Author(s): Sevinç Aslan,Nurperihan Tosun,Sümeyye Arslan Kurtuluş / Language(s): Turkish
Issue: 2/2019
Nowadays, families with children have an important place in tourism purchasing activities. In this context, the concept of child-friendly hotels come into prominence. A child-friendly hotel can be defined as the hotel that meets the requests and needs of families with children. Hotels that provide opportunities such as dining, room options, and hotel activities for families with children are categorized in this class (ETS TUR, 2018). In other words, child-friendly hotels can be described as facilities equipped with opportunities such as larger rooms and a special menu for children, with controlled or planned activities, close to entertainment venues (Lim et. al., 2009).Families prefer the child-friendly hotel concept for their children, so they expect to see that the children to be satisfied with the hotel. If their expectations are not met or in the case of dissatisfaction, they express their feelings by using the complaint channels. Customers can express their complaints by expressing this situation directly to the management, initiating negative word of mouth, interrupting the service (patronage) or taking legal actions such as arbitration committee for consumer problems. It is important for hotels holding their current customers in providing a long-term competitive advantage. In this case, they should satisfy and compensate their customers' dissatisfaction.Complaint management is the process of disseminating and transitioning of information in order to identify and correct various causes of customer dissatisfaction. It defines strategies are used to resolve previous mistakes of companies and learn from them in order to restore customer trust to the credibility of the organization. Encouragements of complaints and quick response to the e-complaints from the customers by the hotels are very important in terms of customer satisfaction. It is not possible to not get complaints and even the best hotels may have deficiencies in this regard. The important thing is to resolve the complaints reaching the hotels as soon as possible (Argan, 2014). Thus, hotels that have experienced this kind of situations will be able to produce goods and services that meet the expectations of customers without any mistake (Alabay, 2012).In this study, the complaints of families who prefer child-friendly hotel concept were examined and it was aimed to determine which elements are most emphasized. For this purpose, it was evaluated customer's comments who got service from ultra-all-inclusive child-friendly hotels and made comments on a well-known website. Comments were evaluated by content analysis. The list of hotels is taken from a well known holiday website. All comments until April 2018 were evaluated in the analysis. According to the website, there is a total of 45 ultra-all-inclusive hotel in Turkey. Some of these hotels are grouped under a single title on the website because they are chain hotels. Some hotels on the list have not received any complaints. Finally, 17 hotels were included in the analysis. Complaints were categorized according to frequency. While making the evaluation, complaints are limited with words such as children, family, hygiene. A total of 152 complaints were included in the analysis.As a result of the content analysis, it was determined that some words repeated too much. First of all, the phrase "child-friendly hotel" repeated 31 times of 152 complaints. Looking at the content of the complaints, expressions of families such as "we came here because it is a child-friendly hotel" draw attention. The contents of the complaints were examined and repeated words were collected in certain categories. As a result of the study, complaints were grouped under five categories. There are complaints about general cleanliness in the first category. Hotel cleaning, hygiene, food safety, environmental cleanliness are included in this category. There have also been complaints about hygiene, quality, old and stained items. In addition to this, there are complaints such as insects coming out of food, not having enough spraying, a cat wandering in restaurants. The second category is complaints about health. Problems such as lack of doctors and medical equipment and children contracting "hand- foot- mouth" disease from the pool were mentioned. One of the most commonly used words is "disease". In addition, words are used such as "fever", "diarrhea", infection", "virus" and "vomiting". The third category includes complaints about services for children. The lack of activities such as pool facilities, mini club, and animation has been subject to comments. The fourth category covers complaints about the general difficulties of the hotel. In this category, there are factors such as the fact that the hotel's wages are very high, the management cannot find solutions to the problems immediately and about the security. Especially the problems experienced in the swimming pool were frequently mentioned in the comments. Pools are one of the places where children spend the most time. Therefore, cleaning and safety must be provided by the hotel. The fifth category includes complaints about employees and their behavior. The most prominent is "complaint" and "problem" words. It was stated that the problems were reported to the staff or authorities by complaining, but not enough responds were given. The weakness of customer relations, inability to respond to the complaints and the indifference of staff are included here. Employee behaviors are effective for families to choose the hotel again.As a result, it was observed that families with children complained mostly about hygiene, cleanliness, and health. If the hotel management evaluates these complaints and finds solutions, they will be more preferred by families with children. Complaints may also affect the choice of other families. In this sense, the managers should take these issues into consideration in order to resolve the complaints and take measures to prevent new problems. Hotels determine the expectations, needs, and requests of the customers correctly and to ensure their satisfaction. This could increase profitability and positive opinions of customers about the business. It can also provide that customers do not experience this kind of problems and do not complain again.
More...
