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Service operations issues influencing the customers’

satisfaction: A study of Indian wild-life tourist resort

Parikshit Charan (Corresponding Author)

Indian Institute of Management, Raipur, Chhattisgarh, India

pcharan@iimraipur.ac.in; parikshitcharan@yahoo.co.in

Sanat Kumar Panda

Directorate General of Central Excise Intelligence, Raipur Regional Unit, Chhattisgarh,

Government of India (GoI), India

skp_rpr@yahoo.co.in

Abstract In the tourism industry, wild-life tourism is a fast growing, attractive and high revenue and profit

generating sector. As the service criteria becomes important with more customers’ involvement

in Service Delivery and more incidence of Service Encounters, the managerial role becomes vital

to meet the customers’ expectations and/or manage the customers’ expectations that result in

customers’ satisfactions. The objective of the study is to find out select issues in service

operations influencing the customers’ satisfaction in an Indian wildlife resort which can be

addressed to attract customers to wildlife destinations.

The study was an exploratory research based on primary data collected through an instrument of

Parsuraman on SERVQUAL to find out the Customers’ expectations and perceptions of the

Service. Further, by administering questionnaires to the employees, their skill levels and level of

satisfaction have been measured. To gain further insight, informal interview of the manager of

the resort under study, few customers and employees was conducted to understand the

influencing issues in service operations.

The study highlights the difference in perception and expectation of the holidaying customers

and wild-lifers/photographers. The study emphasise the trade-off between kind of service

operation a wild-life resort could focus and its effect on the customer satisfaction.

Keywords: Service Operations, Wild-life tourist resorts, SERVQUAL

INTRODUCTION:-

The wild-life sanctuaries and national parks in India are the home for variety of flowering plants

including several rare, endangered and threatened species, mammals, avian-life, reptiles,

amphibians and many species of fish insects including butterflies and dragonflies. India has got

around 442 wild-life sanctuaries and 99 national parks across a diverse terrain of desert, tropical

rain forest, lagoons, mangroves and sub-Himalayas etc. These diverse terrains offer natural

habitats to geography & climate specific wild animals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, flora & fauna.

These habitats are paradise for the nature lovers. The attraction of seeing this wild life in its

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natural habitat has created huge opportunity for wild life tourism in India. Some of the rare and

exotic animals like Royal Bengal Tiger, Asiatic Lion, Asian Elephants, One-horned Rhinoceros,

etc. and hundreds of species of migratory birds coming in winter season have attracted many a

tourists, researchers, ornithologists, etc. from outside India as well. All of these have provided

with a fertile ground for budget as well as luxury resorts to flourish in various sanctuaries and

national parks of India

Tourism Industry In the tourism industry, wild-life tourism is a fast growing, attractive and high revenue and profit

generating sector. With the limited capacity and popularity of wild-life destination, the sector has

never been price sensitive, commanding premium price. In fact this sector has the highest

potential for customers’ willingness to pay (WIP) that creates a competitive dynamics for high

profiteering. But with that the service criteria becomes much more important with more of

customers’ involvement in Service Delivery and more incidence of Service Encounters sensitive

to customers satisfactions. It is the management role and responsibility how to manage the

Service Operations to meet the customers’ expectations and/or manage the customers’

expectations that result in optimal customers’ satisfactions. The customer expectation from the

wild-life resorts is different from any other business, beach or hill resorts. The satisfaction of the

customers visiting these resorts is dependent on their success ratio of wild-life encounters and the

guides and naturalists keeping up to their knowledge of flora and fauna and facilitating such

encounters. The service operation flows in a different speed in such resorts with hectic activities

during early morning preparing the customers for morning safari, then the activities are carried

on at relaxed pace till they come back and the evening time is all festive with activity based

services like bon-fires, ethnic dances, wild-life film shows, etc. So, there has to be different

priorities of expectation by the customers/guest from these wild-life resorts than any other

typical resorts/hotels, etc. The objective of the paper is to find the elements of service operations

that influence the customers’ satisfactions so as to focus on such elements for the continuous

improvement in those aspects.

LITERATURE REVIEW

Measuring service quality is a challenge because customer satisfaction is determined by many

intangible factors. Unlike a product with physical features that can be objectively measured,

service quality contains many psychological features that is difficult to measure (Fitzsimmons

and Fitzsimmons, 2002). In this context, the multiple dimensions of service quality is best

captured through one SERVQUAL instrument that has been predominant method used to

measure customer’s perception of service quality and it has five generic dimensions or factors

that make the service far more unique and satisfying. This 22 item SERVQUAL instrument has

been developed by Parsuraman et al. (1988) for assessing customer perceptions of service quality

in service and retailing organization. From the original 10 conceptualized dimensions, after an

examination of the content of the final items making up each of SERVQUAL’s five dimensions,

they suggested the following labels and concise definitions for the dimensions: Tangibles:

Physical facilities, equipment, and appearance of personnel; Reliability: Ability to perform the

promised service dependably and accurately; Responsiveness: Willingness to help customers and

provide prompt service; Assurance: Knowledge and courtesy of employees and their ability to

inspire trust and confidence; and Empathy: Caring, individualized attention the firm provides its

customers.

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Further, the SERVQUAL instrument was refined by them by reconstructing the

questionnaires, making all as positive statements and two new items-one each under tangible and

assurance-were substituted for two original items to more fully capture the dimensions and to

incorporate suggestions from managers who reviewed the pre-test questionnaire (Parsuraman et

al., 1991). For this study, this refined SERVQUAL instrument has been used to measure the

customer’s satisfaction and identify the elements of service operation influencing the customer’s

satisfaction with relative importance weightage against the five dimensions. As suggested by

Parsuraman et al. (1991), the use of SERVQUAL can fruitfully be supplemented with additional

qualitative or quantitative research to uncover the causes underlying the key problem areas or

gaps identified by a SERVQUAL study, this study uses the SERVQUAL instrument to find out

the areas/elements of service operation along the five dimensions influencing the customers

satisfactions along with role played by the skills and satisfactions levels of employees, generated

out of the compensations package, human resources management including training, in a wild-

life resort.

Service operations

In the modern day economics, the service operation is playing an important role in a service

organization for customer satisfaction resulting in their loyalty and resultant profitability through

the principle of 3R’s i.e. their Retention, Repeat purchase and Referral business through them. In

the new economics of service, front-line workers and customers need to be centre of

management concern. Successful service managers pay attention to the factors that drive

profitability in this new service paradigm: investment in people, technology that supports

frontline workers, revamped recruiting and training practices, and compensation linked to

performance for employees at every level (Heskett et al., 2008). The Service-Profit Chain

establishes relationship between profitability, customer loyalty, and employees’ satisfaction,

loyalty and productivity. This study while measuring SERVQUAL along the five dimensions

tries to link the employees’ role, with their skills and satisfaction level, contributing to the

Service Operation to the satisfaction of the Customer in a wild-life resort.

RESEARCH FRAMEWORK:

To find the select issues of service operations influencing the customers’ satisfaction, both the

quantitative as well as qualitative research methods were adopted through collection of primary

data as well as secondary data and analysis thereof. Under the Quantitative Research Method,

customers’ survey through Questionnaires as prescribed by Parsuraman on SERVQUAL to find

out the Customers’ expectations and their perceptions of the service in the Reliability,

Assurance, Tangibility, Empathy & Responsiveness dimensions, so as to identify specific

elements of Service Operations in each dimension that influence the customers’ satisfaction.

Further, from the organization sources the qualification, training, orientation and skill levels of

the employees, role of their skill levels were found out. Under the Qualitative Research Method,

informal interview of the manager of the resort under study, few customers and employees were

conducted so as to know these elements of service operations influencing the customers’

satisfaction. As from secondary source of data, qualitative analysis of the feed-back over the

period of time as mentioned in “Suggestion Book” were done to have an insight on any particular

aspect/element of service operations highlighted by the guests that needs to be considered.

Scope of the study The study covers the employees as well as the customers/guests of the Eco-tourism Complex,

Barakhandia, Samblapur District, Odisha. The setting of the resort is inside the Debrigarh Wild-

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life sanctuary, Sambalpur. Debrigarh Sanctuary, notified in 1985, is situated in Bargarh District

in Odisha, encompassing 335 square kilometres comprising of Lohara and Debrigarh Reserve

forests, locally famous as the “Barapahad” hills. Debrigarh means “Abode/Fort of the Goddess”.

With the customers’ survey for almost one month, the findings of the survey can be extrapolated

to find out the generic elements. Further to compensate that the secondary qualitative data from “

Suggestions Book” for a larger period is also to be taken to fills in the gaps, if any, and also that

of informal interviews of the manager, few customers and employees of their experience and

critical encounters. The employees are also to be brought into the study, as they are a very

important part in Service-Profit Chain, so as to arrive at their role in influencing the customers’

satisfaction through their involvement in Service Delivery, hence the Service Operations.

Demographic profile of respondents and research methods adopted

The guests, who visited and stayed for a night at Eco-tourism Complex, Barakhandia, Samblapur

District, Odisha inside the buffer zone of Debrigarh Wild-life Sanctuary during one and half

months from mid- February to end of March, 2014, were the population of the study. As there

are six cottages in total, five with two bedded and one with four bedded accommodation, per day

capacity was 14 guests. The SERVQUAL questionnaires were the original tested questionnaires

developed by Parsuraman using a five point (1 to 5) Liker scale, rating with the importance of

the variables/service criteria, against 22 variables based on five dimensions of SERVQUAL

model of Parsuraman (Table 1), requiring no pre-testing of these questionnaires. The five point

scale was selected to make the cumulative average rating (CAR) accurate, as the population of

the survey was supposed to be low keeping in view the low capacity of the resort and paucity of

time i.e. the survey to be completed by end of March, 2014.

A total of 75 set of SERVQUAL questionnaires administered for the survey, 55 got filled

up for the study on random sampling. Out of the 55 set, 24 set got rejected due to unfilled

questions. The demographic data of customers (age, gender, statehood, education level) and also

behaviourographic data like wild-life/photography/holidaying were collected through the

questionnaires. The questionnaires under SEVQUAL instrument of Parsuraman are basically

designed to assess the gap between customer expectations from a wild-life resort and their

perception after availing the service of Eco-tourism Complex, Barakhandia, leading to the

assessment of Service Quality. The respondents were also asked to give weightage to the five

dimensions as per their importance in a wild-life resort by allocating 100 Marks to the different

features adding up to 100. Factor analysis was not done as the questionnaires based on

Parsuraman’s SERVQUAL were already validated through their numerous applications and

consistency of results till date. Statistical methods like percentages, averages, Cumulative

Averages (CAR), graphs, bar diagrams were employed in analyzing the SERVQUAL

Questionnaires. There are a total of 14 employees including the Manager of the Eco-Complex.

Informal interviews and interactions are conducted with the manager, employees and customers

to further look into the gap and element of service operation influencing customers’ satisfaction.

Further, the “SUGGESTION BOOK” kept for guests for the period from inception of the Eco-

complex was also studied to have an insight of the customers’ perception of the service operation

and the elements thereof causing satisfaction/dissatisfaction were also looked into to identify

those elements.

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Table 1: Five dimensions of SEVQUAL model and their variables used for the study

(Parsuraman et al., 1988, 1991; Perng et al., 2007; Aydin and Yildirim, 2012)

Sl. No. Dimension Variables

1. Tangibility 1) Modern looking equipment, 2) Visually appealing physical

facilities, 3) Neat appearance of employees, 4) Visually

appealing materials associated with service

2. Reliability 1) Do something as promised by certain time, 2) Sincere interest

in solving customer's problem, 3) Perform the service right for

the first time, 4) Provide the service at the time promised, 5)

Insist on error-free records

3. Responsiveness 1) Tell customers exactly when services will be performed, 2)

Prompt service to customers, 3) Willingness to help customers,

4) Never be too busy to respond to customers' requests

4. Assurance 1) Employees behaviour instils confidence in customers, 2)

Customers feel safe in transactions, 3) Employees consistently

courteous with the customers, 4) Employees knowledge to

answer customers' questions

5. Empathy 1) Give customers individual attention, 2) Operating hours

convenient to all their customers, 3) Employees give personal

service, 4) Customers' best interest at heart, 5) Employees

understand the specific needs of their customers

In the other four dimensions of SERVQUAL i.e. reliability, responsiveness, assurance

and empathy, the role played by the service employees with their qualification, training,

orientation and skill levels with service standard set by the management and their priorities was

considered.

Therefore, from the above physical structure, amenities and service employees’

orientation influencing the five dimensions of SERVQUAL, the null hypothesis tested for the

study was that the customers, while satisfied with the tangibility dimension of the SERVQUAL,

were dissatisfied with the other four dimensions of reliability, responsiveness, assurance and

empathy having perception below to their expectation, which are directly related to the service

employees skills, knowledge of languages, training. And from this hypothesis testing, through

the instrument of SERVQUAL survey and informal interaction with the manager, few customers

and secondary information source of “Suggestion Book’, the elements of service operation

influencing customers’ satisfaction can be identified for wild-life resorts.

SURVEY ON SERVQUAL MEASUREMENTS, ANALYSIS AND INTERPRETATION

The scores against 22 variables of all the five dimensions of their expectation and perception as

assigned by the guests and their gap as service quality determinants were analyzed under three

perspective i.e. one against all guests, second against guests visited as holidayers and the third as

wild-lifers and/or photographers. The Cumulative Average Rating (CAR) of all

customers/guests, holidayers amongst them and photographers/wild-lifers amongst them, against

their expectation from wild-life resorts and their perception after staying and availing services at

Eco-Complex, Barakhandia were analyzed separately to know the elements of service operation

influencing their satisfaction.

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Comparison between all customers, holidayers and wild-lifer/photographer:

The comparison between all customers, hoildayers and wild-lifer/photographers are given below:

Weightage given to each dimensions

In the SERVQUAL questionnaires, each respondent was asked to give weightage to each of the

dimensions according to its’ importance as per them in a wild-life resort adding up to 100 and

result thereof were analyzed. The average scores in % term against all the five dimensions were

plotted in bar-diagram as in Figure 1 separately for all customers, holidayers and wild-

lifer/photographer to see their degree of importance. It was seen that though the weightage given

to tangibility was highest amongst all five dimensions, for holidayers it was around 30% coming

down to 21% for the wild-lifer/photographer. With that the importance of all five dimensions

were more or less equal in and around 20% for the wild-lifer/photographer as they viewed all

dimensions in equal light whereas assurance and empathy got less weightage at around 15% for

the holidayers. Importance given to tangibility by holidayers was on the expected line as the feel

of security and coziness was supposed to be more important for the holidayers who wanted to

spend more time inside the facility, Whereas the relative importance of the wild-

lifer/photographer might be the reflection of their aesthetic sense and appreciation of the facility

to be eco-friendly to blend with the wild-environment.

Figure 1: Weightage (%) given by different category of customers to the five dimensions of

customer satisfaction

Overall Average and Weighted Average SERVQUAL Score

The overall average SERVQUAL score (perception and expectation gap score) for the three

category of customers i.e. all customers, holidayers and wild-lifer/photographer which also

reflect their satisfaction level having bearing on the service quality of the organization were

plotted on the scale and the graph that came out has been shown in Figure 2 below. It shows that

the wild-lifer and photographer were a satisfied lot with the service experienced at Barakhandia

Eco-Complex with +ve SERVQUAL score, whereas all customers’ and holidayers’ gap score

were –ve with holidayers being most dissatisfied with -1.98 gap score.

Figure 2: Overall Average SERVQUAL Score by different category of customers

-1.01

-1.98

0.52

-2.5

-2

-1.5

-1

-0.5

0

0.5

1

All customers Holidayers Wild-lifers & Photographers

All customers Holidayers Wild-lifers & Photographers

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

35

All Holidayers Wild-lifers & Photographers

Tangibles

Reliabilty

Resposiveness

Assurance

Empathy

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Similarly, when the overall average SERVQUAL scores were calculated on the basis of

weightage given by the three categories of customers i.e. all customers, holidayers and wild-

lifer/photographer and plotted on the scale and the graph came out as Figure 3 below. It also

shows more or less same result that the wild-lifer and photographer were satisfied with the

service experienced at Barakhandia Eco-Complex with SERVQUAL score of 0.1, whereas all

customers’ and holidayers’ gap score were -0.19 and -0.4 respectively, showing holidayers were

highly dissatisfied.

Figure 3: Overall Weighted Average SERVQUAL Score by different category of customers

Level of expectations and perceptions of services by different category of customers on five

dimensions of customers’ satisfaction

On comparison of CAR (Cumulative Average Ratings) of customers’ expectations against the

five dimensions of SERVQUAL by the all customers, holidayers and wild-lifer/photographers

amongst them, it is observed as in Figure 4 below that the expectations level in all five

dimensions were quite high as compared to all customers and wild-lifers & photographers with

the expectation level of wild-lifer & photographers being the least. With the expectations level

being almost proportionately higher in all dimensions, the expectation level of holidayers is

relatively higher in tangibility dimensions than other dimensions showing the no-compromise

attitude of the holidayers on this aspect not allowing any concession on the ground of wild-

setting, ecology conservation or remoteness of the facility.

Figure 4: Comparison of levels of expectations of services by different category of customers on

five dimensions of customers’ satisfaction.

3.33.43.53.63.73.83.944.14.24.34.44.5

All customers

Holidayers

Wild-lifers &

Photographers

-0.19

-0.4

0.1

-0.5

-0.4

-0.3

-0.2

-0.1

0

0.1

0.2

All customers Holidayers Wild-lifers & Photographers

All customers Holidayers Wild-lifers & Photographers

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Interestingly the perceptions level of all customers, holidayers and wild-lifer/photographer in all

the five dimensions of the service of Barakhandia Eco-Complex were almost same in all the five

dimensions of SERVQUAL as can be seen from Figure 5 below with similar ratings (CAR). So,

it can be inferred that negative or positive gap score in each dimensions or on the

Figure 5: Comparison of levels of perceptions of services by different category of customers on

five dimensions of customers’ satisfaction.

Overall SERVQAUL gap score was a result of the difference in level of expectations by different

category of customers which varies a lot. The high expectation level in all five dimensions by the

holidayers resulted in dissatisfactions after availing the service, whereas with the same

perceptions ratings the wild-lifers and photographers appeared satisfied with the positive gap

score because of the low expectation level from a wild-life resort.

CUSTOMERS EXPECTATIONS AND PERCEPTIONS AS OBSERVED FROM THE

SECONDARY SOURCES INCLUDING INFORMAL INTERACTION WITH THE

MANAGER, CUSTOMERS AND EMPLOYEES

From the “Suggestion Book” kept by the management for comments of the customers regarding

their experience, comments and suggestion for improvements was also studied to look into the

customers’ expectations and perceived service quality of Barakhandia Eco-Complex. It is

observed that with the different comments and suggestions by the customers, there had been

extreme perception of the service by customers with the same service operation. The two

extreme perceptions, one highly satisfied and the other highly dissatisfied, were observed to be

associated with different category of customers as under study i.e. wild-lifers and holidayers, as

below:-

“I would never have expected to find such a lovely and peaceful place in the

surroundings of Sambalpur. It is an experience of pure nature. You get the impression to be at

sea side and on top you have the chance to observe some rare and really impressive animals. The

hospitality of the staff is outstanding, perfect service, great food, very nice ambience and

facilities which basically are in good shape (may be with the exception of the toilet of our

3.33.43.53.63.73.83.9

44.14.24.34.44.5

CA

R

All customers

Holidayers

Wild-lifers & Photographers

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cottage Aakash). Definitely worth to come again!” - Mr. J Koun, Germany (Wild-lifer)(Name

disguised)

“Our stay in the cottage has been very disappointing. The service given by the general

staff was pathetic. Food served to us was not sufficient to feed the members of our family. We

had to survive on our personal food item. Proper guide was not provided while travelling to the

forest. False billing was done w.r.t. the fooding and lodging. Driver accommodation was

provided in the kitchen and we were charged Rs.400/- per driver for the same. Proper blanket

were also not provided. Every time we sit to eat, the food gets finished. Sufficient quantity of

food was not there. Proper generator facility is not there. After requesting the staffs for so many

times the DG was not started in the morning hours also, -------------------------------------In precise

we would like to say that we wasted our time and money by visiting Nirvana.”

– Mr. Sanjay S, India, holidayer (Name disguised)

It can be seen from the aforesaid comments that two types of customers had different

perception of the service. The wild-lifer, a foreign national definitely with higher service

philosophy, was amazed by such a beautiful facility inside a sanctuary that too near a small town

like Sambalpur and also impressed by the food quality, service and of course the wild-life for

which had visited the place. Whereas a holidayer is dissatisfied with all kind of service, whether

it was food, accommodation or safari with the same service operation. A wild-lifer takes the

power failure as an opportunity for candle-lit dinner, whereas a holidayer is frustrated to the core

with power failure as a source of discomfort killing their pleasure trip as observed by Mr. Anmol

Singh, one such holidayer.

When discussed about the reasons of such dissatisfaction by the aforesaid customer with

the Manager of the Eco-Complex, Barakhandia, he recalled vividly the trouble customer. He

shared his experience about this customer along with his family members. In the Barkhandia

Complex, they have package system for the tourist, in which the tariff includes breakfast, lunch

and dinner with the room rent per cottage for two and separately that for the cottage for four.

They have a fixed menu and buffet serving for the guests and the timing for the breakfast. This

customer, who had come for holidaying with his family, was expecting full service as any other

luxury hotel. So, he demanded food to be prepared and served as per their choice. With the

limited capacity, options and hands, the manager showed his inability to heed to his request.

However, the manager accepted his request to prepare and serve rotis (Indian bread) in addition

to the normal buffet and asked about the number of rotis to be prepared. The requested number

of rotis were prepared and served, but the family members with the touching the buffet’s prime

food i.e. rice, went on eating all the rotis and demanded for more which could not be supplied

because of limited supply. That was the reason for the dissatisfaction of them. Again, as the luck

would have it, because of a storm there was long power disruption because of the falling of a tree

inside the sanctuary on the electric line and the DG set has a limited power supply potential and

the demanding customer was dissatisfied on that account as well, not ready to listen any practical

difficulties, finding those to be lame excuses. So, the reasons of dissatisfaction were basically

non-compromising and non-cooperative attitude and non-understanding of the standardized

service operation of the Eco-Complex, Barakhandia, a wild-life resort.

Further in the “Suggestion Book”, the following observations were made: Overall

appreciation of Managers’ involvement, contribution, co-operation & of pleasant personality by

all customers; Well-kept virgin forest, animals & birds sightings as observed by wild-lifer; Well-

maintained physical structure observed by the holidayers; Innocent service providers as observed

by wild-lifers; Good fooding, local & homely as observed by wild-lifers; Interior, lack of

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facilities (cramped toilet) observed by holidayers; Should have been simpler and more eco-

friendly physical structure; Interactions with the manager of the resort, customers and

employees, it was revealed that the guests coming for the wild-life, photography were

appreciative of the limitation and very much co-operative in the running service operation with

standardized menu, timely and early dinner and breakfast and lunch as well, limited service, etc.

But the guests coming for holidaying, with main focus of entertainment with safari being an

additional feature, were very demanding on the internal service operation requiring more

variability in the service.

The aforesaid survey, results, analysis and interpretations thereof and further from the

other sources as “Suggestion Book”, Manager of the Barakhandia Eco-Complex, some

customers and employees, brings in the trade-off between service operations, required customer

focus and requirement of a wild-life resort to focus on certain elements of service operation to

the satisfaction of the target customers which have been discussed in the subsequent section of

the paper.

MANAGERIAL IMPLICATION AND CONCLUSION

The study of these elements of Service Operations has become more significant with increasing

variability in customers’ expectations and service philosophy with increasing flow of cross-

cultural, much more educated and informed customers, exposed to standard of the service

industry, the complexity of service delivery to the needs and expectations of the customers,

hence the service operation has increased multi-fold. As the satisfaction of the customers is the

most important criteria for running a service company in a sustained profitable way, these

elements of service operation leading to customers satisfaction need to be identified to maximise

the profit through the three R’s i.e. Repeat Customers, Retention of the existing ones and

Referral business through word-of-mouth. Generally, Service Organizations put much

importance to marketing efforts, specifically highlighting/creating hype about the destination i.e.

external factors on which they have less control than the internal standards of the service and

their operations on which they have the most of the control in meeting the customers’

expectation leading to their satisfaction. Further, in wild-life resorts as the customers satisfaction

is also much dependent on the wild-life encounters in the wild and the

sharing/discussing/identifying these encounters inside the service organization and time spent

inside, the number of service encounters increases multi-fold, making the service operation much

more important influencing the customers’ satisfaction. Therefore, in such wild-life resorts while

there is need for customers’ education for external factors, the identification of elements service

operations inside the service organizations influencing customers’ satisfaction and focusing on

them should be the primary concern.

From the above study and analysis of the results thereof it is observed that the customers

coming for holidaying had internal service focus whereas the customers coming for wild-life,

photography had external focus i.e. they were more concerned about the activities outside the

resort i.e. inside the forest. The holidayers had high expectation level of the wild-life resort

before coming to the resort as compared to the wild-lifers/photographers who were more

practical having experience and knowledge of the limitations of a wild-life resort and

standardized service operation as basic requirement where the wild-life experience counts more

than anything. The holidayers wanted the facility to be more modern and the physical structure

very attractive and the service personnel to be neat and skilled in attending to their needs and

requirements while providing service all the time bringing in variability with more choice of

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food and late service to the night. In contrast the wild-lifers/photographers wanted the facilities

to be more basic in congruence with the wild setting and the service to be more standardized

with early breakfast, timely lunch and early dinner, preferably buffet so that they can go early to

bed and rise early to be ready to venture into the forest for wild encounters. They never expected

the operating hours to be for their luxury unlike the holidayers. The holidayers seldom wanted to

compromise on the slack service delivery due to lack of language or service skills or knowledge

of the employees. Whereas the wild-lifer with already expecting that the skills and knowledge of

the service employees will be low, they had more or less positive perception of the service

delivery accepting the service employees were doing their best to satisfy them with all the

shortcomings and their overall satisfaction level was positive. Only slight problem faced by the

wild-lifers/photographers was in the reliability and responsiveness dimension in which they

perceived that the service personnel were unable to show their sincere interest or emotion to

express such attitude to solve the customers problem and to tell the exact time at which the

service will be provided though were efficient enough to deliver prompt service beyond

expectation of them, due to lack of training. Whereas the holidayers were having dissatisfaction

at all levels i.e. variables of all five dimensions of SEVQUAL except having their perception

exactly meeting their expectation on having visually appealing physical facility in tangibility

dimension and personal service provided by the employees. This had occurred because of the all

concrete and safe modern cottages with slanting roof keeping up extraordinarily modern

architecture for a wild-life resort and very homely kind of attitude of local service personnel

whose skill is only simplicity and hard labour.

Now, there is a trade-off between choosing kind of service operation a wild-life resort

should focus. There are alternatives of going for a full service operation catering to all type of

customers with buffet as well as menu-based breakfast, lunch and dinner with unlimited service

options and standardized operation with buffet breakfast, lunch and dinner with limited and

timely service focused towards wild-lifers, photographers and researchers. With kind of

restrictions inside a sanctuary or forest or national park, a full service operation has its’

limitations and if you go for full service operation then the group of wild-

lifers/photographers/researchers whose main attraction is the forest, nature and wild-life inside it

feel ignored as employees can’t be expected to cater to cater to the time restricted standardized

service while keeping up with variability in service and without the needed focus in service

operation it is bound to go haywire, the strategic drift. While going for standardized kind of

service, so as to bring efficiency the demand of variability by the holidayers cannot be attended

to. So, the resort has to decide the service operation strategy it has to adopt. To operate with a

full service there is a need for huge investment in trained employees all kind of service skills for

food preparation, entertainment and also ultra-modern equipment and facilities. So, the question

arises with limited season for wild-life activities where the rainy season are closed for visitors

and with the kind of governmental restrictions coming up for forest, sanctuaries and national

parks with the concern for ecology and wild-life, whether it is wise to go for such a business

model of full service operation. Or rather to go for the operation for which a wild-life resort

stands for, to cater to customers coming for wild-life experience, to have an experience of

staying in the wild, to be close to the nature away from the city life and hustle-bustle therein,

expecting very rugged, limited and standardized service. While adopting this limited service

operational model, can there be any service operation strategy that can satisfy the holidayers as

well?

12

The study is limited by the scope of the study of only one wild-life resort and with a

limited time period of survey. The Eco-tourism Complex, Barakhandia is a social-initiative of

Govt. of Odisha, limiting the activities and business choices on asset, policy and governance

important ingredients of a successful business model. Further, the employees are recruited

locally, limiting their service orientation & skills. Therefore, the customers’ expectation is also

having high zone of tolerance, at least for those customers knowing this fact or coming to know

after getting into the resort or are repeat customers, not allowing in revealing of all the elements

of service operations in influencing the customers’ satisfactions in accordance of importance.

There is scope of further study in measuring customers’ satisfaction by refining the original

SERVQUAL questionnaires of Parsuraman for a wild-life resort and also zeroing on the issues

affecting their satisfaction by studying the implications of the recommendations on the basis of

these findings.

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