An Exploration of the Role of Product and Service Elements Affecting Customer Satisfaction in UK Hotels

This research attempts to examine the relationships between physical products or services and customer satisfaction. According to the findings of the present research, physical products have more effect on customer satisfaction than services, and physical products are more important for customers' staying in hotels than services. Moreover, this research found that physical products are more important for females than males, and services have more impact on males' satisfaction than females' satisfaction. Services are more important for customers who travel for visiting friends/families, attending weddings and leisure than business travellers and physical products have more impact on business travellers than travellers who travel for other purposes. Physical products have more effect on customers who have stayed in the hotels for more than three times in the last three months, than customers in other frequency of stay groups. The findings of this study bring several managerial implications for UK hotels. At the end, due to the small sample size of this research, the results could not be generalized to the hotel industry in general, but could provide some interesting areas for consideration. Further studies need to be done in order to validate the results of this research.