Assessing the Standard of Services Offered in Small And Medium Size Hotels in Tanzania: The Case of Arusha Municipality
The expansion of hotel industry in Tanzania has stimulated the growth of Tourism industry in the country due to increase of availability and variety of accommodation, food, drinks and other services. Together with this expansion the small and medium size hotels do not meet the standard of services which cater for the needs of guests. Customers have complained that the standard of services offered in small and medium size hotels are of low standards. Thus the purpose of this study was to assess the standard of services offered in small and medium size hotels in Arusha, in Tanzania. The study design was a survey research design. The sample size included 120 international guests, 30 internal guests, 36 hotel employees and 9 hotel managers. Simple randomly, systematic and purposive sampling methods were used. Data collection instruments were questionnaires, interview and focus group discussion. The Data were analyzed by Statistics Packages for Social Science (SPSS version 16.0) and explained in descriptive statistics, the emerged themes was used. The findings revealed that unqualified staff, poor management, high running costs, shortage of power and water supply are reasons for low standard of services offered in small and medium size hotels. Furthermore employee training, team work, availability of equipment and tools, attending clients problems are ways of meeting the standard of services needed by guests. This study recommend that quality assurance for accommodation and catering standards should be established, also there should be established hotel school curricular which cover current skills and needs for hotel industry and knowing guests requirements before designing standard of service to be offered.
Networked Digital Library of Theses and Dissertations