Service quality as a fundamental cornerstone for visitor satisfaction: lessons learned from Pretoria, South Africa

The White Paper on the Development and Promotion of Tourism identified that poor service was one of the challenges facing the South African tourism industry. As the number of tourists to South Africa has increased in the post 1994 era, the return of consuming tourist is paramount to maintain sustainable growth of the industry. Service quality is linked with the ability to satisfy customers with the provision of the tourism product offering, by meeting or exceeding expectations and promised product benefits. Therefore, service quality is imperative for customer satisfaction. With tourism playing such a significant role in the economies of a vast majority of nations around the world, a drop in the quality of service in the industry could sacrifice these nations’ opportunities of generating sufficient income. The provision not only of good but rather excellent service is therefore essential for all destinations around the world, let alone the entire country or nation