Is the hotel classification system a good indicator of hotel quality? [An article from: Tourism Management]

This digital document is a journal article from Tourism Management, published by Elsevier in 2004. The article is delivered in HTML format and is available in your Amazon.com Media Library immediately after purchase. You can view it with any web browser.

Description:
This paper analyses whether the hotel classification system is a good indicator of hotel quality, where quality is defined to be satisfying the expectations and needs of the client. We conducted our research in Spain, where a five-category system using stars is employed. To be exact, the hotel sector of one autonomous community (Cantabria, located in northern Spain) was studied, given that it is these autonomous regions that have exclusive authority to regulate and promote tourism. The results of the study confirm that even though significant quality differences are seen between the different categories, the ranking by quality does not correspond to that by categories. This supports the idea that quality is associated with the delivery of a service according to client expectations, more than it is with establishment category.