| Summary: | Determining customers’ (guests’) perception of service quality and ensuring that service delivery ‘gaps’ are addressed is critical to ensuring the success of hotels and tourist establishments. This article aims at determining the ‘gap’ between the hotels customers’ expectations (E) and perceptions (P) of the actual
service delivered by graded hotels in Ethiopia. Despite limited criticisms, the renowned SERVQUAL instrument was used with minor adaptions, which included adding five items to the Tangibles dimension, and using a 5-point, instead of a 7-point scale. The instrument was deemed valid and reliable through Confirmatory Factor Analysis and determining the Cronbach Alpha co-efficient values. From the response to survey using a self-administered questionnaire, it became evident that of the 415 responses, the
majority (54.7%) indicated that their P>E, and 12.5% indicated that P=E; and the rest (32.8%) indicated that their E>P. Furthermore, although the mean difference (P-E) was significant (t (N415) = 3.100, p = .002), the difference was very small (0.07398). Thus, it could be stated with 95% confidence that the true mean increase in perception lies somewhere between 0.027 and 0.121, implying that the hotel customers’ service expectations were being mostly met. With respect to those few areas, where the net (P-E) score is negative, the hotel management needs to address this so as to narrow or eliminate the service delivery
‘gap’.
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