TY - JOUR
T1 - ‘Not on my vacation’
T2 - service encounters between able-bodied and disabled consumers–the case of high-contact service
AU - Tchetchik, Anat
AU - Eichhorn, Victoria
AU - Biran, Avital
N1 - Publisher Copyright:
© 2018, © 2018 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.
PY - 2018/9/2
Y1 - 2018/9/2
N2 - The effect of service encounters on customer satisfaction in high-contact services is gaining wider recognition among academics and practitioners alike. In this exploratory study, we aimed at gaining insight into a specific service encounter, namely, between able-bodied and disabled customers. While many studies have addressed the experiences of disabled persons in a plethora of situations, including tourism and leisure settings, the service experience of able-bodied customers sharing a service environment with disabled customers has been overlooked. Using a simple choice experiment, we showed that when given textual information about the expected presence of disabled guests in advance, two-thirds of the able-bodied study participants would be willing to stay in a hotel with a minor to moderate probability of being co-present with disabled guests. However, when a visual aid was provided together with the textual information, this figure decreased significantly. Implications and potential recommendations for policy-makers and hotel managers are presented, as are suggestions for future research. Such research is imperative if better inclusion of disabled tourists is to be achieved, with the resulting realisation of the immense underexploited economic potential of disabled tourism.
AB - The effect of service encounters on customer satisfaction in high-contact services is gaining wider recognition among academics and practitioners alike. In this exploratory study, we aimed at gaining insight into a specific service encounter, namely, between able-bodied and disabled customers. While many studies have addressed the experiences of disabled persons in a plethora of situations, including tourism and leisure settings, the service experience of able-bodied customers sharing a service environment with disabled customers has been overlooked. Using a simple choice experiment, we showed that when given textual information about the expected presence of disabled guests in advance, two-thirds of the able-bodied study participants would be willing to stay in a hotel with a minor to moderate probability of being co-present with disabled guests. However, when a visual aid was provided together with the textual information, this figure decreased significantly. Implications and potential recommendations for policy-makers and hotel managers are presented, as are suggestions for future research. Such research is imperative if better inclusion of disabled tourists is to be achieved, with the resulting realisation of the immense underexploited economic potential of disabled tourism.
KW - Disabled tourists
KW - experimental design
KW - hotel vacation
KW - service encounters
KW - stated preferences
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85041103825&partnerID=8YFLogxK
U2 - 10.1080/19407963.2017.1421202
DO - 10.1080/19407963.2017.1421202
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AN - SCOPUS:85041103825
SN - 1940-7963
VL - 10
SP - 204
EP - 220
JO - Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events
JF - Journal of Policy Research in Tourism, Leisure and Events
IS - 3
ER -