Do Travel Agencies Measure Up to Customer Expectation? An Empirical Investigation of Travel Agencies' Service Quality as Measured by SERVQUAL

Abstract To achieve and maintain their competitiveness and profitability, travel agencies should manage and aim to continuously improve the level of service quality offered to their customers. To know what their current level of quality is and to identify those aspects of their service which need improving, travel agencies should measure their service quality. This research reports an application of Parasuraman, Zeithaml and Berry's SERVQUAL questionnaire to a sample of New Zealand clients of travel agencies. The results support the reliability of the scale, but were unable to replicate the five dimensions of the original study. The implications of these and other findings relating to the gaps are discussed and further applications of SERVQUAL for travel agencies are presented.