Effectiveness of service quality efforts in the tourism industry of thailand

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EFFECTIVENESS OF SERVICE QUALITY EFFORTS IN THE
TOURISM INDUSTRY OF THAILAND

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Abstract
Thailand – one of the top leaders of the global tourism industry – has been possessing a large
number of service quality gaps that have been negatively influencing its effectiveness of service
quality efforts over the years. As such, this paper’s primary objectives are to perform a detailed
evaluation of different factorsthat havebeen influencing the effectivenessof service quality efforts
within the Thailand tourism industry, as well as to produce a number of recommendations for
firms operating within which and the nation’s government to be able to improve their service
quality in the future. This paper follows the research approach of qualitative and uses secondary
data of academic journals and industry reports formulated in the past 10 years in order to provide
an analysis of the service quality effectiveness of the nation’s tourism industry, which is firmly
grounded under Parasuraman et al.’s (1985) Service Quality Gaps framework. The result of the
analysis contains eight different gaps that have been damaging the industry’ service quality efforts
effectiveness over the years. Recommendations to close such gaps have also been given out
throughout the rest of the paper.

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Table of Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... 2
1. Introduction.............................................................................................................................. 4
2. Literature Review .................................................................................................................... 4
2.1. Overview of the Tourism Industry in Thailand................................................................ 4
2.2. Definition and Types of Service Quality.......................................................................... 6
2.3. Service Quality Gaps Theory ........................................................................................... 7
2.4. Customer Expectations..................................................................................................... 8
2.5. Customer Satisfaction ...................................................................................................... 9
2.6. Indicators of Service Quality Efforts Effectiveness in the Tourism Industry................ 10
3. Research Methods.................................................................................................................. 11
4. Findings and Discussion........................................................................................................ 15
5. Conclusion............................................................................................................................. 23
References..................................................................................................................................... 27
Appendix....................................................................................................................................... 32
Appendix A: Reflective Learning Statement............................................................................ 32
Appendix B: Dissertation Proposal........................................................................................... 33

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1. Introduction
Over the decades, Thailand tourism has been one of the biggest and most iconic industries of the
nation, as it has been providing the country with a huge amount of reputation as well as economic
boost, boosting its position within the continents and ranking among other tourism-focused nations
around the world. However, Tsegaw and Teressa (2017) have pointed out that within the Thailand
tourism industry, there has been a total lack of a clear service quality standard that must be abide
by within all firms operating within such industry over the years, leading to the outcome that the
service quality consistency exerted by Thailand tourism firms have been highly inconsistent.
Coupled with the fact that there has been a rapidly rising level of competition from foreign firms
entering the market as well as other countries hat possess the same set of values and competencies
such as Vietnam, Malaysia and Indonesia, it can be indicated that the need for Thailand tourism
firms to be able to continuously improve and maintain their service quality efforts effectiveness is
extremely important for them to be able to survive and develop in the long run.
As there has been a lack within the academic landscape on a thorough extraction and evaluation
of the effectiveness of service quality efforts within the Thailand tourism industry, this paper aims
to provide an in-depth analysis into different factors that influence the effectiveness of service
quality efforts of the tourism industry of the country, as well as to produce a detailed look onto
whether such industry in Thailand has been able to exert highly effective service quality efforts or
not in recent years. After that, the extracted conclusions could be used to construct potential
recommendations and implications for Thailand tourism firms and government officials to follow,
so that such service quality efforts within the nation’s tourism industry could be improved even
more in the future. This paper’s analysis is heavily grounded under Parasuraman et al.’s (1985)
Service Quality Gaps theory, and it pursues the qualitative approach to analyze the secondary data
of past journal articles that have been performed in the past 10 years relating to the topic.
2. Literature Review
2.1. Overview of the Tourism Industry in Thailand
In Thailand, tourism has been one of the most influential industries that has been producing major
positive influences to the well-being and development of the nation’s economy over recent
decades. In particular, the work constructed by Knoema (2018) has pointed out that: Thailand

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tourism industry has been contributing more than 21 percent to the nation’s economic development
in 2018, and that every year, the nation has been welcoming more than 6.7 million travelers
participating in the activities of Thailand tourism firms over the decades (Statista, 2020).
McDowall and Wang (2009) has even pointed out that Thailand has been the leading Asian nation
that has been able to effectively develop their tourism industry and maintain top-notch service
quality within the continent, to the point that the industry has been driving the nation’s economy
to be one of the strongest ones over the years. In terms of the primary tourist segment of Thailand
tourism, the traveler demographics that has been playing a key role in the nation’s tourism industry
revenues and profitability over the years are those come from China, and that the report conducted
by Ninpradith et al. (2018) has also ranked Thailand to be the top tourist destination for Chinese
tourists as of 2016. In terms of the tourism product that is the most popular in Thailand, package-
tour has been holding the top position within the country’s tourism industry over the years. As the
nature of package-tour hugely involves complementary services form tourism corporations, it can
be implied that Thailand tourism firms have been able to provide a well-rounded services and
amenities for their customers throughout the years, which is directly shown in their service’s
popularity and reputation over time (Chinese International Travel Monitor, 2016).
However, in recent years, numerous reports have been pointing out that the Thailand tourism
industry is rapidly degrading due to its extremely low level of service quality over time (Beirman,
2016), which directly comes from the nation’s tourism organization’s ability to effectively cope
with the rising level of competition and radical shift within the global tourism industry. In
particular, Baguisi et al. (2015) has stated that there has been a growing amount of pressures aiming
at Thailand tourism industry to conduct constant and effective maintenance and improvements of
service quality efforts across corporations operating within which, so that the nation could be able
to maintain their leading tourism position within the Asian continent in terms of tourism the long
run. This need has been proven by the authors to come from the fact that: the tourism industry of
Thailand has been experiencing radical changes, prompting for tourism firms within the nation to
focus more on the continuous improvements and closing down of service quality gaps in order to
be able to effectively survive and compete in the long run. First and foremost, the rising wave of
globalization across the globe has been severely boosting the international competition of the
tourism industry country-by-country, leading to the fact that service quality standards and
expectations from customers have also been increasing at a rapid pace. Especially considering the

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fact that governments and firms of nearby countries of Malaysia, Vietnam and Indonesia have also
been putting major efforts in the development of better tourism infrastructures and competitive
policies, Thailand tourism firms now need to face a rapidly expanding global tourism market,
strong competitors within which have been constantly expanding over the years. Secondly, as the
overall income and economic stability of citizens is getting higher over time, there has been a
rising level of expectations from customers within the global tourism industry in general, and
Thailand tourism industry in particular, to have opportunities to experience higher-quality services
and amenities conducted by tourism organizations, thus putting more pressures on Thailand
tourism firms to conduct continuous quality improvements and breakthrough additions to their
current services and amenities to be able to effectively survive and thrive in the long run. In fact,
with the wide adoption of the Internet, travelers and tourism consumers are also getting
increasingly ‘smart’, in the sense that they are now looking for tourism services that offer the best
value for their money, while being able to effectively exceed their ever-rising expectations and
needs in the future. Last but not least, the paper written by Thai Hotels Association (2019) has
argued that technological development has not only been influencing Thailand tourism industry
from the customer side, but also from the perspective of tourism corporations themselves; this is
due to the fact that a large number of which has realized that their adoption of technological
advancements can drastically separate their services from others from the perspectives of the
consumers, while substantially boost their operational effectiveness and productivity across all
departments over time.
2.2. Definition and Types of Service Quality
Early definitions of service quality have been extremely narrow, concerning only the difference
between what the customer expects and what they actually experience when the service is
conducted in real-life (Seth et al., 2005). However, the opting for this definition to measure the
effectiveness of service quality efforts within the tourism industry of Thailand can be incomplete,
simply due to the fact that the service quality can be highly subjective without particular standards,
and that it can be harder for customers to measure service quality comparing to product quality
(Schiffman and Kanuk, 2000). In a later research conducted by Parasuraman et al. (1985), the
authors have been able to produce a more comprehensive service quality gap framework that has
been able to take into account the perspectives of various parties participating and having

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influences on the service conduction process, including: the customer, the organization and the
employee. In the model, according to Parasuraman et al. (1988), service quality is defined as the
degree of correlation between what the customers or higher-ups expect from the service and the
real-life perceptions of such service when they experience it at the time. Based on this definition,
it can be indicated that services that possess a low-to-moderate level of effectiveness and quality
will be the ones that possesses an extremely small gaps between the former and the latter; that is,
expectations of the service are higher than the real-life perceptions that the parties experiencing
have during and after the service is conducted. On the other hand, those that can be considered to
be high-quality will have the latter vastly outperforms the former; that is, what the experience were
much better than what the involved expect before the service conduction process. Furthermore,
this description has also produced a highly important implication, which is that: the effectiveness
of service quality efforts will be largely judged and assessed by the parties who receive or control
such service, instead of the subjective perceptions that are exerted by the organization or employee
that performs it.
2.3. Service Quality Gaps Theory
As such, the paper formulated by Parasuraman et al. (1985) has been able to prove that: service
quality can exist in a number of different types, or ‘gaps’; these gaps possess different meanings
and values that can be important for the organization and managers in the process of fine-tuning
their service conduction to give out the highest-possible quality that effective surpass customer
expectations over time. In essence, these gaps are: the difference between what the customer
expects and what the customer experiences, the difference between what the customer expects and
the service’ innate qualifications or standards, the difference between service quality standards and
real-life service conduction, and the difference between service delivery and what the customers
have been communicated about the quality of such service delivery. Based on the availability of
researches regarding each gap mentioned above within the tourism industry of Thailand as well as
the limitations of this study, which will be extracted later on within the study, only the two gaps
of ‘the service quality standards and real-life service conduction’ and ‘what the customer
experience and what the customer expects’ will be focused on and deeply discussed in this paper
instead.

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2.4. Customer Expectations
Olson and Dover (1979) have stated that: customer expectation is the utmost important elements
existing within all services that can effectively depict the quality of which as well as the degree of
customer satisfaction exerted during and after the process. The work conducted by Boulding et al.
(1993) has seemingly agreed with this statement and provides an explanation to it, pointing out
that: even before participating in the service conduction process, customers have already formed
normative expectations about various aspects of such services over time, and that their opinions
regarding the outcomes of the whole process would largely be influenced by those expectations
over time, regardless of how the organization assesses the effectiveness and quality of their
performed services performed in the end. Furthermore, Parasuraman et al. (1985) have also argued
that: as customer expectations could vary from customers to customers, and that the perceived
service quality exerted by the organization is constant during a particular period of time, increases
in the former will definitely produce decreases in the latter, thus yielding the outcome that the
service is perceived to be increasingly inferior, despite of the fact their procedures are not modified
over time. On the other hand, if the organization is able to correctly measure and evaluate the level
of expectations within customers before their services are given out, they could be able to further
fine-tune their service conduction process in order to better align its outcome with customer
expectation in the end. This concept is called Expectancy Disconfirmation Paradigm and depicts
how the outcome of service conduction process could change when assessing against customer
expectations, even though the nature of the service does not change throughout the whole process
(Weber, 1997).
In the case of the tourism industry, Choibamroong (2017) has pointed out that customer
expectation is a major indicator of the effectiveness of service quality efforts, due to its linkages
to another crucial element of service expectation within the industry – customer motivation. In
particular, the work performed by Lee et al. (2011) has indicated that while tourism expectations
could produce negative influences to tourism service quality as described above, tourism
motivation can actually yield positive effects to such element over time; both of these elements
are under the direct influences of different external factors existing within the environment
surrounding the tour at the time, and that motivation could be boosted through the activities that
are given out within the tour that can satisfy other sets of needs of tourists.

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2.5. Customer Satisfaction
The paper written by Czepiel and Rosenberg (1976) has defined customer satisfaction to be the
state of emotions within the customers that indicates the level of preference toward a product or
service. Customer satisfaction is another key element that can heavily influencing customer
perception of whether the service conducted by the organization has been high-quality or not. In
general, the satisfaction of customer has not only been existing only within a particular industry,
but is frequently concentrated and aimed to be fully achieved by all firms operating across all
sectors, due to the fact that to be able to outperform competitors within the market, firms must be
able to capture the attention of buyers and satisfy all of their needs in a sustainable manner (Sun
and Kim, 2013). Within service industries like tourism, customer satisfaction matters even more
to the companies’ survivability and financial performance, as it has been pointed out in a large
number of past researches that the achievement of such has been the key to obtain competitive
advantages, which can be shown through: increases in customer loyalty and could generate
recurring revenues, boosts in word-of-mouth advertising that reduce marketing costs, and effective
improvements to current services’ strengths and weaknesses to be able to level up their quality in
the long future; all of these benefits will ultimately lead to the revisiting of customers to purchase
the service more than once, or to suggest new groups of customers to do so over time (Oom do
Valle et al., 2008). From the perspective of tourism business owners, the obtainment of high tourist
satisfaction regarding their service quality could also assist the area to receive further funding and
development investments by private investors and governments over the years, thus benefitting all
players within the market with high-quality tourism infrastructure (Song et al., 2011).
Through the description above of the term ‘customer satisfaction’, this paper will be applying the
definition of the term ‘tourism satisfaction’ that has been given out by Lee (2009), which states
that: tourism satisfaction is the positive perceptions and feelings of a tourist or tour customers
regarding a single or a set of leisure and tour activities performed by the organization over time;
these positivity can come from the physical or emotional experiences that are created by such
activities throughout the process. Tourism satisfaction have been argued by Smith et al. (2010) to
be an effective measurement to tourism firm’s performance and outcome achievement over the
years, as it has been linking all aspects of tourism activities and productivity together; for instance,
higher tourist satisfaction could directly lead to higher motivation for tourists to perform word-of-

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mouth marketing, thus boosting the destination’s reputation and attractiveness among current as
well as other potential customer groups that the firm might not know about. The research
performed by Sotiriadis and van Zyl (2013) has put high emphasis on word-of-mouth to be the
most obvious evidence of customer satisfaction, as positive word-of-mouth has been proven to
produce significant impacts on the overall decision-making process. Last but not least, the paper
conducted by Naidoo et al. (2010) has been able to extract the key influencers to tourist satisfaction
within the tourism sector over time, which include: the surrounding natural environment,
accommodation services and amenities, local culture, infrastructures at the attraction and the
quality of food given out throughout the whole tourism experience.
2.6. Indicators of Service Quality Efforts Effectiveness in the Tourism Industry
A wide range of researches conducted within the tourism industry in the past have been focusing
on the extraction of all of the indicators of service quality efforts effectiveness within the tourism
industry over the years, as the successful performing of such would be able to hugely assist tourism
business leaders to be able to fine-tune the most important elements of their services, thus
producing higher customer satisfaction and better service quality over time. Although the previous
section has been able to point out that customer satisfaction is the biggest indicator of service
quality efforts effectiveness, Heung (2008) has argued that there are also other factors that could
drastically influencing the quality outcome of service conduction over time, namely: core service
delivery, customer orientation as well as communication effectiveness. The term ‘core service
delivery’ is defined by Heung (2008) to be the intrinsic characteristics and standards of the service
itself, which is often stated and measured by the firms conducting it, such as: the agreed itinerary,
the process of providing commentaries throughout the experience, and the assurance that basic
customer needs and satisfaction levels will be met with great consistency. On the other hand, the
‘customer orientation’ indicator depicts the extent to which the tourist guide and tourism leaders
are willing to prioritize their customer’s needs and interests above their own; for instance, they
might be focusing on long-term instead of short-term interests and avoid ‘hard-selling’ services to
the tourists through the service conduction process. The last element – communication
effectiveness – denotes the quality of the information exchange process between the tourism
employee and the tourists involved in the service conduction procedures; this element can be
argued to be extremely critical to the perception of the customers before actually experiencing the

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services at the tourism facility, simply due to the fact that it could set the first level of tourist
expectation regarding the service quality efforts effectiveness of the tourism corporation before
the whole process. Ap and Wong (2001) have supported this statement by stating that: throughout
tour guiding – a crucial activity within the tourism sector, the tour guide’s overall attitude,
knowledge about the service, and their communication skills directly indicate the level of
professionalism of the company’s service providing process, thus setting the bar on what the
tourists need to expect when participating in tourism activities of the company later on. The
empirical study performed by Zhang and Chow (2004) has also found out that within the Chinese
tourism industry, there has been a wide range of factors influencing the effectiveness of service
quality efforts that are perceived by both the tourists participating in the tourism activity, as well
as the company that conducts such activity over time, including: punctuality, problem-solving
skills, knowledge regarding the location and activity, honesty, knowledge regarding safety
regulations and the itinerary delivery of service promised.
However, within the context of the Thailand tourism industry, there have been very few researches
conducted to thoroughly breakdown the effectiveness of factors influencing the effectiveness of
service quality efforts within the industry over time and produce suggestions for firms operating
within such industry to improve their services over time. As such, this paper will fill that research
gap by providing a thorough analysis of the key elements that have been influencing the service
quality efforts effectiveness of the Thailand tourism industry, as well as to produce
recommendations and implications for firms operating within such industry to be able to have their
service quality be improved in the future.
3. ResearchMethods
Throughout this paper’s analysis, three research questions will be answered and evaluated to the
full extent, which include:
1. What are the factors influencing the effectiveness of service quality efforts within the
Thailand tourism industry?
2. How is the effectiveness of the service quality efforts of Thailand tourism industry in recent
years?
3. What are the recommendations for firms operating within the tourism industry to be able
to further improve the service quality efforts effectiveness in the future?

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There are two main desired outcomes of this study regarding the effectiveness of service quality
efforts within the Thailand tourism industry. First and foremost, as it has been stated in the previous
section that there have been few researches being able to conduct an in-depth analysis onto the
service quality of the Thailand tourism industry, one of the desired outcome of this paper will be
to extract the critical influencers of service quality in the sector, in order to assist managers of
Thailand tourism firms to be able to make crucial and effective improvements to their current
service delivery and achieve efficient service quality boost over time. These influencing factors
will be extracted from both the perspectives of tourists as well as personnel working within tourism
organizations of Thailand over time, thus giving a larger-scale insight onto all service quality gaps
between different parties involved in the service conduction process, which has been stated within
the service quality gap model proposed by Parasuraman et al. (1985) in the previous literature
review section. The second desired outcome of this paper would be to produce a firm conclusion
on whether the Thailand tourism industry has been able to produce high-quality services or not,
after which several recommendations for players in the industry to improve their service
conduction process could be given out over time.
In terms of research design, the Research Onion crafted by Saunders et al. (2009) has constructed
a highly detailed model that can act as a guide for researches to follow and produce suitable
methodology approaches for their various types of studies. Firstly, in terms of research approach,
this study aims to pursue the inductive approach, which concentrates on the establishment of a big
picture on the matters beforehand, then breakdowns of specific details regarding the situations and
elements influencing such will be conducted (Sahay, 2016), in order to researching the
effectiveness of service quality efforts within the Thailand tourism industry. The main reason for
this study to pursue the inductive approach to research is the need to be able to answer the proposed
research question above of “What are the factors influencing the effectiveness of service quality
efforts within the Thailand tourism industry?” and “How is the effectiveness of the service quality
efforts of Thailand tourism industry in recent years?”, both of which require a broad view of what
the situation currently is within the Thailand tourism industry first, and then a detailed view onto
the situation needs to be conducted later on. In other words, it is only through the inductive research
approach that this study will be able to extract the connection between how the Thailand tourism
industry’s service quality is currently performing, and why they are performing like so over time.
The inductive research approach is directly shown in the flow of this paper: for the first section,

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the research background and an overview on the current situation of service quality of the Thailand
tourism industry will be extracted, along with the definitions and summary on different concepts
and theories that will be applied throughout the work; for the second section of the paper, in-depth
evaluation of the effectiveness of service quality efforts of the Thailand tourism industry, using
past research papers, will be given out that directly answers one of the proposed research questions;
lastly, implications for firms operating within the Thailand tourism industry to further improve
their service quality and close down extracted gaps will be established throughout the rest of the
paper.
In terms of research methodology, this study will be pursuing the qualitative approach to extract
and evaluate the effectiveness of service quality efforts within the Thailand tourism industry, as
well as to discover on potential future paths and improvements that firms operating within which
could follow, in order to obtain quality boosts over time. The work conducted by Melnikovas
(2018) has been able to point out that: qualitative research approach is highly suitable for papers
that require the answering of in-depth research questions, which usually are the “why?” and
“how?”, and the critical evaluation of non-numerical data in order to produce a conclusion that
digs deep into the roots of the initial problems or hypotheses. The need for a qualitative approach
to break down the topic of service quality efforts effectiveness within the Thailand tourism
industry directly comes from the research’s proposed questions of “How is the effectiveness of
service quality efforts of Thailand tourism industry in recent years?” and “What are the
recommendations for firms operating within the tourism industry to be able to further improve the
service quality efforts effectiveness in the future?”, both of which cannot be effectively answered
using numerical data from quantitative-based approaches. The qualitative research methodology
has been pointed out by Thanh and Thanh (2015) to be frequently paired with the paradigm of
interpretivism, in which the social reality of a particular situation or issue will be influenced by
elements existing within the surrounding environments and social contexts around them, thus
suggesting that the usage of quantitative approaches to extract numeric data and conclude a specific
pattern of the situation and elements with which can be highly irrelevant and inaccurate to the
outcome of the research in the long run. For instance, in the case of this paper’s topic of “the
effectiveness of service quality efforts within the Thailand tourism industry”, it has been extracted
previously that: there exist different types of service quality gaps between various parties that are
involved in the service conduction process, and that emotions can play a key role in tourist

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satisfaction during and after the experience; all of these indications signal that the application of a
rigid quantitative approach to analyze the proposed research questions would not be highly
effective and produce inaccurate outcomes in the end.
In terms of the type of data that will be used within this paper, secondary data, which has been
extracted and gathered through journal articles, industry reports and studies relating to the main
topic in the past, will be collected and evaluated. The source of the secondary data used will be
online academic journal databases, including: Google Scholar, ProQuest and online search engine
Google for industry reports. The evaluation of secondary instead of primary data implies that
during the data collection process, zero interviews, surveys or face-to-face interactions with human
participants will be performed, and that such type of data collection method is highly suitable to
the limitations and obstacles that the writer was encountering during the conduction of this
research, which will be discussed in subsequent sections. Furthermore, as one of the proposed
research questions is to produce several recommendations and managerial implications for
Thailand tourism firm leaders to improve the quality of their current providing of service, it is also
important that the secondary data are up-to-date; as such, journal articles and industry reports will
be those conducted within the past 10 years relating to the industry.
In terms of the approach to analyze and evaluate data throughout this study, breakdowns and
analysis of the tourist satisfaction and service quality gaps within the Thailand tourism industry
will be heavily grounded under Parasuraman et al.’s (1985) service quality gap framework, which
has been extracted and examined within the literature review section above. In essence, after papers
depicting service quality perceptions and expectations of tourists within the Thailand tourism
industry has been collected, there will be an attempt to align and classify such data into different
types of expectations that are set out by the authors, so that service quality gaps between various
parties involved in the service conduction process could be correctly established and analyzed.
The extraction of such service quality gaps based on Parasuraman et al.’s (1985) framework will
paint a highly detailed picture on what factors or elements that tourism firms in Thailand have
been performing extremely weak or completely missing from within their current offerings in the
industry. Last but not least, after the service quality gaps have been extracted through the
evaluation of past researches and industry reports conducted within the Thailand tourism industry,

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recommendations and implications for tourism firms operating within which will be given out
throughout the rest of the paper.
Nevertheless, there still exists a number of limitations associated with the pursuance of this
research design and methodology throughout this paper. First and foremost, it has been pointed
out by Zivkovic (2012) that the following of an inductive-based approach to analyze a topic will
produce broad hypotheses that are grounded under limited amount of information regarding such
topic first, then only after which can in-depth evaluation and breaking down of the linkages
between elements existing within the situation can be inferred. On the other hand, papers that
pursue the deductive research approach would be able to build up the big picture of the topic or
situation using a larger amount of data, due to the fact that the relationships between elements of
which are evaluated from specific to broad, thus possessing a higher level of accuracy (Soiferman,
2010). In the case of this paper’s topic of “Effectiveness of Service Quality Efforts within the
Thailand Tourism Industry”, a broad picture on the current situation within the country’s tourism
firm services has to be constructed first through the usage of a limited number of researches, then
only after which could detailed analysis on the service quality gaps within the industry could be
extracted and evaluated. The second limitation of this paper comes from the fact that it uses
secondary data that has been obtained through past journal articles and industry reports of other
authors instead of primary data that are directly collected by the writer himself, leading to the
outcome that such data could be highly inaccurate to the current and near future, where the
expanding COVID-19 pandemic has been and will be yielding significant influences to the welfare
and sustainability of the global tourism industry in the long run. However, it can be indicated that
the pursuance of the qualitative research design using secondary data of previous studies is highly
suitable to the current growing COVID-19 pandemic that has been severely limiting researchers
to be able to engage in social interactions and interviews, as the huge amount of such could pose
risks to both the interviewers as well as the face-to-face participants over time.
4. Findings and Discussion
One of Parasuraman et al.’s (1985) proposed service quality gaps has been the difference between
the expectations of the customer and what they actually experience during their process of using
the service. The work conducted by Choibamroong (2017) has been able to extract the elements
that are frequently mentioned by Chinese tourists when coming into Thailand to participate in

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tourism activities in a highly detailed manner. In particular, the authors have stated that: there have
been five main elements hugely contributing to Chinese tourist satisfaction while touring in
Thailand, which include: convenience of immigration process, good accommodation, varied
tourism activities, good accessibility of attractions and good hospitality of the local people.
In terms of the first element – immigration process in Thailand, the authors have stated that
customer expectations and actual customer experience has been highly aligned with each other,
signaling that tourists have been satisfied with this section of their touring while in Thailand.
However, Choibamroong (2017) has argued that such activity is not perceived positively by luxury
Chinese tourists, as the high-budget customer segment has stated that the immigration process has
been extremely cumbersome and severely damage their positive experience while travelling in
Thailand. This difference comes from the fact that while most tourists have been opting for the
services of Thailand travel agencies, who will take care of all of the lobbying activities in order to
smoothen the immigration process, luxury travelers do not usually do so and prefer to do
everything themselves. As immigration services are the aspects that are usually encountered first
and foremost by foreign tourists entering the country, and that the effectiveness of which has been
heavily controlled by the government, it can be indicated that the Thailand government should be
putting much more efforts in the closing of this gap in order to be able to produce a positive ‘first
impression’ in the eyes of Chinese as well as foreign tourists in the future.
In terms of the second indicator of effective tourism service quality efforts – good accommodation
– it has been pointed out within Choibamroong’s (2017) paper that the general Chinese tourists
travelling to the nation have been putting extremely little attention to such element, while the
luxury Chinese tourists have been perceiving such service to be much above average. This great
level of accommodation quality efforts effectiveness of Thailand’s tourism industry has signaled
that: firms operating within such segment have been able to nail one of the most critical activities
within tourism, since staying at accommodation has been the activity that takes a huge amount of
time during any tourist activities (Nagy and Carr, 2018). However, the fact that the general tourists
rank the quality level of accommodation to be average implies that the quality of budget and
boutique hotels and resorts in Thailand have not been high enough to create a memorable
experience for them, indicating a gap between tourist expectations of accommodation quality and
customer perceptions of what they actually receive throughout the trips. This finding has been

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highly aligned with the work conducted by Boon-itt and Chomvong (2010), who has stated that
Thailand hotel service quality has not been very high and is negatively influencing the overall
tourism quality of the nation throughout the decades. In essence, it has been measured by the
authors that Thailand tourist perception has been lower than their expectations, which comes from
three main reasons: weak resolution of customer problems and obstacles, negative food and
beverages quality, and a total lack of infrastructures and facilities to take care of the needs of
disabled tourists; these elements have been highly severe, to the point that they have been
overwhelming other positive elements of the Thailand tourism accommodation, including:
sufficient amenities such as soap and towel, clean staff uniform and good interior design of hotels
and rooms. According to Boon-itt and Chomvong (2010), the source of the gap in Thailand
accommodation’s inability to effectively resolve customer problems come from the fact that: there
have been insufficient power distribution and delegation for low-level tourism employees to be
able to make direct decisions to resolve problems, leading to the outcome that the problems are
either fully ignored or being addressed in an extremely slow and inefficient manner. Although the
study performed by Boon-itt and Chomvong (2010) has also pointed out that: different sets of
tourists can have different levels of expectations regarding an accommodation’s service quality
efforts effectiveness, it has been extracted from the study that the overall service quality and
security of small-scale hotels and resorts within Thailand has still been relatively weak, signaling
that there is a need for accommodations, especially small-scale ones, within the nations to establish
and adhere to a higher level of quality standard in the long run.
In terms of the third indicator of efficient Thailand tourism service quality efforts – varied tourism
activity, the work conducted by Choibamroong (2017) has been able to extract that: from the
perspective of the largest tourist segment of the country – the Chinese tourists, Thailand has not
been performing great in this segment, as most of the activities have been highly ordinary and can
be frequently found in many other tourism destinations around the world. Especially for luxury
Chinese tourists who have been visiting the country more than once, it has been argued by the
group that their experience in Thailand has been extremely similar to those of other nations that
provide luxury tourism activities. This service quality gap of unique tourism experience between
what the tourists expect and what they actually go through has been stated by Andriotis et al.
(2007) to be extremely critical to the success of the tourist destination, since it is the only factor
that could motivate first-time tourists to travel to the destinations many more times in the future,

18. 18
instead of just once. For the general Chinese tourists who opt for medium-budget Thailand tourism
activities, the same service quality gap still presents: there has been a huge lack of unique tourism
experiences that are crafted based on local Thai lifestyles and atmosphere, indicating that Thailand
tourism firms have completely failed in the process of conducting experiences that are different
from tourists’ daily routines as well as what they cannot be able to obtain when visiting other
nations (Choibamroong, 2017). Furthermore, among different sections within the whole tourism
experience, tourism activities have been the most critical ones that, if done right, could produce
major competitive advantages for the nation against other similar competitors that provide a nearly
identical level of value for money. Therefore, it is critical for the Thailand tourism industry to
close this service quality gap to be able to develop sustainably and effectively in the long-term,
when the competition within the global market will only get increasingly intense over time.
In terms of the fourth indicator – accessibility during the tourism experience, the research
conducted by Choibamroong (2017) has pointed out that: this is a dimension that has been defining
the difference between Thailand tourism firms’ ability to satisfy general tourists and luxury tourists
over the years, as they have been able to satisfy the former but produce major hassles for the latter.
In essence, the authors have argued that: general Chinese tourists in Thailand has been perceiving
that tourist services within the nation have been highly accessible; this could come from the fact
that they are often accompanied by tourist guides who are extremely fluent in multiple languages
and directions of the location, thus yielding virtually zero turbulences and unexpected occurrences
throughout the tourist trips. On the other hand, luxury Chinese tourists have been perceiving that
it is extremely difficult for them to be able to follow directions and access the tourist destination
comfortably, as there has been a high level of conflicts in the language, legislations and cultures
of the two nations, leading to the outcome that signs, number and self-serve guiding instructions
are not understood by the tourist segment at all. This finding implies that there should have been
a higher level of globalization and tourist-friendly adaptations within areas that are tourist-heavy,
so that independent travelers could be able to better navigate themselves, thus closing down the
service quality gap of weak accessibility within the Thailand tourism industry over time.
According to Lee et al. (2011), the presence of tourist-friendly accessibility guides and instructions
could produce highly positive impacts to the expectations and perceptions of tourists visiting the
location, as they feel that the authorities and firms truly care about their contribution and visiting
of the place over time. Unfortunately, the study performed by Choovanichchannon (2015) has been

19. 19
arguing that poor environmental protection within various Thailand tourist destinations has also
been damaging the perceived quality of such destination, as there have been very little attention
shown by the local authorities to keep the national attractions clean, leading to the outcome that
international tourists are reluctant to visit the locations, thinking that they are not being welcomed
by the nation. As such, it can be concluded that in general, the expectation of tourists visiting
Thailand has been higher than the perception of them in terms of destination accessibility within
the Thailand tourism industry; however, considering the fact that environmental issues and topics
have been gathering a rising level of attention around the globe, if the government are not able to
resolve the tourist destination environmental quality gap, the overall effectiveness of service
quality efforts of the whole industry is bound to suffer significant damages in the long run.
Last but not least, it has been discovered by Choibamroong (2017) that Thailand tourism industry’s
formulation of a good hospitality within the tourism environment of the nation has been
successfully achieved, as Chinese tourists participating in which have answered that they are
highly satisfied with the friendliness and openness of the local people. Based on the paper written
by the author, the hospitality of the locals can play a huge role in the level of customer satisfaction
throughout their trips at the location, and that the successful formulation of which directly
contributes to the service quality efforts perception established within the tourists’ minds during
and after the experience. However, Choibamroong’s (2017) work has also mentioned that there
has been a weak level of assistance exerted by the locals to help Chinese tourists throughout their
experience within Thailand, exerting a small damage to the hospitality quality of the nation’s
tourism service quality over time. Nevertheless, the authors have pointed out that this weakness
comes from the local’s inability to speak proper English or Chinese to be able to assist them
correctly, leading to their ignorance regarding tourists’ obstacles and challenges faced during the
Thailand trip. The research performed by Supitchayangkool (2012) has further added to the
element of good hospitality by pointing out that: over the years international tourists have not been
highly satisfied with the local cuisines that are being sold by the local people; they think that local
foods are too expensive for what they bring, and that there has been a negative perception that they
are being charged higher only because they are foreign tourists. Although local hospitality exerted
by local people might not be fully under the control of firms within the Thailand tourism industry
or the government, there are still opportunities for tourism firms and local government officials to

20. 20
be able to conduct initiatives in order to effectively close this small service quality gap and provide
an even more well-rounded tourism service in the long run.
The research performed by Boon-itt and Chomvong (2010) has provided an explanation for the
low level of service quality efforts perception within the Thailand tourism industry in recent years,
which comes from the recent political turbulences of the nation. In essence, the authors have stated
that: in recent years, the once-leading tourism nation of Asia has gone through a wide range of
disasters and political conflicts that have not only been damaging the economic development but
also increasing the criminal cases within the nation over time; both of these incidents have been
laying enormous negative impacts to the tourism reputation of the country, as they imply a highly
insecure environment for travelers to visit in the future. This is in line with the experience of
Turkey during the country’s political instability period, which has also been pointed out by Akbaba
(2006) to lay heavy damages to the nation’s tourism landscape in a very short period of time.
Additionally, considering the fact that Thailand’s popular slogan among foreign tourists have been
“a land of smiles”, such negative events have completely contradicted with the slogan, thus
degrading the friendly tourism image of Thailand in the eyes of international tourists over time.
Another gap existing within Parasuraman et al.’s (1985) service quality gap framework is the
difference between the service quality standards, which are established and monitored by
organizations and government officials, and the real-life quality level that are exerted by such
service when being conducted in real-life. This gap has been closely examined within the research
conducted by Tuntirattanasoontorn (2008), who have conducted a survey with Thailand tourism
firm’s personnel and managers in order to extract their expectations regarding their firm service
delivery and their quality levels when being performed in real-life. According to the paper, when
considering tourism service standards, there has been a number of quality gaps existing within
which that have been negatively influencing the industry’s overall effectiveness of service quality
efforts over time, including: staff skills and expertise, internal communication and IT
infrastructures.
In terms of the first service quality gap – staff skills and expertise, Tuntirattanasoontorn (2008)
has stated that: the organization’s expectations of such elements have been much higher than the
perception of service quality when being conducted in real-life. In particular, this gap has been
proven by the authors to span across a wide range of areas, including: staff’s lack of knowledge,

21. 21
insufficient number of employees to make the process smooth, and weak foreign language
expertise when facing foreign tourists. The source of these quality gaps can come from a wide
range of sources; for instance, the work conducted by Rodyu (2018) has stated that: most medium-
scale tourism firms in Thailand have been putting very little investments into employee training
programs and initiatives for their staffs, thinking that such decision would be a waste of capital
and unnecessary comparing to the salary that such employees have been receiving. However, this
perception of tourism firms in Thailand has been a damaging one for the overall service quality of
the nation’s tourism industry, as the work performed by Slatten and Mehmetoglu (2011) has argued
that: within service-intensive sectors, including hospitality and tourism, frontline employees’ skills
and expertise are extremely crucial for the firm’s survivability and sustainability in the long run,
simply due to the fact that they are the individuals that could produce ‘first impressions’ toward
the guests, and that a large amount of the firm’s brand reputation will be evaluated based on the
quality of such from the perspectives of the visitors and tourists over time. Furthermore, it has also
been recorded by Tuntirattanasoontorn (2008) that in tourism corporations that witness the most
significant quality improvements, their leaders have been putting more attention in the boosting of
customer-facing employees’ skills and expertise over time.
In terms of the second factors influencing the effectiveness of service quality efforts within the
Thailand tourism industry – internal communication, the paper formulated by
Tuntirattanasoontorn (2008) has also pointed out that this element has been extremely weak within
Thailand tourism firms, leading to the outcome that tourism services are not properly conducted
and service errors are prone to occur over time. Considering the fact that effective internal
communication has been proven to have a direct relationship with service responsiveness (Yildiz,
2015), Thailand tourism firm’s inability to maintain and improve internal communication
effectiveness is bound to produce negative influences to service smoothness as well as
responsiveness over time, thus directly damaging their service effectiveness during conduction
attempts. In fact, the smoothness of tourism services have also been discovered by Chang (2014)
to have a tight linkage to the service’s credibility; as such, this element can be highly detrimental
for the tourism company’s brand reputation, considering the fact that almost all core business
operations of which has been customer-facing ones, and that negative reputation of such will yield
shrinking customer’s willing to purchase services in the long run. When looking at the gap from a
bigger perspective, the study performed by Tuntirattanasoontorn (2008) has further emphasized

22. 22
the importance of having an effective internal as well as communication to the competitiveness of
the whole Thailand tourism industry over time: the presence of such element assists tourism firms
to be able to properly communicate with the customers, the press as well as the employees in order
to better align them with the mission, vision and value commitment of the organizations over time.
Therefore, it can be concluded that it is essential for Thailand tourism corporations to conduct
solutions to be able to close this gap in order to not only improve the performance of the firm, but
also the competitiveness of the nation’s industry to better outperform other nations and foreign
corporations amid rising globalization in the long run.
Finally, it has also been figured out within the work of Tuntirattanasoontorn (2008) that there has
been a service quality gap between the service quality standards of IT infrastructures and what
such infrastructures actually are in the current Thailand tourism industry. In particular, the authors
have stated that the IT infrastructure of the Thailand tourism industry has been extremely poor
over time, and that managers of domestic tourism firms have been putting very little attention and
investments in the improvements and adoption of such over the years. In fact, the article conducted
by Chinmaneevong (2012) has argued that: Thailand tourism firms must incorporate more
technological advancements in their infrastructures if they do not want to fall behind in the global
tourism competition in the long run. The lack of attention towards IT facilities and breakthrough
adoption can produce negative impacts to the industry’s effectiveness of service quality efforts
through a number of ways. First and foremost, although the paper written by Choi et al. (2020) has
argued that the adoption of high technology in hotel operations could produce a number of negative
impacts to the tourist’s emotions and experience over time, it is undeniable that such initiative’s
application in the back office and hidden operations of the firm could improve their efficiency,
thus effectively reducing the total expense of the corporation and allowing firm leaders to pursue
cost leadership or invest more in formulating unique amenities and values for customers over time
(Pinillos et al., 2016). Secondly, it has been proven by Pinillos et al. (2016) that efficient usage of
IT facilities within customer-facing activities of the tourism industry could allow firms to
reallocate their human capital towards more quality customer-oriented operations, instead of
wasting such resource to repeated procedures that could have been automated. Finally, in the
current era of Information Technology, younger generations have been getting increasingly
accustomed to technological gadgets and innovations that give them greater conveniences; as such,
applications of the right type of IT facilities can in fact attract a huge number of tourists within

23. 23
this segment, thus producing better profitability and service quality for the firm over time. In real-
life, many corporations have been able to achieve great successes by putting huge efforts in the
development of strong IT infrastructures, such as the Peninsula Hotel Tokyo, Eccleston Square
and Aloft Cupertino in the U.S., all of which have been able to exert top-notch service quality
efforts into the industry thanks to technology over the decades. As such, Thailand tourism
corporations should consider implementing the right technologies ad IT infrastructures into their
operations, so that they could be able to close this service quality gap and boost their effectiveness
of service quality efforts in the long run.
5. Conclusion
To sum up, through the detailed analysis above, it can be concluded that although in the past, the
Thailand tourism industry has been able to perform effectively by exerting superior service quality
efforts effectiveness than other tourism-focused nations around the world, in recent years the
nation’s position has been significantly damaged due to the existence of a large number of quality
gaps within the domestic tourism company’s services over time. To be able to thoroughly extract
these gaps, this paper has been opting for the application of the qualitative research approach,
using secondary data of past research journals and industry reports relating to the topic of
“Effectiveness of Service Quality Efforts within the Thailand Tourism Industry”. Three research
questions have been proposed, which are: “What are the factors influencing the effectiveness of
service quality efforts within the Thailand tourism industry?”, “How is the effectiveness of the
service quality efforts of Thailand tourism industry in recent years?”, and “What are the
recommendations for firms operating within the tourism industry to be able to further improve the
service quality efforts effectiveness in the future?”. The paper has been grounded under
Parasuraman et al.’s (1985) service quality gaps framework, within which two main gaps are
primarily focused throughout the paper, which are: what the tourists expects and what they actually
experience in real-life, and what the organization expects through service standards and what such
standards are followed when being conducted in real-life.
The result of the research is that: there has been existing a total of eight quality gaps within the
Thailand tourism industry services conducted over the years, all of which have been directly
contributing to the degrading service quality level of the industry over time. First and foremost, in
terms of the service quality gaps between what the tourist expects and what the tourist actually

24. 24
experience in real-life, it has been discovered that tourists visiting Thailand has been dissatisfied
with the nation’s convenience of immigration process, good accommodation, varied tourism
activities, good accessibility of attractions and good hospitality of the local people. When
considering the service quality gaps between what the organization expects through service
standards and what the services actually become when being performed in real-life, there has been
three quality gaps that have been negatively influencing the industry’s overall effectiveness of
service quality efforts over time, including: staff skills and expertise, internal communication and
IT infrastructures. These gaps have been attributed both to the domestic firm’s neglection of
conducting proper quality improvements as well as the national government’s lack of attention to
forming efficient policies and initiatives that could better the experiences of foreign tourists
entering the nation over time.
Therefore, a number of recommendations could be produced for firm leaders and government
officials in order to increase the effectiveness of service quality efforts of Thailand tourism
industry in the future. First and foremost, Thailand tourism companies could construct better
customer-oriented feedback programs in the near future in order to be able to best understand on
the most effective solution to satisfy the expectations of tourists. In particular, as the first gap type
is about the difference between customer’s expectation and perception, the best measure would be
to understand better this gap this initiative could be performed through the giving of surveys to
tourists right at the end of survey usage, so that their most recent frustrations or dissatisfaction
during service execution could be immediately recalled and expressed to firm staffs at the time. In
terms of the gap regarding the immigration process, it is recommended that the Thailand
government forms a less complicated procedures for foreign tourists to be able to enter the country,
so that first impressions of the tourists when travelling to the nation could be improved, thus
yielding an overall higher level of tourist satisfaction toward the effectiveness of service quality
efforts of the industry over time. From the work of Choibamroong (2017), a first significant
improvement could be to deploy immigration officers who could speak fluent Chinese to first
eliminate the language barrier between the two parties, which will alleviate part of the
complications arise throughout the procedures. The government’s quality improvement of this
small stage within the whole tourism experience is bound to increase the nation’s tourism
competitiveness against other nations in the same continents, as the paper written by Bryant and

25. 25
Walker (2011) has proven that the fine-tuning of good complementary services within the tourism
experience is bound to attract more groups of tourists in the long run.
Secondly, the closing down of the service quality gap of poor resolution of tourist issues and
obstacles during stay, it can be recommended that tourism firm leaders in Thailand assign more
decision-making power to lower-level, customer-facing personnel, so that during situations where
tourists demand immediate solutions, employees could be able to respond and resolve in a quicker
manner, thus protecting the whole service experience from being interrupted and degraded at that
very moment. Thirdly, in order to be able to close the service quality gap of tourist perception
regarding the low variety and uniqueness of local tourism activities, it is recommended that
Thailand tourism firms construct highly local tourism activities that are extremely unique to the
nation and local areas only, so that tourists could only be able to experience such when coming to
the destination. Furthermore, by opting for a highly memorable localized tourism program,
corporations could expect that tourists and travelers will conduct constant revisits of the location,
due to the fact that the positive impressions regarding previous trips could stay in their minds for
longer and do carry onto next travelling decisions (Jang and Feng, 2007). Additionally, as the
obtainment of positive tourist satisfaction regarding tourism activities has also been proven by
Kim (2014) to come from the levels of body- and mind-relaxing elements within such activities,
Thailand tourism companies could also focus on the crafting of activities that can release stress
and pressures from the minds of the visitors, so that they could be easily released from their daily
routines and create an even more memorable travelling experience in the end. In addition, it has
also been extracted within the paper that: while the luxury tourists have been perceiving Thailand’s
accommodation quality, which is an extremely crucial part to the whole tourism experience, to be
good for the value that it brings, general tourists have not been obtaining a memorable experiences
of such, signaling that: there has been a accommodation quality gap between what such tourists
expect and what they actually experience while staying in medium-sized hotels of Thailand.
Therefore, it is recommended that the Thailand government imposes a higher level of service
quality standards across small-and-medium-sized hotels and accommodations across the country,
so that even for low-budget customers, memorable experiences could also be formulated to a point
that could still exceed their expectations after the trip.

26. 26
In terms of the gap between what the organization expects through standards and what the service
quality actually are when being performed in real-life, a number of recommendations could also
be given to Thailand tourism firms in order to close down these service quality efforts degradation
factors in the long run. First and foremost, the best solution to resolve staff’s lack of knowledge
and skills regarding their operations and standards of conduct is to perform higher-quality
recruitment and selection process, so that more competent human resources could be obtained,
thus improving the overall talent pool of the organization over time. The work conducted by Dhar
(2015) has argued that: effective continuous training initiatives have been proven to have direct
influences to the overall quality of firms operating within service-oriented industries; as such,
Thailand tourism corporations could expect this gap to be effectively closed by following this
recommendation in the long run. For current employees of tourism firms, more focus needs to be
put into training programs of the organization, so that tourism personnel could be able to better
understand tourist’s needs and expectations to deliver the best-quality services to them at the time
(Chang et al., 2011). Finally, to effectively cope with the external influence of political instability
that have been negatively impacting tourist expectation in the nation, it is important that Thailand
tourist destination managers as well as accommodation owners put huge efforts in the development
of security enforcement measures in their organizations, so that such negative perception could be
effectively alleviated in the future.

27. 27
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Appendix
Appendix A: Reflective Learning Statement
Throughout the work done for the dissertation, I have been able to obtain a wide amount of
knowledge as well as effectively hone a number of different skills that are highly aligned with
the proposed “Programme Goals” stated at the beginning of the course. First and foremost, as the
dissertation has been grounded under heavy researches and analysis, the work done throughout
this dissertation has greatly boosted my critical thinking and academic researching skills, both of
which are extremely valuable for my intended career path to become a professional Business
Analyst in the near future. The knowledge obtained through this work, as well as lectures that I
have acquired throughout the programme, has drastically expanded my perception regarding how
business practices could be conducted in ways that can produce long-term service quality
improvements in the long run. Furthermore, in terms of the particular topic of this dissertation, I
have been able to realize the valuable lesson that: an individual must be taking a number of
different perspectives in order to be able to fully understand sources to the situation as well as
how various elements existing within which could be interacting with each other over time. Last
but not least, the dissertation as well as the programme have also significantly improve my soft
skillsets of communication, decision-making as well as time management, all of which are
extremely crucial for my personal development as a well-rounded Business student as well as a
prospective Business Analyst in the long run.

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Appendix B: Dissertation Proposal
UG Dissertation Proposal Student name:
Title: Effectiveness Of Service Quality Efforts In The Tourism Industry Of Thailand
Section 1: Researchable Topic Area and Objectives
The research aims to provide a detailed analysis into the effectiveness of service quality efforts of
the Thailand tourism industry based on the Service Quality Gaps framework. There are three
research objectives that this paper aims to achieve, which are:
- To extract different elements that have been mediating the service quality efforts
effectiveness of the tourism industry in Thailand.
- To evaluate the service quality gaps existing within the Thailand tourism industry.
- To give out recommendations for Thailand tourism firms and governments to improve the
industry’s service quality in the future.
Section 2: Literature Review
Thailand Tourism Industry
In Thailand, tourism has been one of the most influential industries that has been producing major
positive influences to the well-being and development of the nation’s economy over recent
decades. However, in recent years, numerous reports have been pointing out that the Thailand
tourism industry is rapidly degrading due to its extremely low level of service quality over time
(Beirman, 2016). First and foremost, the rising wave of globalization across the globe has been
severely boosting the international competition of the tourism industry country-by-country,
leading to the fact that service quality standards and expectations from customers have also been
increasing at a rapid pace. Secondly, as the overall income and economic stability of citizens is
getting higher over time, there has been a rising level of expectations from customers within the
global tourism industry in general, and Thailand tourism industry in particular, to have
opportunities to experience higher-quality services and amenities conducted by tourism

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organizations, thus putting more pressures on Thailand tourism firms to conduct continuous quality
improvements and breakthrough additions to their current services and amenities to be able to
effectively survive and thrive in the long run (Baguisi et al., 2015).
Definition of Service Quality
According to Parasuraman et al. (1988), service quality is defined as the degree of correlation
between what the customers or higher-ups expect from the service and the real-life perceptions of
such service when they experience it at the time.
Customer Expectations
Olson and Dover (1979) have stated that: customer expectation is the utmost important elements
existing within all services that can effectively depict the quality of which as well as the degree of
customer satisfaction exerted during and after the process.
Customer Satisfaction
The paper written by Czepiel and Rosenberg (1976) has defined customer satisfaction to be the
state of emotions within the customers that indicates the level of preference toward a product or
service.
Service Quality Gaps Theory
The paper formulated by Parasuraman et al. (1985) has been able to point out that service quality
efforts have been measured through four main gaps, which are: the difference between what the
customer expects and what the customer experiences, the difference between what the customer
expects and the service’ innate qualifications or standards, the difference between service quality
standards and real-life service conduction, and the difference between service delivery and what
the customers have been communicated about the quality of such service delivery. Due to the time
and capability limitations, this paper will focus on the two gaps of: the difference between what
the customer expects and what the customer experiences, and the difference between service
quality standards and real-life service conduction.
Indicators of Service Quality Efforts Effectiveness

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Heung (2008) has argued that there are a number of factors that could drastically influencing the
quality outcome of service conduction over time, namely: core service delivery, customer
orientation, communication effectiveness and customer satisfaction. The paper conducted by
Naidoo et al. (2010) has been able to extract the key influencers to tourist satisfaction within the
tourism sector over time, which include: the surrounding natural environment, accommodation
services and amenities, local culture, infrastructures at the attraction and the quality of food given
out throughout the whole tourism experience
Influencers of Service Quality Efforts within the Thailand Tourism Industry
The work conducted by Choibamroong (2017) has been able to extract the elements that are
frequently mentioned by Chinese tourists when coming into Thailand to participate in tourism
activities in a highly detailed manner. In particular, the authors have stated that: there have been
five main elements hugely contributing to Chinese tourist satisfaction while touring in Thailand,
which include: convenience of immigration process, good accommodation, varied tourism
activities, good accessibility of attractions and good hospitality of the local people.
Another gap existing within Parasuraman et al.’s (1985) service quality gap framework is the
difference between the service quality standards, which are established and monitored by
organizations and government officials, and the real-life quality level that are exerted by such
service when being conducted in real-life. This gap has been closely examined within the research
conducted by Tuntirattanasoontorn (2008), who have conducted a survey with Thailand tourism
firm’s personnel and managers in order to extract their expectations regarding their firm service
delivery and their quality levels when being performed in real-life. According to the paper, when
considering tourism service standards, there has been a number of quality gaps existing within
which that have been negatively influencing the industry’s overall effectiveness of service quality
efforts over time, including: staff skills and expertise, internal communication and IT
infrastructures.
Section 3: Proposed research methods
- Research approach: inductive
- Research methodology: qualitative

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- Research paradigm: interpretivism
- Data type: secondary data – journal articles & industry reports conducted in the past that
relate to the topic
- Data collection method: through academic sites: Google Scholar and ProQuest
- Sample: researches conducted within the past 15 years
- Ethical issues: none, as there are not any involvements of any human individuals or
organizations throughout the data collection process
Section 4: Timetable for your research
Month Dissertation Activity
Reading papers + Literature Review
Data collection
Preliminary analysis + section arrangement
Detailed analysis
Conclusion + Recommendations
Section 5: Reference List
Baguisi, K., Aung, H. M., Yu, T. M., Linn, K. Y., & Oo, S. Y. (2015). A study of tourist level of
satisfaction and its effects on Thailand’s tourism. Apheit Journal, 4(2).
Beirman, D. (2016). Challenging times for Thai tourism. Retrieved 22 August 2020, from
https://www.policyforum.net/challenging-times-for-thai-tourism/
Choibamroong, T. (2017). Expectations and satisfaction of Chinese tourists toward Thailand
tourism management. Asia-Pacific Social Science Review, 16(3), 30-45.
Czepiel, J. A., & Rosenberg, L. J. (1976). The study of consumer satisfaction: Addressing the" so
what" question. New York University, Graduate School of Business Administration.
Heung, V. C. S. (2008). Effects of tour leader’s service quality on agency’s reputation and
customers’ word-of-mouth. Journal of Vacation Marketing, 14(4), 305-315.

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Naidoo, P., Ramseook-Munhurrun, P., & Ladsawut, J. (2010). Tourist satisfaction with Mauritius
as a holiday destination. Global Journal of Business Research, 4(2), 113–123.
Olson, J. C., & Dover, P. A. (1979). Disconfirmation of consumer expectations through product
trial. Journal of Applied psychology, 64(2), 179.
Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1985). A Conceptual Model of Service Quality
and Its Implications for Future Research. Journal of Marketing, 49(4), 41-50.
Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V. A., & Berry, L. L. (1988). SERVQUAL: A Multiple-Item Scale for
Measuring Consumer Perceptions of Service Quality. Journal of Retailing, 64(1), 12-40.
Tuntirattanasoontorn, N. (2008). Service quality improvement in the Thai hotel industry. AU
Journal of Management, 6(1), 24-37.