Expected versus Perceived: Service Quality Gap among International Passengers

Abstract

Airports are powerful engines of many economies, and over millions of international passengers arrive at and depart from major airports daily. Accordingly, airports play a significant role as the most important hub in the world, connecting people from all over the world that contribute massively for the development of each country, also providing many countries an opportunity to earn a greater amount of foreign income by supplying utilities to international passengers. This study was conducted to evaluate the expected level of service quality with the perceived level of service quality of the international passengers who use the airport of Sri Lanka. Convenience sampling technique was adopted, and the data was collected from 205 international passengers from the regions of Europe, USA, Australia, New Zealand and Asia, using a structured questionnaire. The independent sample t-test was employed for the major purpose of evaluating the difference between the expected level of service quality and the perceived level of service quality in airports. The results of the study show a significant difference between the expected and the perceived level of service quality. Thus, it is concluded that the expected level of service quality of all the three components, namely pre-flight services, inside services and post-flight services, among international passengers, is relatively high compared to their perceived level of service quality.