Tourist Customer Service Satisfaction: An Encounter Approach

Customer satisfaction and loyalty in the tourism sector is highly dependent upon the behaviours of front-line service providers. Service is about people, how they relate to one another, fulfill each other’s needs and ultimately care for each other. Yet surprisingly there are few or any books which focus on the detailed specifics of the social exchange and interaction between the service provider and customer.

Tourist Customer Service Satisfaction fully explores this relationship by defining the specific kind of verbal and non-verbal messages needed for successful exchanges, outlining how the service provider ought to behave & cope in a situation as well as detailing positive approaches that enhance a service provider’s role performance. The book uses encounter theory to examine the customer – provider relationship as well as drawing on current research and theories from hospitality, tourism, management, psychology bodies of literature. In doing so the book offers important insight into how employee – centric competitive advantage in this sector can be achieved in various markets.

This book is unique in its approach by focusing on the specifics of the social exchange and interaction between the service provider and customer. It therefore offers a novel synthesis of knowledge on service satisfaction in the tourism sector which will serve as valuable pedagogical and research reference for students and academics interested in hospitality and tourism.

Francis P. Noe Ph.D. is the retired Southeast Regional Social Scientist for the National Park Service, U.S. Dept. of Interior. His work focused on social satisfaction surveys and studies measuring the public’s perceptions, attitudes and values toward facilities, services and programs. The results not only provided applied information for NPS management but were relevant to the recreation and tourism industries.

Dr. Uysal, Professor of Tourism in the Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management – Pamplin College of Business at Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, has extensive experience in the travel and tourism field. He is a member of the International Academy for the Study of Tourism, the Academy of Leisure Sciences, and serves as co-editor of Tourism Analysis: an Interdisciplinary journal. In addition, he sits on the editorial boards of several journals, including Journal of Travel Research, and Annals of Tourism Research as resource editor. He received a number of awards for research, excellence in international education, and teaching excellence. His current research interests center on tourism demand/supply interaction, tourism development, and QOL research in tourism.

Vincent P. Magnini is an Assistant Professor of Hospitality Marketing (Ph.D., Old Dominion University), Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University (Virginia Tech). He has significant expertise in the area of customer satisfaction in service settings, authoring or co-authoring numerous articles in hospitality, marketing, and management journals on the subject. He serves on the editorial boards of the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly and the Journal of Vacation Marketing. He has also received a number of awards for Research, Institutional Leadership Ability, and Teaching Excellence. His current research interests focus on blending marketing and strategic management theories with the intent of identifying opportunities for sustainable competitive advantage for hospitality and tourism firms.