A Study on the Characteristics and Service Quality of Selected Boutique Hotels in Bangkok

Abstract

The popularity of the boutique hotel is getting famous day by day due to the uniqueness of the hotel architectural decoration, themes, intimate services, and the new trend of travelers. There are four objectives in this research. The first objective is to investigate hotel managers’ and guests’ understanding about the characteristics of boutique hotels in Bangkok. The second objective is to distinguish between boutique hotel managers’ and boutique hotel guests’ point of view about service quality requirements in selecting boutique hotels in Bangkok. The third objective is to identify the challenges that boutique hotels in Bangkok have faced in relation to the guests’ service quality requirements, and the last objective is to identify the factors that satisfy and dissatisfy guests during their stay in boutique hotels in Bangkok. The qualitative method with the semi-structured interview was chosen by the researcher to gather information from the five boutique hotel managers and twelve international tourists who had stayed or were staying in the boutique hotel in Bangkok. Additionally, the constant comparison analysis method is used to analyze the necessary data collected from the interviews. The interview was conducted in Bangkok between 25th June to 12th July, 2019. The result revealed that both boutique hotel managers and boutique hotel guests have almost the same understanding about the characteristics and service quality of the boutique hotel in Bangkok, yet they used different ways to describe their opinion about it. In conclusion, the finding showed that the boutique hotel managers in Bangkok seem to understand a lot about their customer needs and wants. However, the misunderstanding between them is still there, so the improvement is still required for the hotel to take into account, such as investing more on human resource development and focusing more on the local Thai design as a priority.