A Study on Customer Satisfaction Towards Hotel Industry in Vellore

This project is aimed at studying customer satisfaction with respect to Hotels in and around Vellore District. The main objective is to explore the level of customer satisfaction towards hotel industry in Vellore and to sustain the customer in the business and to give direction to the hotel management for improvement of customer services and to know the factors which motivate the customers towards hotels. A well structured Questionnaire is used to collect primary data. Sample size is 100, variance and confidence methods are used for Determining sample size. The researcher adopted simple random sampling for the study. Finally, it has been proved that the overall assessment of customer satisfaction in hotel industry is good.


INTRODUCTION
The 'Customer is the king!' And, if we believe this time tested and accepted philosophy, then we also know as to how difficult it is to make the 'King' happy. The new age customer is highly demanding as far as expectations of hospitality services from hotels. Human interaction is an important part of managing all facets hotel operations. Each interaction between the customer and the hotel staff plays an important role in customer's unique experience at the hotel. Therefore, human interaction is the key to making a customer feel like a king. This project is aimed at studying customer satisfaction with respect to Hotels in and around Vellore District. Hence the project is limited to Vellore. Apart from studying the level customer satisfaction this study also aims at finding out the important ingredients for satisfying any customer.
There are diverse studies that address the customer satisfaction and the influencing variables that leverage the process. In business, customer satisfaction is a tactic of making money and this money can only be generated by having a satisfied and loyal customer base. With the world dwindling into the globalization the intensity of competition has augmented to an outlying mark.

LITERATURE REVIEW
Customer satisfaction is a business philosophy which tends to the creation of value for customers, anticipating and managing their expectations, and demonstrating ability and responsibility to satisfy their needs. Qualities of service and customer satisfaction are critical factors for success of any business (Gronoos, 1990;Parasuraman etal., 1988). As Valdani (2009) points out: enterprises exist because they have a customer to serve. The key to achieve sustainable advantage lies in delivering high quality service that results in satisfied customers (Shemwellet al, 1998).
Service quality and customer satisfaction are key factors in the battle to obtain competitive advantage and customer retention. Customer satisfaction is the outcome of customer's perception of the value received in a transaction or relationship, where value equals perceived service quality, compared to the value expected from transactions or relationships with competing vendors (Blanchard & Galloway, 1994;Heskett et al., 1990;Zeithaml et al., 1990). In order to achieve customer satisfaction, it is important to recognize and to anticipate customers' needs and to be able to satisfy them. Enterprises which are able to rapidly understand and satisfy customers' needs, make greater profits than those which fail to un-derstand and satisfy those (Barsky &Nash, 2003). Since the cost of attracting new customers is higher than the cost of retaining the existing ones, in order to be successful managers must concentrate on retaining existing customers implementing effective policies of customer satisfaction and loyalty. This is especially true in the hotel industry.
Hotels are increasing their investments to improve service quality and the perceived value for guests so as to achieve better customer satisfaction and loyalty, thus resulting in better relationships with each customer (Jones et al., 2007). Relationship quality has a remarkable positive effect on hotel guests' behavior: it creates positive word of mouth (WOM) and increments repeated guest rates (Kim et al., 2001).In this paper, after a review of the main literature on customer satisfaction and retention in the hotel industry, we confront a real case (Hotel Sporting Club of Cefalù, Sicily, Italy) and analyze, using a qualitative methodology, whether there is a positive correlation between the customer oriented business philosophy, adopted by the management of Sporting Club, and the achievements obtained in terms of customer satisfaction.
In the past, tourism has been often considered as the natural outcome of environmental and cultural resources of a specific territory. In this view, the role of hospitality enterprises cannot influence demand levels and is merely limited to the supply of services to tourists. Le Blanc & Nguyen (1996) suggest that marketing efforts should be directed to highlight the environmental characteristics of the location in order to attract new customers. The constant increase of demand of touristic services, and the request for higher standards by the guests, has enforced the competition among hospitality suppliers and highlighted how the attractively of the touristic destination is influenced by the standards of the services provided by the local hotels.
Hence, both exploring the importance for customers of single attributes in hotel selection and to systematically survey their level of satisfaction are indispensable. Research on the topic of guest satisfaction, which translates into the consideration of whether or not customers will return to a hotel or advice it to other tourists, is pivotal to the success of the hospitality business. Neglecting to pay attention to those hotel attributes considered most important by guests leads to negative evaluations of the hotel, thus restricting the chance of repeat patronage.
The booming firms define their strategies in customer orient-ed comportment. Kotler (2000) defined satisfaction as a person's feelings of pleasure or disappointment resulting from comparing a product's perceived performance (or outcome) in relation to his or her expectations". But Oliver (1997) took a more myopic view and stated customer satisfaction as a consumer's fulfilment response. It is a judgment that product or service feature, or the product or service itself, provides a pleasurable level of consumption related fulfilment. In other words, it is the overall level of contentment with a service/ product experience".

METHODOLOGY
The study is conducted in customer satisfaction towards hotel industry in Vellore. It covers the various strategies applied by the hotel industry to satisfy the customers. At present some of the customers are not satisfied with the service provided by the hotels. That will be identified based on the data analysis and some value information would be provided for improvement of the service in hotel industry.
The topic taken for the study is customer satisfaction towards hotel industry in Vellore. The reason why took up this topic is because today hotel industry is among the fastest growing sector in the market and provides more business opportunity to the public, whereby people will be spent their time in hotels to have relaxation with their family through them project work can expect to come up with meaningful analysis of customer satisfaction towards hotel industry.
The main objective is to explore the level of customer satisfaction towards hotel industry in Vellore and to sustain the customer in the business and to give direction to the hotel management for improvement of customer services and to know the factors which motivate the customers towards hotels.

RESEARCH DESIGN:
Descriptive approach is one of the most popular approaches these days. In this approach, a problem is described by the researcher by using questionnaire or schedule. This approach enables a researcher to explore new areas of investigation. A well structured Questionnaire is used to collect primary data. The research was conducted at Vellore, Tamilnadu, India. Sample size is 100, variance and confidence methods are used for Determining sample size. The researcher adopted simple random sampling for the study.

RESULTS
64% of the respondents are satisfied with the cleanliness and comfort of rooms. 51% of the respondents are satisfied with the spaciousness of rooms. 41% of the respondents are satisfied with the hygienic restrooms. 41% of the respondents are satisfied with the complementary items. 52% of the respondents are satisfied with brochures and pamphlets than other. 45% of the respondents are satisfied with the availability of non-smoking areas in restaurant. 47% of the respondents are satisfied with the staff performing services right at the first time. 48% of the respondents are satisfied with the staff with good communication skills. 49% of the respondents are satisfied with the accuracy of food orders by the hotels. 37% of the respondents are satisfied with the advance information about services. 42% of the respondents are satisfied with the availability of services provided by the staffs. 43% of the respondents are satisfied with the variety and quality of food and recreational facilities. 46% of the respondents are satisfied with the quality of food in restaurant. 54% of the respondents are satisfied with the variety of basic products and services offered. 55% of the respondents are satisfied with the availability of room services. 37% of the respondents are satisfied with the timely housekeeping services. 46% of the respondents are satisfied with the satisfactory level related to affordability of prices. 48% of the respondents are satisfied with the delivery of services at the time of promised. 37% of the respondents are satisfied with the comfortable clean and mattress, pillow, bed sheets and covers. 47% of the respondents are rated that the availability of conference hall is good. 41% of the respondents are rated that the telephone facilities available in the hotel is good. The hotel manager should understand about the customer expectation and level of satisfaction based on that they have to service. Make necessary arrangements like proper chairs and tables, refreshers rooms, ventilations and other arrangements of which customer expected at the time of service provided by the hotels.

CONCLUSION
As the study focused on the customer satisfaction, has been clearly analyzed with appropriate methodology based on the objectives as the findings valuable suggestions and recommendations are given according to the data analysis. This would help to make the hotel industry more perfection towards the customer satisfaction much more effective way. Finally, it has been proved that the overall assessment of customer satisfaction in hotel industry is good.