FIVE-STAR TREATMENT? E-MAIL CUSTOMER SERVICE BY INTERNATIONAL LUXURY HOTELS
This research used a typical e-mail query to investigate customer service by 491 properties from 13 international hotel chains. These five-star hotels had difficulty providing prompt, accurate, and timely e-mail responses to their customers. The results suggest significant differences in e-mail customer service, based on hotel location and the size of the hotel chain. The poor responsiveness and quality by many hotels illustrate that better e-mail policies and training would give hotels an immediate competitive advantage via improved e-mail customer service. The article closes with practical suggestions to improve e-mail customer service and future research avenues for academics.
Keywords: Customer service; E-mail; Internet; Luxury international hotels; eService
Document Type: Research Article
Affiliations: 1: *Lausanne Institute for Hospitality Research (LIHR), Ecole hôtelière de Lausanne (EHL), Switzerland 2: †University of Western Australia, Department of Information Management and Marketing, Western Australia
Publication date: 01 January 2003
- Information Technology & Tourism is the first scientific journal dealing with the exciting relationship between information technology and tourism. Information and communication systems embedded in a global net have profound influence on the tourism and travel industry. Reservation systems, distributed multimedia systems, highly mobile working places, electronic markets, and the dominant position of tourism applications in the Internet are noticeable results of this development. And the tourism industry poses several challenges to the IT field and its methodologies.
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