Investigating the Relationship between Service Quality and Customer's Satisfaction, Loyalty, and Trust: A Case Study of Tehran's Enghelab and Laleh Hotels

Today's business environment requires organizations to find new strategies to compete with their rivals. Therefore, maintaining customer satisfaction and loyalty is an important goal to achieve by organizations. In a world where competition among companies is constantly increasing, the immediate solution to achieve a sustainable competitive advantage is to improve the quality of services, which in turn leads to customer satisfaction. Many organizations have recognized that customer satisfaction can bring about their long-term success, and the entities involved in the tourism industry, especially the hotels, are no exception. Furthermore, many studies conducted in various industries have shown that providing quality services is a key factor in building customer loyalty. In other words, offering superior services to customers leads to customer satisfaction, which is necessary to establish customer loyalty. This functional survey study set out to investigate the relationship between service quality and customer satisfaction, loyalty, and trust in the Enghelab and Laleh hotels in Tehran city. To collect the required data, some questionnaires were administered to the hotels' guests who were selected via the available non-random sampling method. The data were then analyzed via structural equation modeling using SMART PLS software. The results showed that service quality had a significant positive effect on customer satisfaction, trust, and loyalty. It was also found that customer satisfaction had a significant positive effect on customer's trust and loyalty. The impact of customer's trust on customer's loyalty was also proved to be positive and significant.