Developing a hierarchical model to enhance business excellence in hotel industry of Bangladesh

Purpose - The study aims to develop a hierarchical model based on the Malcolm Baldrige National Quality Award to enable the ranking of quality dimensions required for achieving business excellence in the hotel industry of Bangladesh. Design/methodology/approach - The study adopted a sequential mix method approach in which semi-structured interviews with 24 participants were initially conducted during the qualitative stage to identify the quality dimensions. Subsequently, a questionnaire survey was conducted among 40 industry experts to prioritise the identified elements using the relative measurement of the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). In total, 32 respondents were further surveyed to evaluate a selected number of hotels in Bangladesh using the absolute measurement of AHP. Findings - The study uncovered eight criteria, together with 23 corresponding sub-criteria during the qualitative stage. Quality management emerged as the most crucial criterion, while health and safety-security measures were the most important sub-criteria in addressing the quality management criterion. In Bangladesh, five-star hotels were observed to be performing better than three-star and four-star hotels. Originality/value - The developed model is unique and can be used by Bangladeshi practitioners to measure the performance of hotels. Moreover, it can also be applied to measure the performance of hotels in other countries just by incorporating minor modification to the model framework.