Sustainable Housekeeping and Service Quality: Identifying the Gap Between Guest Expectations and Perceived Benefits in leading Indian Hotels

Abstract

Housekeeping has become an important activity that is vital to the environmental performance and the quality of services provided by a hotel. This paper discusses the linkage between the level of sustainable housekeeping practices and the quality of services in top Indian hotels, and in particular, how to determine the difference in expectation and perceived benefit gap by the guests. With the help of a quantitative and descriptive research design, primary data were gathered (N=400 hotel guests, measured using a structured questionnaire) based on the three following dimensions of service quality that are expected, perceived, and quality of housekeeping services (related to sustainable housekeeping). Descriptive statistics and gap analysis and regression were used to analyse the data. The results show that the guests set high standards when it comes to the point of cleanliness and environmentally-friendly methods but the perceived benefits prove to be less than the expected ones when it comes to a variety of service qualities, creating an imbalance between the expectations and perceptions. The research also gives a positive influence on the quality of overall services significantly and strongly impacted by sustainable housekeeping practices, and communication effectiveness being one of the most significant mediators. The findings reveal that sustainability efforts do not necessarily promote poor quality of services; the poor match of their expectations with those of the guests and insufficient communication is one of the factors that create perception gaps. The article provides a viable information to hotel managers to implement the practice of sustainable housekeeping onto the dynamic service delivery in such a way that it improves the satisfaction of the guests and attains the targeted environmental goals.