Tourism Development Boosted with PolyU Tourist Satisfaction and Tourism Service Quality Indices
The SHTM released the 2012 PolyU Tourist Satisfaction Index (PolyU TSI) and Tourism Service Quality Index (PolyU TSQI) on 27 March. The 2012 PolyU TSI hit a record high of 75.07, an increase of 2.46 points from 72.61 in the previous year. As another innovative gauge for service performance, the first-ever PolyU TSQI stood at 75.37 for 2012.
Spearheaded by Professor Haiyan Song, Associate Dean of the SHTM, the PolyU TSI project measures inbound tourist satisfaction levels
across six tourism-related sectors and integrates them into an overall index. Since its launch in 2009, the PolyU TSI has served as a comprehensive system that provides authorities and industry practitioners with much needed information for decision making and planning.
The 2012 index shows that the sectors consistently excelling in service performance in Hong Kong are transportation (78.48) and attractions (75.49). Immigration services (75.15), retail shops (73.42), hotels (72.96) and
restaurants (72.95) have also managed to exceed tourist expectations. The measurement of tourist satisfaction spanning four years from 2009 to 2012 has revealed the stability of the market-level index, with the Americas scoring the highest, followed by Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific, Europe, Africa and the Middle East, South and Southeast Asia, mainland China, Taiwan and Macau, and Japan and Korea.
The PolyU TSI evaluates service sector competitiveness not only over time but also across
international tourism destinations. In fact, the project has been expanded and its framework has been adopted by Singapore, Macau and major cities in Guangdong, mainland China. With the PolyU TSI, Hong Kong is able to determine its performance and competitiveness relative to other international tourism destinations, allowing it to identify strategic areas for further development. The 2012 index indicates that Hong Kong outperformed all other destinations measured.
With an underlying
research design resembling that of the PolyU TSI, the PolyU TSQI is a weighted average of six tourism service quality indices, measuring overall tourism service quality.
In the first PolyU TSQI study, tourists from the Americas had the highest index score of 79.17, followed by Australia, New Zealand and the Pacific (78.71), Europe, Africa and the Middle East (78.38), South and Southeast Asia (78.05), mainland China (72.81), Taiwan and Macau (71.92), and Japan and Korea
(68.31).
Among the six tourism-related sectors, transportation received the highest score of 78.32, followed by immigration (75.65) and attractions (75.10). Hotels (74.65) were ranked fourth, restaurants (74.30) were ranked fifth, and retail shops (73.52) were ranked sixth.
The SHTM believes that adding the tourism service quality index to the existing framework of the PolyU TSI will help to boost tourist satisfaction through the management of tourism service quality. Indeed,
with the PolyU TSQI the industry can benchmark its service performance against tourists’ growing expectations. Professor Kaye Chon, Dean and Chair Professor of the SHTM, is the project’s Principal Investigator.
With such a comprehensive and sophisticated system of measuring the level of customer satisfaction and supplier service quality, the Hong Kong tourism industry is well equipped to further bolster local economic development.
For more information on the indices, please visit:
http://www.touristsatisfaction.org
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