George Costa

Recreational services in resort hotels: customer satisfaction aspects.

Leisure, fitness and sport activities, as well as live entertainment, are the content of recreational services, attributed by European resort hotels as hotel animation. This paper reviews the nature of such services, as a component of the hotel product, in order to appropriately assess and standardize quality towards customer satisfaction. The majority of Greek resort hotels offer animation services free of charge, aiming at profits and other benefits. Evaluating those services appears critical, because they hold up autonomy and require greater human involvement compared with other hotel services. Instruments for measuring the quality of services, such as SERVQUAL and its modifications, have been in use by several organizations in the hospitality industry. However, they are subject to criticism and it is argued that these instruments are not suitable for international measurements. Literature on customer satisfaction in this area of services has been reviewed with the focus on experiential dimensions of this construct. A different approach of animation services as a marketing management tool is suggested.

Expected and perceived service quality at basketball stadiums in Greece

Abstract The purpose of the current research was to examine the differences between expected quality of service and the perceived quality of service experienced by spectators at selected professional basketball stadiums in Northern Greece. Five hundred spectators filled in the evaluation instrument created for the purpose of the study. The Wilcoxons matched-pairs signed—ranks test showed a statistically significant difference in all 23 items between expectations and perceptions of service quality and in all cases only organizational weaknesses were proved to exist and no strengths. The exploratory factor analysis revealed nine factors: “show time expectations”, “installations evaluation”, “convenience and employee evaluation”, “show time evaluation”, “employee expectations”, “convenience expectations”, “installations expectations”, “comfort evaluation” and “comfort expectations”. The challenge of providing a high quality sport and recreation service becomes less difficult when sport managers know what their customers expect from a service and what they feel is important to quality. From a managerial perspective, identifying the dimensions and knowing both a spectators evaluations and expectations of a provided service indicates the direction that management should take in investing its efforts and resources to increase the probability of the customer experiencing a positive outcome from watching.

Empathy and sport tourism services: a literature review.

The paper examines the concept of empathy and its role in the fields of tourism and the leisure industry. Based on a literature review, the definitions, the aspects and the role of empathy in the tourism and recreation professions are discussed. Researchers see empathy as a component of quality services. It is also concluded that empathy can be identified and staff can be trained in this ability in order to achieve team spirit, enjoyment at work and satisfied customers.

Sport tourism in Greece

After three decades of rapid growth in tourism, Greece has maintained its numbers in attendance, but the quality of tourism and the money spent per tourist is not as expected. This is apparently related to the economic policy of the tour operators, to the competition of neighbouring tourism destinations and other complex reasons (Glinia, 2002). Besides the betterment of services and other policies, one of the ambitious plans Greek tourism authorities have initiated for the period 2000–2010, is the development of alternative tourism forms. This competitive policy has given priority to sport tourism, as 2004 Olympic Games called interest for investments and other sport businesses. To our knowledge, sport tourism market comprises four distinct areas of business in Greece: a) Olympic Games and other sport events b) resort hotels and “all inclusive” clubs c) outdoor activities agencies and d) sport tourism marketing programs. More analytical, those market areas are described below in length of services and economic importance.

General Travel Behavior in Eastern Macedonia and Thrace

Holidays that include outdoor recreational activities are preferred by tourists. The opportunity given to tourists for active employment during holidays is one of the key reason for choosing regions that offer such activities. Our research took place in the region of Eastern Macedonia and Thrace in a year base in order to monitor the tourist behavior of tourists. Participants in the survey were 3070 from seven different countries. Travel behavior in the survey was tested with 5 questions. The behavior of the tourists was different between Greek, English and Polish, who behaved differently from German, Bulgarian, Cypriot and Romanian. The favourable and preferred sports activities are the canoe-kayak, rafting, diving, mountain bike (m.t.b.), climbing-rappeliling, flying-fox and water sports.

The future of sustainable tourism development for the Greek enterprises that provide sport tourism

‘Green tourism’ is defined as tourism that enhances local cultural elements, which are operating under the control of local communities, providing employment and maintaining economic benefits within the local communities. In fact, many times the above definition is poorly utilized, since there are times when the economic benefits dim from local communities. Tourism industry uses the term as a message to tourists on energy saving, avoiding coastal pollution and so on. Sometimes, the same tourist businesses are accused of using the term or labelling ‘green’ primarily for marketing purposes. Although it is a fact that tourism industry is starting to respond to the changing values of tourists regarding environmental issues, however, the purpose of this research is to infer if there is a future for sustainable tourism development concerning the enterprises that provide sport tourism in Greece.