and develop the article substantively. This study was developed during a research leave of Prof. Heras-Saizarbitoria and Prof. Tarí, which they spent at Kent Business School (University of Kent). The authors express their deepest gratitude to Kent Business School and, more specifically, to Dr. Gavin Dick for his hospitality and support. Likewise, this article is a result of a Research Group funded by the Basque Autonomous Government (Grupos de investigación del sistema universitario vasco; IT763-13).

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Business Management, University of Alicante, P.O. Box 99, 03080, Alicante, Spain

    Juan José Tarí

  2. Department of Management, The University of the Basque Country (UPV/EHU), Plaza de Oñati, 1, 20018, Donostia-San Sebastián, Spain

    Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria

  3. Kent Business School, University of Kent, Giles Lane, Canterbury, Kent, CT2 7PE, UK

    Gavin Dick

Authors
  1. Juan José Tarí
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  2. Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria
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  3. Gavin Dick
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Iñaki Heras-Saizarbitoria.

Appendix

Appendix

Measures

Source

Reasons for seeking Q Certification

 Please rate the reasons which led your establishment to seek Q Certification, on a scale from 1 (not important at all) to 5 (extremely important)

Carlsson and Carlsson (1996), Jones et al. (1997), Brown et al. (1998), Bryde and Slocock (1998), Singels et al. (2001), Claver et al. (2006)

  1. Customer demands and requirements

  2. Increasing the efficiency of your services and staff

  3. Developing quality awareness and culture in the hotel

  4. Increasing market share

  5. Increasing competitiveness

  6. Process standardisation

  7. Improving customer satisfaction

  8. Improved service quality

Benefits from Q Certification

 Please rate the benefits which your hotel has experienced through Q Certification, on a scale from 1 (not important at all) to 5 (extremely important)

Powell (1995), Jones et al. (1997), Brown et al. (1998), Samson and Terziovski (1999), Singels et al. (2001), Kaynak (2003), Claver et al. (2006)

  External benefits

   1. Improved customer satisfaction

   2. Improved external image of the hotel

   3. Increased sales

  Internal benefits

   1. Increased employee motivation

   2. Increased productivity

   3. Reduction in non-conformity costs

   4. Favours innovation in tourist product

   5. Favours process optimisation

Tools used for Q Certification

 Please rate the usage of the following quality tools within your hotel, on a scale from 1 (not important at all) to 5 (extremely important)

Tarí and Sabater (2004)

  1. Quantification of non-conformity costs

  2. Mystery guest

  3. Facilities and/or corporate internal audits

  4. Customer satisfaction surveys

  5. Flow charts

  6. Quality and procedures manual

  7. Complaints register

  8. Data statistics—indicators comparisons—continuous improvement

  9. Minutes from meetings

  10. Incident register—internal communication

  11. Internal training

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Tarí, J.J., Heras-Saizarbitoria, I. & Dick, G. Internal and external drivers for quality certification in the service industry: Do they have different impacts on success?. Serv Bus 8, 337–354 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11628-013-0198-6

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