Participation in service design process: An empirical research on a hotel

Service design draws considerable interest in recent years. Employees and customers participation in service design is important in service success, both in technical and functional terms. The main goal of service design is to compose the service package. Service package is a function of features in service product and service delivery. A five star hotel in Ankara was chosen to examine the participation in service design process. Service features of the hotel were explored with employees, thereafter customers expectations were measured on those features. The underlying dimensions of expectations was held as the participatory service package. A qualitative research carried out with 14 managers by Delphi method. This study conducted through three panels and data collected by interview technique. In order to increase reliability and validity of Delphi study, various data resources and methods was used. So that 8 academic experts were involved within second and third panels. Data are gathered by questionnaire method from academic experts. Consensus was searched both in experts groups itself and also mutually. Qualitative data analyzed by content analysis, mean score, standard deviations and also consensus and consitency analysis. Within Delphi process the current hotel service deeply questioned and basic features of hotel service were determined. In the second part of the field research a survey was conducted in the same hotel to seek the customers expectations of those service components. In this section, data gathered by questionnaire method, where 134 customers responded. The main dimensions of customer expactations are analyzed by factor analysis. Also descriptive analysis, ANOVA and T-Test were used to analyze quantitative data. The reliability of the scale used in customer survey anlayzed with Cronbach alpha coefficients. Findings showed that the participation in service design process can be effectively conducted. The service package proposal revealed in this study also have some different aspects than litarature.