complaint management in hotels: Evaluation of e-complaints of Russian tourists in large-scale hotels in Antalya province

Hotel enterprises offer services in a period of time where the intensity of face-to-face interaction with customers is very high and the accommodation period may last from one day up to weeks or sometimes even lasts longer than weeks. The number of experiences is increased by the longer period of interaction with customers compared to other service businesses. The experiences are not always positive but they at times can be negative, too. Some of such experiences result in complaints. Complaints are highly important for hotel enterprises. This importance derives from meeting the customer satisfaction, identifying failures in management and overcoming them. In today's fierce competition environment, it is easier for businesses to maintain their current customers than to gain new ones; therefore it is essential that complaints from current customers be carefully taken into consideration and a customer be prevented from leaving the hotel without a solution to his/her complaint. Thanks to these evaluations and corrective actions, the possibility of facing the same problems in new customers in future can be removed. The experiences that customers share go the rounds via verbal communication. Such sharing, through technological advance, includes not only the immediate environment but now it can reach any person all over the world. It has been seen in studies carried out that individuals are more willing to share their negative experiences. The main aim of this thesis study is to evaluate the complaints about hotels made by Russian tourists who have an important place among the tourist groups with the highest number of visitors to Turkey and following this evaluation to identify the subjects which hotel enterprises must lay great emphasis on. A great majority of the incoming tourists prefer Antalya and its surroundings. Thus, complaints about hotels were gathered from the hotels in Antalya. The first two sections of the study include theoretical knowledge such as the concept of complaint and complaint behavior, behaviors of the complaining customers according to their cultural, psychological and demographic features, operation of the complaint management system, strategies and methods that can be used in the resolving a complaint. In the practice section of the study, the complaint behaviors of the Russian tourists regarding the five-star hotels around Antalya and a total of 200 complaints categorized based on the information on the website www.tophotels.ru, which the Russian tourists often use and on which they state both their complaints and suggestions, are analyzed. During the study all comments have been sorted out from the suggestions and focus is given to the complaints. The complaints are those made between 2013-2014. The 200 complaints in question have been translated into Turkish and examined in 15 different categories and according to region, hotel and date.According to the results obtained, the complaints of the Russian tourists are mostly related to inadequate infrastructure, flavorless food with little variety and unqualified personnel. With 2014 bearing more complaints than 2013, the time frame in which the guests make complaints the most is the periods between May-June and August-September. Among the primary reasons why these months are mostly preferred by the Russian tourists are the lower temperature, less crowdedness and cheaper prices of tours. In order for the large-scale hotels around Antalya to have a steady hand on the Russian market which constitutes a significant source of income and to ensure customer loyalty, they need to increase service quality working on the complaint subjects stated, effectively manage customer relations and finally develop and implement appropriate and effective complaint management strategies. Keywords: Complaint Management, Complaint Behavior, E-Complaint, Complaints in Hotel Enterprises.