MANAGING FACTORS THAT INFLUENCE GUEST SERVICE EXPERIENCE WITHIN THE 3-5 STAR HOTEL ACCOMMODATION: AN IMC APPROACH

The services sector continues to be the most important, significant and predominant tertiary sector of the world economy (Nankervis, Miyamoto, Taylor & Milton-Smith, and 2005:1). In South Africa, according to the statistics from Wikipedia (2009), the services sector contributed 78.5% towards the GDP. This sector comprises of a wide variety of industries such as transportation, tourism and hospitality, financial services, communications and education. For the purpose of this study, the research would be confined to the hotel accommodation sector, which is the most organized and recognizable subsector within the hospitality and tourism industry. The South African tourist-accommodation industry is complex, with an overwhelming availability of substitutes, diminishing opportunities for differentiation among competing accommodation facilities and stiff competition (Prakash & Sharma, 2010:371). The industry is comprised of a wide spectrum of accommodation facilities, ranging from formal hotels to informal accommodation establishments, such as holiday flats and cottages, game lodges and reserves, guest houses and Bed and Breakfast (B&Bs)(Department of Environmental Affairs and Tourism, 2010:485). Faced with such a challenging business environment, accommodation facilities now compete on the basis of service quality and customer satisfaction. They strive to meet and exceed customer expectations by providing value for money services and creating memorable experiences. However, creating memorable experiences within the accommodation industry is very complex and subject to multiple factors, which are related to the broad categories of the organization, consumer, employees and marketing communications affecting and influencing the service delivery process. Therefore, it is apparent that there is a need for a holistic marketing approach and the development of a strategic management approach to deal and manage the influence of these factors on customer service experience and ultimately satisfaction (Potluri 2008:59 and

Nankervis et al 2009:1). This has often resulted in many organizations adopting either the internal marketing or customer relationship marketing (CRM) concepts. To-date, internal marketing and CRM have been the main focus areas of many research studies conducted in the services sector, particularly the hotel industry. Whilst the Integrated Marketing Communications Approach (IMC) has been widely researched, particularly on its practice by either the manufacturers or the marketers of consumer products /goods (Dewhrist & Davis 2005 and Grove, Carlson & Dorsch, 2007), there has been a tendency to overlook services(Luck & Moffat, 2009:316).Therefore, a gap in literature exists, which this study intends to bridge by examining how the IMC Approach can be adopted to manage factors influencing service experience within the hotel industry. The IMC Approach, is a management approach that aligns and optimizes the communications impact of various disciplines (Kitchen, Kim and Schultz, 2008:533). It seeks to strategically manage and influence the transmission of a unified message across all brand contact points (interactions) between an organization and its customers (Grove et al 2007:37), thereby managing the influence these factors have on consumer service experience. This Chapter presents the Background to the Study, will also outline the research problem, questions, hypotheses and objectives of the research study. The importance of the study and the research methodology adopted for the study will be briefly discussed. A further analysis of the subsequent chapters forming the research study would be highlighted.