never applied for certification, over 40% intended to apply within
three years and about 20% planned to apply in three years.
Approximately 37% indicated no intention to apply, while 2% had
not decided.
Factor Analysis of Service Quality Improvement
The study intended to identify the dimensions of service quality
improvement as a result of implementing the Thailand Hotel
Standard. The participants rated their perceived extent to which the
service quality attributes have been changed (or may be changed) due
to an application for certification of the hotel rating under the
Thailand Hotel Standard. The attributes were measured on a 7-point
Likert scale with 0 indicating no change, 1 indicating minimum
changes, and 7 indicating maximum changes. Besides the 78 certified
hotels, 94 hotels in the application process—which indicated that
changes were made due to the introduction of the Thailand Hotel
Stardard—were included in this analysis. These selected cases were
representative of hotels with service quality most likely to be affected
by the Thailand Hotel Standard.
The assumptions of factor analysis were checked by the Bartlett
test of sphericity and the measure of sampling adequacy (MSA). The
consideration of practical and statistical significance resulted in
retaining 42 variables and disregarding 12 variables due to low factor
loadings and cross loadings. As shown in Table 2, four factors of
service quality improvement with eigenvalues above one were
identified, which accounted for 81.04% of the total variance.
VARIMAX orthogonal rotation was used as it provides clear
separation of factors. Based on the representative items, the four
factors were named as ‘‘Service Delivery,’’ ‘‘Hotel Employees,’’
‘‘Facilities and Surroundings,’’ and ‘‘Prestige.’’ The reliability
coefficients of the four factors ranged from 0.85 to 0.99.
Factor 1, Service Delivery, covered most statements in
SERVQUAL with modifications, and the overall service efficiency—
an attribute in the Thailand Hotel Standard. The factor with 20 items
included characteristics of proper and effective hotel services, such as
guests’ feeling safe about their transactions, employees’ willingness to
help guests, error-free service, courtesy to guests, personal attention
to guests, and the overall service efficiency. All factor loadings were
0.697 or above. The factor explained 37.4% of total variance in the