The impact of seasonality on service quality in beach hotels: the case of the Palm Beach Hotel and Bungalows

One of the biggest issues that any business is facing nowadays is offering the highest quality of service possible to its clients. Having acknowledged the imminent importance of offering high quality of service in the Cypriot hotel industry, this report went on to investigate the impact that seasonality has on the quality of service in beach hotel. In order to do so in a feasible way and taking into consideration the limitation of the study, this report selected the case study method and used the Palm Beach Hotel and Bungalows (Four stars hotel) who acted as the sponsor to it. The hotel is situated right on the beach of the Larnaca bay in Cyprus, just off Dhekelia road and 10 minutes by car from the center of the city of Larnaca.
With the aid of semi structure questionnaires and self filled questionnaires in two indicative periods (Winter and Summer) as well as the extensive use of literature review this report managed to collect a great number of data that allowed it to produce some solid recommendations that if followed by the sponsor hotel will bring actual change to the organization thus allowing it to offer the highest quality of service possible to its guests all year round. These recommendations aimed at improving both the tangible and the intangible aspects of the quality of service that the hotel has to offer. Regarding the tangible aspects, amongst others, this study went on to suggest the total renovation of the hotel and addition of new facilities. Moreover there were some more suggestions that included the intangible aspects related to the hotel’s day to day operations and they included a number of Staff related issues related to the hiring, induction and training of new staff members as well as the creation of a quality assurance office headed by the hotel’s quality assurance manager. Furthermore this research went on even further and suggested some secondary recommendations related to the mitigation of the problem of seasonality that were directed towards the tourism policy makers of Cyprus, namely the Government of the Republic of Cyprus.
Finally, it also has to be mentioned that the framework developed for the purposes of this research could be adopted and used by other researchers in hotels of different types and classifications.