Turizmo paslaugų kokybės vertinimo metodologiniai ir praktiniai aspektai

LTStraipsnyje analizuojamas paslaugos kokybės suvokimo dualizmas, paslaugų kokybės vertinimo metodologijos adaptacijos empiriniams tyrimams sudėtingumas bei turizmo paslaugų, tokių kaip kelionių organizavimo, kokybės vertinimo ypatumai vartotojų požiūriu. Tuo tikslu straipsnio pirmoje ir antroje dalyje nagrinėjami paslaugų kokybės vertinimo kriterijai bei teoriniai modeliai. Trečiojoje ir ketvirtoje dalyje pateikiami tyrimo, atlikto, naudojantis Servqual metodologija, rezultatai ir jų interpretacija. Atliktos analizės pagrindu formuluojami apibendrinimai, leidžiantys teigti, kad paslaugų kokybės vertinimo metodologijos tobulinimas išlieka aktualus mokslinių diskusijų klausimas. [Iš leidinio]Reikšminiai žodžiai: Paslaugų kokybė; Paslaugų kokybės vertinimas; Paslaugų sektorius; SERQUAL metodas; Turizmo agentūros; Turizmo verslas; SERQUAL technique; Service quality; Service quality evaluation; Service sector; Tourism business; Tourist agencies.

ENAccording to economic statistical data, two thirds of the business in the world belongs to the service sector today. The greater number of companies is coming to business, the bigger the competition is. Today, service quality is one of the most important things that induces firms to compete, to hold out in the market, or to conquer it. Service quality creates the image of a company and directly influences work productivity, profit growth, and consumer satisfaction. Therefore, in today's economy there is a growing interest in service quality. Most of tourist agencies offer the same service products. Therefore, service quality is a determining factor for customers when choosing a tourist agency. As a mater of fact, the research on service quality may be useful for tourist agencies trying to find out their customers' expectations. The purpose of the article is to disclose the complexity of tourist service quality evaluation, with the greatest attention focused on expectation and customer satisfaction. The first and the second parts of the article focus on the service quality measure factors and models. As a result of analyses of existing service quality models, it has been pointed out that some of them can't be adapted directly to the research on the quality of service. Some of them disregard one of the main or some peculiar research elements.Servqual, the best practically used model, has been applied to explore service quality of a tourist service organization. The research has shown that the main issue for customers when evaluating service quality of tourist agencies is the reliability of the service. The research hypothesis has been proved. The analysis of the research data has revealed that till now there exists the gap between customer expectation and satisfaction which shows the lack of ability and effort of the service provided to understand customers' expectations before the service process. In our opinion, the existing methodology of service quality measurement must be improved in the following ways: by dividing tourist service or other service process into separate steps, what should be aimed at throughout these steps, is estimating customer satisfaction/non-satisfaction, and not at the expectations and the experience of the total service. [From the publication]