Tourism is considered as one of the most diverse and richest global industries in the 21st century. In the highly competitive tourism industry, service quality has been recognized as the key factors in maintain destination competitiveness. Well-brought-up service quality is not only intended to satisfy the tourists but it also get better the destination image, differentiate the destination from others and construct a loyal tourist to perform a certain post-visit behaviour. Hence, recognizing the importance of service quality for the growth and development of the tourism business and also of the economy, the researchers have made an attempt to study the service quality of tour operators in Yercaud Hill Station. In the present study, the primary data were collected in two stages. At the first stage, 5 tour operators i.e. Amar Tours & Travels, Tours and Travels Salem, Thomas Cook, Kunoni-SOTC and Alpha Tours & Travels were selected on the purposive basis. In the second stage, adopting convenience sampling, 100 tourists were selected from each tour operator. Thus, the primary data were collected from 500 tourists with the help of questionnaire. Analysis of variance, student t test, paired t-test, analysis of co-efficient of variation and percentage analysis were employed. The findings of the study shows a significant difference between the expected and perceived levels of various service quality dimensions such as assurance, empathy, reliability, responsiveness and tangibility, empathy in the select tour operators. In the present study, the researchers suggest various measures to improve service quality of the select tour operators.
KEYWORDS: Service Quality, Travel and Tourism, Tourism Services, Marketing of Tourism Services.
