It is obvious that customers are important stakeholders in tourism industry and their satisfaction is a priority to management of this industry. Tourist satisfaction has been a subject of great interest to tourist operator and researchers. In recent years, organizations are obliged to render more services in addition to their offers. The quality of service has become an aspect of customer satisfaction. Service quality is related to customer satisfaction.
Purpose: The main purpose of the study is to examine the relationship between customer satisfaction and service quality in tourism service with respect to the service quality dimensions. Tourism in India has emerged as an instrument of income and employment generation, poverty alleviation and sustainable human development. It contributes 6.23% to the national GDP and 8.78% of the total employment in India. Almost 20 million people are now working in the India’s tourism industry.
Findings:The study of the paper showed distinctive results for the relationship between service quality dimensions and service quality tourist satisfaction. It is showed that: ´responsiveness`, empathy´ and ´reliability´ are significantly related to service quality; ´reliability` and `empathy`, are significantly related to customer satisfaction but `responsiveness` is not significantly related to customer satisfaction; meanwhile service quality is significantly related to customer satisfaction.
Implication/ Contribution: The findings imply that service quality is not the only factors that could lead to tourist satisfaction in tourism service sectors; that service quality dimension varies in the different service sectors. The findings suggest that to provide quality service in order to satisfy customers, organizations in this kind of service sectors need to improve on the dimensions of service quality. Also, to provide total satisfaction to customers, the service sectors need to improve on the other factors that were given as reasons for satisfaction. It provides results that could be useful to managers in business organizations for strategic planning.
