The effect of culture on accommodation service quality perception and expectations

Article history: Received: April 29, 2020 Received in revised format: April 3


Introduction
According to the World Travel and Tourism Council's (WTTC) (2019), in 2018, the Tourist and Travel sector grew at 3.9%. This sector, also, contributed to the global gross domestic product (GDP) by $8.8 trillion and provided 319 million jobs to the world economy. As for Australia, tourism has had great impact on the Australian economy. Tourism in Australia has directly contributed to Australia's GDP with $60.8 billion and 996,000 Australians were, directly and indirectly, employed. Moreover, Australia's tourism accounts for over 8% of total Australian exports of $39.1 billion, and for every tourism dollar, 44 cents were spent in Australian regions (Australian Government Austrade, 2020). One of the benefits of tourist spending is the upsurge of foreign exchange earnings and job creation (Phau et al., 2014). The tourist customer is critical to the sustainability and survival of tourist service firms (Legcevic, 2008) as a travel experience that meets or exceeds a tourist's expectations is positively viewed (Andereck et al., 2012). The academic literature and the tourism industry, particularly the accommodation sector, recognizes the increasing importance of customer cultural values and their effect on customer expectations and perceptions of service quality (Truong & King, 2010). In the accommodation sector, the pursuit of customer expectations and perceptions of service quality is a primary objective of accommodation management (Han et al., 2008). Cultural values are often considered to be the underlying determinant of tourist expectations, perceptions and behavioural intentions (Reisinger, 2009). Particularly in the decline of international tourist travel due to the global financial crisis (Ritchie & Hudson, 2009) and global pandemics such as swine flu (Page et al., 2012), perceived personal safety, value for money, and political unrest (Phau et al., 2014). Today's accommodation managers would benefit by being aware of their ability to influence service culture and the costs incurred when ignoring a tourist's cultural norms (Patterson & Mattila, 2008). Most studies link culture to nationality which can be problematic as increasingly boundaries are becoming less dominant with the world moving towards being a global village (Laesser, et al., 2014). This study acknowledges that criticism but asserts the population sample under investigation in this study is Arab tourists who commonly share Islam as their dominant religion and thus share strong cultural values.
Cultural values have been studied from various tourism perspectives (Truong & King, 2010). Yet research into the impact of tourists' expectations and perceptions in the Australian tourism and accommodation sector context has been limited particularly for tourists from the Middle East. This tourist cohort is classified as the sixth largest number of global inbound tourist arrivals to Australia and the dollar value they spend whilst visiting Australia is expected to grow significantly (Tourism Research Australia, 2008) . Our study addresses this gap by examining the influence of cultural values on service quality expectations and perceptions in relation to Gold Coast accommodation service quality by Arab tourists. The three hypotheses driving this study are: H1 There is a positive relationship between cultural values and service quality expectations.
H2 There is a positive relationship between cultural values and service quality perceptions.
H3 Gender, age, education level, profession, country of origin and cultural values are predictive of each factor of expectations and perceptions among the Arab tourists.

The Association between Culture and Service
With the growing interest in the notion that cultural values are an important factor in providing appropriate services and success, service providers need to understand the customer's cultural values (Patterson & Mattila, 2008). Truong and King (2010) confirmed that the expectations and perceptions of service quality may differ among cultural groups. For example, Sabiote-Ortiz et al. (2014) showed that the dimensions of "uncertainty-avoidance" and "individualism/collectivism" cultural dimensions have an impact on overall perceived value in the hospitality industry. Their study supports Patterson and Mattila's (2008) findings showing the importance of cultural values in customer perceptions of service quality. The exploration of the association between culture and service quality, in the accommodation sector, has further to go in order to fill the significant gaps still existing in the literature (Truong & King, 2010). Few studies have investigated the impact of cultural values on accommodation service quality (Truong & King, 2010). As the literature is fragmented, the intention of this study is to extend the existing literature by simultaneously measuring and identifying the relationship between cultural values, and each factor of service quality expectations and perceptions, held by Arab tourists. This is done by using the Best Worst Scale (BWS), which is the scale recommended for studies addressing cultural research (Lee et al., 2008). Therefore, this study used Schwartz's (1992) cultural values, on the individual level, to measure the relationship between cultural values and service quality for Arab tourist.

Demographic Factors and Service
Literature shows that demographics may influence tourist expectations and perceptions. The more significant demographic factors include age, gender, profession and education level (Ariffin & Maghazi, 2012). Age is considered one of the factors that contributes to tourists' demands (Liu and Yen, 2010). Studies addressing age as an independent variable have sought to identify the impact of different age groups on the tourist expectations and perceptions. Shaw and Williams (2002) proposed that middle-aged tourists have high demand expectations and low perceptions, while older and retired tourists have fewer expectations and higher service quality perceptions. In contrast, Liu and Yen (2010) conducted their study on leisure farming tourists living in Taiwan and found that young tourists' age had a higher total tourist satisfaction than that of older tourists. In addition, to the tourists' age, gender was considered as one of the factors that contributed to the tourists' expectations and perceptions. This outcome was confirmed by a number of studies such as Ariffin and Maghazi (2012) who proposed that that the expectations of accommodation service quality level are influenced by individual aspects such as gender. Other demographical variables identified as a predictor of expectations and perceptions among tourists are education level, profession, and country of origin or nation (Liu & Yen, 2010). Tourists' education level, profession and country of origin are significantly correlated to the tourists' perceptions (Liu & Yen, 2010). In summary, the literature shows that tourists' cultural background and their demographic characteristics impact on their expectations and perceptions. Thus, tourism service providers have to take into consideration these factors to understand tourists' expectations and perception.

A Conceptual Model
Based on the literature and utilising two established scales with reliable track records, we developed the study's conceptual model in order to examine the relationship between cultural values and each factor of expectations and perceptions. To measure cultural values at the individual level, Schwartz's (1992) ten values scale (power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism, benevolence, tradition, conformity and security) was utilised. Soutar and Louviere's (2008) Best-Worst scale (BWS) was used to measure Schwartz's values. Service quality expectations and perceptions were measured by using the five dimensions of service quality (tangible, empathy, assurance, reliability, and responsiveness). The SERVQUAL scale was used to reveal tourist expectations and perceptions, and to uncover the gap between them (Parasuraman, et al., 1991).

Sample
With a response rate of 61%, a total of 305 usable responses were received from Arab tourists who visited the Gold Coast, Australia and stayed at hotels and holiday apartments for at least one night.

Instruments
Schwartz's (1992) ten values scale, and the Lee, Soutar and Louviere (2008) Best-Worst Survey (SVBWS) were used in this study. The SVBWS allowed for each participant to see each value type six times and each pair of value types three times. This resulted in 66 measures of the 11 value types. The 11 subsets that were used in this study cover Schwartz's (1992) 10 cultural values: power, achievement, hedonism, stimulation, self-direction, universalism-nature, universalismsocial concern, benevolence, tradition, conformity, and security. In this scale the participants only can choose the most and least important values for them, avoiding the middle answers (Cohen, 2009). To measure service quality, the SERV-QUAL scale includes the expectations (SQE) and perceptions (SQP) were used. The service quality scale has subsequently been widely used within different service contexts (Legcevic, 2008). Mey et al. (2006) have adapted Parasuraman et al.'s (1991) questionnaire in order to apply it to the Malaysian accommodation services sector. The scale that was adapted by Mey et al. (2006) contains 25 items, instead of the 22 items that was developed by the Parasuraman et al.'s original scale for each of the expectations and perceptions scales. Therefore, this study used the 22 items adapted by Mey et al. (2006) and related to Parasuraman et al.'s (1991) original 22 items for each of the expectations and perceptions scales. This scale covered the five dimensions of reliability, responsiveness, assurance, empathy, and tangible. Expectations and perceptions items were measured on a 7-point Likert-type scale (strongly disagree to strongly agree). The Cronbach alpha internal reliability of the scale was reported by previous research as between .71 and .91 ( Mey et al., 2006).

Analysis
Reliability analysis (Cronbach's alpha) was performed to test the internal consistency of the service quality expectations and perceptions attributes. They were at desirable level of .70 or above, ranging from .70 to .90. An independent sample t-test was conducted to determine if significant mean score differences exist between the Arab tourist who stayed at hotels and holiday apartments in their cultural values, expectations and perceptions. Bivariate analysis including Pearson's product-moment correlation coefficient (r) was used to identify the relationship between the cultural values and demographic characteristics as independent variables with the expectations, and perceptions as dependent variables. Multivariate analyses was conducted including hierarchical multiple regression (R 2 ) analysis using a model-building (Hair et al., 2010), to predict the relationships between demographic variables and cultural values as an independent variables and each factor of SQE and SQP as a dependent variables among the Arab tourist. Hierarchical regression is considered as the most appropriate technique when the aim is to explore how the predictors combine in their influence on the dependent variable.

Respondents' Profile
The data shows that there were 167 respondents (54.8%) who preferred to stay at hotels while 138 (45.2%) preferred to stay at the holiday apartments. This sample of Arab tourist respondents was composed of 62.3% males and 37.7% females from hotels, while holiday apartment's respondents were 53.6% males and 46.4% females. The majority of the respondents 85% were aged between 20-49 years old for both hotels and holiday apartment's respondents as shown in Table 1. The majority of respondents in both hotels and holiday apartments had bachelor degrees. Table 2 shows that the majority of the respondents who stayed at hotels were professionals (30.9%), while the majority of the respondents who stayed at holiday apartments were managerial professions (29.0%). The largest group of respondents from both hotels and holiday apartments came from UAE were 29.3% and 26.8%, respectively.

Arab Culture
The result shows that the respondents from both hotels and holiday apartments agreed that the most important value was universalism-social concern (M=.41, SD=.442), and (M=.327, SD=.447), while they disagreed on the least important value. The least important value for the respondents who stayed in hotels was self-direction (M= -.041, SD= .191), while the least important value for those who stayed in holiday apartments, was achievement (M= -.045, SD= .237), as shown in Table 2. An independent t-test for differences showed that the Arab tourist visiting the Gold Coast and staying at hotels and holiday apartments were different in three of eleven of the cultural values of tradition, hedonism, and universalism-nature as shown in Table 2.

Arab Tourist's Expectations and Perceptions Gap
For both hotel and holiday apartment respondents' expectations, the result in Table 3, shows that the highest dimension of expectations was tangibility with mean score of 47.14 (SD=3.873) and (M=44.40, SD=6.344), while the lowest mean score was the empathy dimension for hotels (M=15.26, SD=1.593) and Holidays Apartments (M=14.27, SD=2.399). However, the respondent service quality perceptions of both hotels and holiday apartments were less than their expectations. Both hotels and holiday apartments respondents assigned the highest perception score on the dimension of tangibility for Hotels (M=40.57, SD=5.427) and Holidays Apartment (M=35.61, SD=8.782), while the lowest perception score was on the dimension of empathy for Hotels (M=12.38, SD=2.887) and Holiday Apartments (M=10.75, SD=3.641). The results indicated that there is a gap between the respondent expectations and perceptions. For hotels, the largest gap was on the dimension of reliability (-7.8), and the lowest gap score was on the dimension of assurance (-2.18). However, the highest gap in the holiday apartment was on the dimension of tangibility (-8.782), while the lowest score was on the dimension of responsiveness (-2.63), as shown in Table 3.

Arab Tourist's Culture and Service Quality
In order to test the first two hypotheses, H1: There is a positive relationship between cultural values and service quality expectations; and H2: There is a positive relationship between cultural values and service quality perceptions, Bivariate Pearson product moment correlation coefficient (r) analysis (two-tailed) was performed. The results from the first hypothesis indicated that cultural values of stimulation, achievement, power, tradition and conformity were significantly correlated with service quality expectation (SQE). The result from the second hypothesis shows that cultural values of achievement, power and universalism-nature were significantly correlated with the service quality perception (SQP) as shown in Table 4. .066 .254 **. Correlation is significant at the 0.01 level (2-tailed). *. Correlation is significant at the 0.05 level (2-tailed).
Hierarchical multiple regression (R 2 ) analysis was employed to test the last hypothesis, H3: gender, age, education level, profession, country of origin and cultural values are predictive of each factor of expectations and perceptions among the Arab tourists. As a result, gender, education level, profession, country of origin, stimulation, achievement, power, tradition and conformity were correlated with SQE. Table 5 indicated that there were positive relationships between age, country of origin, stimulation, power, tradition and SQE (B value: 1.04 and .23, 4.89, 6.36, 6.00 respectively), and a negative relationship between education level, profession, achievement, conformity and SQE (B value: -2.65 and -7.22, -7.69 respectively). Assessment of the standardised beta coefficients within this model shows that value of power has slightly more impact in the model (beta = .229, p<.000). Step 1 0.12 Step 1  The initial model showed that age, education level, achievement, power, tradition, and conformity were statistically significant and predicted SQE among the Arab tourist. However, examination of hierarchical regression analysis indicated that profession, country of origin and stimulation were statistically non-significant (p= .127, .555, and .130 respectively). Therefore, further analysis was undertaken in relation to the predictors that highly correlated with SQE. The results from parsimonious hierarchical multiple regression model (see Table 5) indicated that there were positive relationships between age, power, tradition and SQE (B value: 1.29 and 6.61, 5.97 respectively), and a negative relationship between education level, achievement, conformity and SQE (B value: -3.10 and -7.63, -9.75 respectively). Assessment of the standardised beta coefficients within this model shows that value of achievement has slightly more impact in the model (beta = -.238, p<.000). It can be concluded that age, education level, achievement, power, tradition and conformity predicted 20% of the service quality expectation among the Arab tourist. Part correlation = -0.18 As shown in Table 4, that the dependent variable of age, education level, achievement, power and universalism-nature were correlated with the dependent variable of SQP. As indicated in Table 5 indicated there were positive relationships between achievement, power and SQP (B value: 1.39 and 3.25 respectively), and a negative relationship between age, education level, universalism-nature and SQP (B value: -1.34, -2.16 and -8.99 respectively). Assessment of the standardised beta coefficients within this model shows that value of universalism-nature has slightly more impact in the model (beta = -.211, p<.000). Step 1 0.04 Step 1  The initial model showed that age and universalism-nature were statistically significant and predicted SQP among the Arab tourists. However, examination of hierarchical regression analysis indicated that education level, achievement and power were statistically non-significant (p= .081, .569, and .128 respectively). Further results from parsimonious hierarchical multiple regression model indicated that there were negative relationships between age, universalism-nature and SQP (B value: -1.45 and -10.91 respectively) (see Table 6). Assessment of the standardised beta coefficients within this model shows that value of universalism-nature has more impact in the model (beta = -.256, p<.000). It can be concluded that age and universalism-nature predicted 10% of the service quality perceptions among the Arab tourists.

Discussion
The results of our study demonstrate that the most important cultural values for the Arab tourists who stayed at Gold Coast hotels and holiday apartments were: universalism-social concern, tradition, conformity, security and benevolence. Overall consistent results were found with previous studies such as : Schwartz (2003) who proposed that Arab people are conservative people who like to share the way of life of other members of their society. Arab people belong to a collectivist culture, which can explain why the Arab tourists consider that universalism-social concern, tradition, conformity, security and benevolence are the most important cultural values in their lives (Hofstede, 2001). On the other hand, the research's findings demonstrate that the cultural values of power, hedonism, stimulation, universalism-nature, achievement and self-direction were considered as the least important values for the Arab tourists. This result supports the results of the previous studies such as Triandis and Suh (2002), who proposed that the Arab people have low individualism, which is the reason why these cultural values were the least important values for them. The literature proposes that Arab people possess large power distance (Schwartz, 1992). In this instance, the findings in this study did not support the literature and clearly showed that the power distance was considered the least important value for the Arab tourists in their lives, which may indicate that the Arab tourists who travel abroad may have different values from those people who do not travel outside their countries, or they may disagree on which values influence their lives. An independent t-test result indicates that there are significant differences in three of the Arab tourists' cultural values, of tradition, hedonism, and universalism-nature, which appear to influence their choice of a particular type of accommodation. This outcome may indicate that the Arab tourists in our sample come from a strong culture, have the same cultural values, and are different in only three of eleven of their cultural values. The findings from this study propose that the Arab tourists' expectations are higher than their perceptions towards accommodation service quality level, which caused a significant negative gap. Thus, tourists' perceptions did not meet their expectations towards Gold Coast hotels' and Part correlation = -0.25 holiday apartments' service quality level. These outcomes were consistent with the findings of Mey et al. (2006) who found that the hotel guests' perceptions of service quality were lower their initial expectations. Hence, the Arab tourists' gap between their expectations and perceptions suggests that more effort should be put in by accommodation managers to improve the accommodation service quality level. Moreover, the results show that the highest gap between the Arab tourists' expectations and perceptions was in the tangibility factor. The result supports earlier findings by Sheng-Hshiung et al. (2005) who suggested that the tourists from Asia pay more attention and care to accommodation physical facilities and equipment. Indeed, the results of this research showed that tourists such as those come from the Middle East have particular needs derived from their cultural values, including 'praying five times per day, eating halal food, care more about the hygienic issues', which is all related to the physical facilities and equipment and explains why these people care about the physical facilities. This indicates that the tourism and accommodation sectors in the Gold Coast and Australia are lacking these facilities, which contributes to the large gap between Arab tourists' expectations and perceptions towards accommodation service quality. The findings of an independent t-test of expectations and perceptions shows that the hotel and holiday apartment managers need to recognize and understand that there are different needs for the tourists who prefer to stay at hotels from those who prefer to stay at holiday apartments. For example, the tourists who prefer to stay at hotels always look for more facilities to be available in their accommodation place such as internet, business centre and restaurants, while the tourists who prefer to stay at the holiday apartments always look for a more comfortable place, more privacy, more space in 'the room size', cooking facilities and more luxurious accommodation.
Results show that there is a relationship between age and service quality expectations and perceptions among the Arab tourists. The result is consistent with the findings of Liu and Yen (2010), who agreed that age is one of the factors that contributes to tourists' expectations and perceptions in relation to the accommodation service quality. Furthermore, the results reveal that education level is one of the predictors of service quality expectations. These results support the previous study by Kastenholz (2002) who proposed that tourists with higher education have higher expectations as a result of their travel experience, which is more than the tourist with less education. However, the result shows that the tourists who rank highly on the power cultural value have high expectations towards the accommodation service quality. These outcomes are inconsistent with the previous findings of Kueh and Voon (2007), who proposed that there is a significant negative relationship between the cultural values of power and the service quality expectations. The difference between this study results and the previous study is that the sample of this study is the Arab tourists who belong to the large power distance culture, while the study of Kueh and Voon (2007) used Asian youths who are likely to score lower in power distance. Moreover, the results revealed that the tourists who subscribe to the cultural values of tradition have high service quality expectations. The result is inconsistent with the findings of Liu, et al. (2001), who demonstrated that the people who belong to the tradition (collectivism) culture have less expectations than the people who belong to self-direction and stimulation (individualism) culture. However, the results revealed that there was no positive relationship between cultural values and service quality perceptions while the results showed that there was a significant negative relationship between the cultural values of universalism-nature of the Arab tourists and the service quality perceptions. This outcome was consistent with the findings of Truong and King (2010). These findings indicate that tourism destination managers should consider allocating appropriate resources to ensure the growth and stability of their destination tourist customers (Botti et al. 20212).

Conclusion and Managerial Implications
This study's findings provide useful marketing and managerial implications for tourism managers and hoteliers who provide service to international tourists such as Arab tourists. In recognising and catering for the specific cultural needs of a tourist cohort, there are significant management and marketing implications at both a macro and micro level. At a macro level, the findings reveal that the Arab tourists' cultural values determine the importance of service quality expectations and perceptions to the tourists and thus affect their travel experiences. However, the findings indicate that the Arab tourists' perceptions did not meet their expectations. Thus, tourism and accommodation managers should give more attention to the tourists' cultural values and carefully consider them in their decision making process, especially in relation to allocating quality efforts and resources in order to minimise this gap. For example, to better serve a market segment with people who have the same cultural characteristics as the Arab tourists, tourism and accommodation managers should direct quality efforts and resources primarily to tangibility, including the physical facilities and equipment, which was the highest gap. The required innovations to implement into this tourism service sector suggest changes to various fundamentals such as combining technological and nontechnological innovations in addition to adopting a problem-solving approach (Carvalho & Sarkar, 2014). In efforts to draw Arab visitors to the Gold Coast, Stolz (2011) reported that the Gold Coast Tourism's advertising campaign promotes their 'Arab lounges' as being sympathetic to the needs of Arab tourists. Gold Coast Tourism international marketing director Price (2011) states that the Middle East has become a profitable tourist market for the Coast over the past decade, delivering tens of thousands of visitors, including wealthy Arab sheiks and their entourages. Therefore, many Gold Coast hotels and theme parks now had prayer rooms and served halal food to cater for Muslim visitors. The importance of this factor is that the Arab tourists' have specific needs that have impacted on their expectations and perceptions, namely: facilities including greater hygiene, the kitchen and its equipment, privacy, providing halal food, place for worship, which are all part of their culture. Thus, the tourism and accommodation managers should be aware of the cultural segmentation of their market. Thus, a marketing message that includes elements of similarity -home culture, employing some similar looking people and those who can speak their mother tongue, providing similar food in the mix, may attract more potential tourists (Ng et al., 2007). At a micro level, managers of accommodation offerings are likely to maximally enhance the appeal of their particular accommodation through offering what is perceived as important and relevant to the Arab tourists in meeting their particular needs. Ardern (2011) noted that almost 60 per cent of the Hilton Surfers Paradise hotel guests in July were from the Middle East. A large number of the 15,000 Arab tourists visiting Australia head to the Gold Coast during Ramadan including members of the Qatar royal family. Armed with this insight, both the tourism industry and accommodation managers can effectively translate an understanding of the needs of Arab tourists as a basis for strategy development in contributing to the service tourism industry's continued establishment and growth. This may contribute to enhancing the service quality level. Finally, this study focused on the relationship between the Arab tourists' cultural values and their expectations and perceptions towards the Gold Coast accommodation service quality. Findings indicate that the demographic factors of age, education level and cultural values on the one hand and service quality expectations and perceptions on the other are the major factors affecting tourists' travel experiences. This study has introduced a new in-depth idea about the Arab tourist cultural values and into tourism and marketing theory. Future research may consider following this example and utilise more extensively the theory of culture and service quality, which will assist in the emerging interest in tourism and marketing studies. We may conclude that tourism and accommodation managers have to pay more attention to staff training to be aware about the culture differences between the tourists and their needs. Our study has addressed the tree hypotheses, confirmed aspects of the literature and significantly contributed to extending the existing literature.