How These Five-Star Hotels in Morocco Can Improve on the Various Products They Offer Using Customer Satisfaction

ABSTRACT

The hospitality industry has been recording immense growth over the last decade all over Morocco. It is the goal of every business, whether in the manufacturing or hospitality industry to retain their customers through satisfying their needs thus achieve a competitive advantage over other hotels. Customer satisfaction can be defined as the process of making sure that the expectations of a customer are met through offering quality services and products on time. Services in the hospitality industry include the guest houses, wedding venues, fitness centers as well as housekeeping that the hotels offer o guests while at their premises. On the other hand, products in the hospitality field may be in the form of meals offered to the guests. The top five star hotels in Africa are mostly based in Casablanca, Morocco.

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Among the factors that have contributed to their growth over the past decade is their financial ability as well as management that has put them in a opposition to offer multiple services to their guests such as 24 hour room dining services, luxurious ocean view restaurants, quality housekeeping, outdoor swimming, ocean view fitness centers, wedding venues and the availability of a multilingual team to handle people from all over the world. Reflection and analyzing guest feedback and how they affect their products will put the management of these five-star hotels in a position to analyze the impact of the services they offer. The objectives of this study were to determine how products and services offered in the Moroccan five-star hotels can be improved through making sure that the visiting guests are satisfied. The study featured three five star hotels in Casablanca, Morocco. The study has reached a total of 100 respondents that have been sampled guests who have been visiting the hotels. Therefore as earlier stated the research paper aims at evaluating how these five-star hotels in Morocco can improve on the various products they offer to their customers using customer satisfaction.

CHAPTER ONE: INTRODUCTION

Background of the Study

As a result of the continuous improvements in the tourism and hospitality field in Morocco, the government is aiming at building more activities and facilities to attract tourists to this North African country in the year 2017/2018. Despite the fact that most African countries in Africa are struggling with political instability, the Moroccan government is in line with its 2020 vision of becoming one of the top 20 tourist destination in the world ("Morocco: Enterprises and employment in tourism: Morocco," 2018).

In the process of the many hoteliers as well as other business trying to make sure that they meet their business obligations, they happen to put a lot of focus on service quality, costs flexibility as well as time. Quality can be defined as the act of meeting or going above the expectations of the client when it comes to the provision of goods and services ("Product Development," n.d.). Goods and services' quality continues to be one of the most important aspects of business today. However goods are advantaged than services as quality for goods can be measured due to the tangibility nature while for services it is hard to measure their quality due to the nature that services are not tangible (Crespi-Cladera & Orfila-Sintes, n.d.).

Whenever an organization such as a hotel surpasses the level that customers expect them to be, it comes with astonishment and excitement. Therefore, the excitement among the customers increases the chances of the customers acquiring the goods or services from the organization again as well as most likely refer their friends to the organization since they are happy with their service experience. However, customer loyalty does not guarantee client dedication but rather assume a basic part of the whole process of customer retention thus being a prerequisite for customer loyalty.

1.1.1 Service/ Product Quality

Service or product quality is characterized by the view of how the product or service delivery goes beyond their desires (Yuan & Yu, 2010). Due to the intangible nature of services, it becomes hard to quantify their quality level but for products, the quality can be measured as they are tangible in nature. As a result of the complicated nature of service delivery, it becomes hard for customers to see the value for the services in the first encounter as well as for the same employees offering the services during different times of the day as a result of the changing factors ("Will a quality product or service cost more and what are the benefits of manufacturing quality products or providing quality service?," 2012).

Therefore, it is important to have a good understanding of the customer perceptions based on the four dimensions since it aids the management to understand what the customers think and how they can satisfy their needs fully ("Product conformity, quality control, and service problem resolution," n.d.). This is because whenever client prerequisites are unmistakably distinguished, it puts the management in a better position to satisfy the needs and wants of their clients.

1.1.2 Customer satisfaction

Customer satisfaction is a very crucial issue in every organization since it puts the organization in a position to retain more customers as well as improve their service processes over time("Customer service, Satisfaction, and Success," n.d.). Many people assume that a product or service meets the desires of the client since customers often get contented with services and products when they got what was promised (Al-Refaie, Li, & Ko, 2012). When the offers are equal to what they expected, they are satisfied but when they get more than what was promised, they get delighted but when the services or products are below than what was promised they get disappointed meaning that they are not satisfied and thus may share their dissatisfaction with their friend thus affecting the organization negatively ("Customer Mapping," 2015).

Therefore, having a good understanding of those factors that influence customer satisfaction will be ideal for aiding the decision maker design those products and services that are needed by the customers. The understanding of the customer needs can be achieved through paying attention to customer preference, criticism as well as liking the feedbacks from the customers since it can guide them through the product or service development and improvement (DR.K.Vanitha, 2012).

Customer satisfaction can too be an avenue of earning brand loyalty and therefore it is good for organizations to meet the expectations of their customers. Despite customer satisfaction not guaranteeing customer loyalty, it can be ideal for increasing the chances of getting loyal customers.

1.1.3 Customer loyalty

Customer loyalty can be achieved in the instances where a customer's belief in a service or good is at its best and meets their needs ("Customer Loyalty and Supply Chain Management," 2017). Customer loyalty is characterized by the attitude and feeling that he or she has for the product or service offered as the attitude is known to create the overall commitment to a product. The behavior of both the organization and the customers is likely to influence customer loyalty as continuous purchases from one supplier can improve the relationships between service providers and the clients ("Frequency Reward Vs Customer Loyalty Programs," 2013).

Customer loyalty is known to be gained over time as the service provider continues to understand the needs of his or her customer (Robinson & Etherington, 2006). Thus it would be cheaper to strive to retain the existing customers so that they cannot be swayed to the competitor products but continue acquiring one's products. It is therefore, important to note that service quality will generally influence the level of customer satisfaction and when a customer is satisfied with a product or service it is more likely that he or she will refer the brand to his friends or change to other brands if their needs are not well taken care of (Zeidler, 2009).

1.1.4 Competitive Advantage

Competitive advantage can be said to be the conditions that allow an organization to produce a good or service of equal value at a reduced and desirable price (Mishra, 2017). With these conditions, an organization can be in a position to generate more sales as compared to other rivals in the market ("Operations strategy as a source of sustainable competitive advantage," n.d.). Competitive advantage is known to be influenced by factors such as branding, distribution networks, product quality, and customer service as well as customer satisfaction (Huang, Dyerson, Wu, & Harindranath, 2015).

1.1.5 Hospitality industry in Morocco

According to the 2017 edition of the Hotelier Summit Africa, the boost of the hospitality and construction industry by Morocco's tourism industry, the summit will provide an insight to the real estate and hospitality entrepreneurs to build and operate new hotels across the country (Bergsma, 2000). As stated by the director of IDE Ravi Kumar Chandran, the last few months of 2016 gave the Moroccan tourism sector an avenue to give the country a record-breaking revenue due to the trust that Morocco has gained over the years as a tourist destination (Day, 2012). Therefore, as a result of the developments of the hospitality industry, those new hospitality facilities have been developed in several parts of Morocco.

To achieve the country's vision of being on the top 20 list of tourist destinations in the world, it will be prudent for the government to invest in the domestic tourism as well as invest in the coastline resorts where most tourist attraction facilities are located (J, 2016). Among the common tourists that have been recorded to visit Morocco in the year 2016 include those from countries such as France, Germany, Britain, as well as those from Spain. There has also been a record on an increase in tourist from Britain while those of French origin continue to occupy the largest part of the tourism sector in Morocco due to their spending and traveling power as well as their willingness to visit the nation as at 2011.

The tourists that visited the kingdom of Morocco in the year 2016 was recorded at 10.6 million and therefore for the country to achieve its vision of 2020, there will be...