Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 7738–7745

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Expert Systems with Applications

journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/eswa

Using FQFD to analyze island accommodation management in fuzzy

linguistic preferences
Ling-Zhong Lin ⇑, Wen-Chiang Chen, Tsun-Jin Chang
Department of Marketing Management, Shih Chien University, Kaohsiung Campus, Taiwan

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Keywords: Tourists’ service management has become a strategic issue for hospitality industry in tourism manage-
FQFD ment field. By improving accommodation performances, hospitality firms increase customer satisfaction
Island accommodation management and gain market shares. Nonetheless, most previously proposed or introduced research paradigms have
Fuzzy linguistic preferences focused on tourists without equally emphasizing the intra-organizational service quality and delivery
processes. The aim of this paper is to propose an approach for both external and internal service manage-
ment issue and service innovations based on the framework of Fuzzy Quality Function Deployment
(FQFD), a methodology that has been successfully adopted in new service development. Specifically,
the paper addresses the issue of how to deploy the House of Quality (HoQ) to improve accommodation
service innovation processes and tourist satisfaction effectively and efficiently. Fuzzy logic is a method-
ology to deal with the ill-defined nature of the tourist linguistic judgments required in the proposed HoQ.
The tourism case in island accommodation demonstrates the implementation of the proposed FQFD. The
effective and appropriate accommodation directions for service innovation designs acquired by applying
the proposed FQFD, thus, enable hotels managers to achieve a competitive advantage.
Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction the development of extant service quality and satisfaction pro-

Service innovation is an important tool for gaining marketing
competitiveness, as positive service innovation affects customer
satisfaction, stimulates intention to return and encourages recom-
mending behavior. Service innovation is an essential process to
visit evaluation. Tsaur and Lin (2004) indicates that 71% of com-
plains received in Asia outbound tourism relates to the quality of
service and accommodations. The growing number of new holiday
destinations increases the competition in the Asian travel market
and, therefore, service innovation of accommodations could be
strategic for increasing the competitiveness of the Asian islands
in the international tourism market (Chang, Lee, & Shin, 2002;
Chu, 2002; Tsang & Qu, 2000).
However, measurement of service innovation in the island
accommodation receives scant attention. Despite these increased
customer-oriented marketing efforts in the tourism industry, the
process of service innovation designs receives little attention.
Although most research programs focuses on measuring customer
perceptions of service quality and satisfaction (Johnston, 1995,
2004; Qu, Ryan, & Chu, 2000), few provide accommodation-specific
guidelines for designing service innovation to meet the quality
standards expected by tourists. That is, the primary purpose of
⇑ Corresponding author. Address: 200 University Road, Nei-Men Hsiang, Kaohsiung
Hsien 845, Taiwan. Tel.: +886 7 6678888x4251/5712; fax: +886 7 6679999.
E-mail address: ling@mail.kh.usc.edu.tw (L.-Z. Lin).
grams is to diagnose a company’s service performance and to
understand consumer purchase behavior. However, but they do
not actively consider the intra-organizational service innovation
development processes that can support the marketing initiatives
of accommodations.
Measuring consumer judgment on service innovation design of
accommodations is sometimes highly complex, since it incorpo-
rates a great variety of uncontrollable and unpredictable factors
that affect the decisions involved (Frochot, 2005; Ghosh, Mehta,
& Vera, 1990; Lam & Zhang, 1999). Researchers often neglect sev-
eral factors that may complicate the consumers’ decision-making
process, such as incomplete information, additional qualitative cri-
teria and imprecise preferences (Albacete-Sáez, Mar Fuentes-Fuen-
tes, & Javier Lloréns-Montes, 2007). The purpose of this paper is to
propose a systematic and structured approach called Fuzzy Quality
Function Deployment (FQFD) adopting an analysis based on fuzzy
logic in order to design a new extant service innovation design
with the focus on both external consumers’ needs and internal
service management requirements.
2. Literature review
2.1. Tourism service
The importance of tourism service as a strategic issue in tourism
industry has emerged during the last decade (Bigné, Sánchez, &

0957-4174/$ - see front matter Ó 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.eswa.2010.12.135
 L.-Z. Lin et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 7738–7745
Sánchez, 2001). Today, the breadth of tourism services related to
accommodation may play a significant role in the competitive sce-
nario (Albacete-Sáez et al., 2007; Fleischer & Pizam, 1997). As a
consequence of this shift towards service, consumers are more
and more excited about accommodation performance.
Tourist service, hereafter understood to be the service perfor-
mance perceived by consumers as a result of accommodation pro-
cesses and activities, has been widely recognized as a mean to
gain competitive advantage. Through tourists’ satisfaction, hotels
retain their consumers and gain new market shares (Tian-Cole &
Crompton, 2003). Even though new consumers are welcomed in
every line of business, the main objective of hotels is to maintain
tourists for a long-time period. The total value of a lifetime tourist
is almost unquantifiable, and allows hotels to achieve a competitive
advantage against competitors (Chekitan & Schultz, 2005). Robledo
(2001) stresses the significant role of service innovation in
achieving competitive advantage, and, conversely, the weak
importance of sales and profits.
According to the so-called ‘‘disconfirmation paradigm’’ (Lewis,
1987; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985), consumer satisfac-
tion is achieved when service performances delivered by the ser-
vice innovation designs meet the requirements of consumers. To
this extent, Robledo (2001) states that tourists evaluate service
by comparing their perceptions of service received with their
expectations. Thus, the gap between tourist expectations and per-
ceptions is a synthetic measure of consumers’ satisfaction. Since
consumers will be satisfied when perceptions exceed their expec-
tations, understanding these requirements is an imperative for ho-
tels (Gundersen, Heide, & Olsson, 1996; Laws, 1991).
In addition, researchers need to adopt a dynamic perspective
when they are working on service innovation. Tourism service is
not a steady concept, and evolves through a continuous improve-
ment cycle (Pizam, 2004). Therefore, researchers have to repeat
the quantitative measurement of delivered and expected service
performances over time. That is to audit gaps between expecta-
tions and perceptions periodically (Enright & Newton, 2004). When
a lack of correspondence occurs, viable service attributes and inno-
vation designs of intervention have to be identified, pondered and
ranked in terms of efficiency and effectiveness. Since interventions
imply costs, before taking steps toward implementation, a cost/
benefits analysis is appropriate for undertaking service designs
starting from those service attributes with the highest impact on
tourist service.
To conclude, providing tourism service which meets the expec-
tations of consumer is a continuous process, which can be summa-
rized in the following steps: (1) Understanding the consumer’s
voice, that is requirements and expectations in terms of relevant
service design performance. (2) Assessing consumer’s service per-
ception. (3) If a gap between perception and requirements occurs,
identifying viable steps that can improve tourist satisfaction. (4)
Identifying costs and benefits related to each step. (5) Implement-
ing the most efficient service innovation design for satisfying con-
sumers by means of a cost/benefit analysis.
2.2. The fuzzy concept of QFD in tourism service
Quality function deployment (QFD) originated in 1972 in Japan
as a methodology to improve products quality in Japanese firms,
such as Mitsubishi, Toyota and their suppliers (Hauser & Clausing,
1988). The basic rationale of QFD is to take the customer’s desires
down to the level of detailed operations. The inherent vagueness or
impreciseness in QFD presents a special challenge to the effective
calculation of the importance of tourism service designs. The
vagueness and impreciseness are due to a number of reasons: (1)
The QFD process involves various inputs in the form of linguistic
data, that is tourist perception, judgment, evolution on importance
7739
of service attributes or strengths of relationship between tourism
service attributes and service designs, which are highly subjective
and vague (Temponi, Yen, & Tiao, 1999). (2) Formal mechanisms
for translating tourist requirements (which are generally qualita-
tive) into service innovation designs (which are usually quantita-
tive) are lacking. There are normally many tourist requirements
for service attributes, each tourist requirement can translate into
multiple service innovation designs, and conversely a certain tour-
ism service designs may affect multiple tourist requirements. In
general, these tourist requirements tend to translate into service
designs in a subjective, qualitative and non-technical way, which
express in more quantitative and technical terms. Hence, the rela-
tionships between tourist requirements and service designs are of-
ten vague or imprecise (Govers, 2001; Graessel & Zeidler, 1993). (3)
Owing to the uncertainties in the tourism service design process,
the data available for tourism service innovation design is often
limited and may be inaccurate, especially when an entirely new
tourism service is developed and a certain degree of vagueness is
often inevitable (Chien & Tsai, 2000).
In the traditional QFD, most of the input variables are assumed to
be precise and are treated as crisp numerical data. However, linguis-
tic variables expressed in fuzzy numbers seem more appropriate for
describing those inputs in QFD. Selection of fuzzy logic as a means
to represent a QFD methodology in tourism service innovation de-
signs seems natural, in particular when we review Hisdal’s (1988)
proposition: ‘‘Fuzzy logic can handle inexact information and verbal
variables in a mathematically well-defined way which simulates
the processing of information in natural-language commutation.’’
For example, expressions such as ‘‘high satisfaction’’, ‘‘low interfer-
ence’’, ‘‘low importance’’, and ‘‘high impact’’ in tourism service attri-
butes and service designs are imprecise. These sentences in a
natural or synthetic language are the values of verbal variables
which represent linguistic concepts in tourist’s perceptions.
3. Construction of fuzzy QFD in service innovation delivers
In the tourism service innovation designs, the design team
needs to create or improve tourism service by incorporating the
service attributes recognized in the fuzzy QFD planning process
into tourism service innovation development. However, it is not
possible to consider all service attributes during service develop-
ment because of constraints in time, budget or feasible facilities
(Poon, 1993). A tourism service innovation design team needs to
be able to make trade-offs while selecting the service attributes
based on the order of their relative importance ranking to achieve
more tourist satisfaction (Ryan, 1995). That is to say, the service
innovation design priority is a key result of QFD since it guides
the tourism service innovation design team in decision-making, re-
source allocation, and the subsequent fuzzy QFD analysis. There-
fore, deriving the final importance rankings of tourism service
innovation design from input service attribute variables is a crucial
step towards successful QFD.
The approach is based on the translation of HoQ (House of
Quality) principles from accommodation service attribute field to
service innovation design/management requirements, while the
traditional HoQ correlates customer requirements (‘‘whats’’) with
engineering characteristics of new product under development
(‘‘hows’’). In our approach, customer requirements in terms of ser-
vice attribute performances (‘‘whats’’) are crossed over with viable
service innovation design/management. Fig. 1 illustrates the
process used to conduct an HoQ evaluation in service attributes.
From Fig. 1, ‘‘whats’’ elements express service attribute SAi,
i = 1, 2, 3, . . . , n, affecting accommodation service innovation
design/management perception. After assessing the customer
service attribute, viable service design SDj, j = 1, 2, . . . , m, the
7740 L.-Z. Lin et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 7738–7745

assessed. To this extent, we adopted the hamming procedure to

evaluate the gap of accommodation performance (Chien & Tsai,
2000). From a mathematical point of view, given the two fuzzy sets
e and B,
A e the Hamming distance dðu ðxÞ; u ðxÞÞ between two fuzzy
eA eB
numbers belonging to A e and B,
e respectively, can be computed as
Z
dðue ðxÞ; ueðxÞÞ ¼ jueðxÞ  ueðxÞj; ð1Þ
A B A B
X

where X is the universe of discourse. The di parameters are them

calculated according to Eq. (1). Then, the fuzzy weighted impor-
f  of SAs can be derived as
tance W i

f  ¼ di  W
W f i: ð2Þ
i

3.2. Fuzzy relationship matrix between service attributes and service

designs

The element strives to determine which service design has the

Fig. 1. The house of quality for the strategic management of the service design.
company can undertake in the tourism field to improve service
performances have to be identified and ranked in terms of both
effectiveness and efficiency. Those service design correspond to
‘‘hows’’ in the proposed customer service HoQ. Service innovation
design/management requirements are specified on the basis of the
hotel’s operations on managerial resource allocation plans in order
to satisfy the customers.
The roof of correlations, the weights Wi [n  1], the relationship
matrix Rij [n  m] and the relative importance of SDs vector
RIj [1  m] complete the HoQ. It is worth stressing that the weight
vector, the correlations matrix and the relationships matrix trans-
late linguistic judgments given by human beings. Therefore, fuzzy
logic seems to be an effective means to deal with them. Fuzzy logic
allows to take into account a different meaning that we may give to
the same linguistic expression. This is why the fuzzy approach has
been so widely adopted in different research fields. In our approach,
four fuzzy elements are added to the traditional HoQ, namely:
(1) the fuzzy weighted importance of service attribute;
(2) the fuzzy weighted importance of service designs;
(3) the fuzzy cost for the implementation of service designs;
(4) the fuzzy marginal benefit of service designs.
3.1. Fuzzy weighted importance of service attribute
The fuzzy weighted importance W f  of SAs is a [n  1] vector
i
which expresses the real importance of each SA. The introduction
f  is required to weigh each service attribute considering not
of W
i
only the importance the customer gives to it, which is expressed
by the fuzzy value W f i , but also the performance delivered by the
hotel for that attribute. To gain a competitive advantage, the hotel
must provide superior service to the tourists on critical service fac-
tors, that is either those that are perceived as the most important
ones or where service perceived is inferior.
The fuzzy weighted importance W f  is computed by assessing
i
the distance di between accommodation performance and that per-
ceived by tourists as superior. Both the performance delivered and
the target superior value could be retrieved from customer service
surveys by directly asking the tourists. Since both performance val-
ues are fuzzy, the distance between fuzzy numbers has to be
highest impact on tourist satisfaction in accommodation. It takes
into account the fuzzy weighted importance of service attributes,
the fuzzy relationships matrix and the correlation matrix.
As already detailed, the position Re ij in the relationships matrix
expresses the fuzzy relationship between the jth SD with the ith
SA. Again, a fuzzy linguistic scale may be usefully adopted by hotel
managers to interpret the vagueness and incomplete understand-
ing of the relationships between ‘‘hows’’ and ‘‘whats’’.
The fuzzy importance ReI j of each service design can be calcu-
lated using the following equation
X
n
ReI j ¼ f  R
W i
e ij ; j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; m: ð3Þ
i¼1
where W f  is the fuzzy weighted importance of ith service factor,
i
while R e ij is the fuzzy number expressing the impact of the jth SD
versus the ith SA.
In a similar manner, the position T e kj ; j; k ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; m; k – j, in
the correlations matrix expresses the fuzzy correlation between
the kth and jth ‘‘hows’’. In order to quantitatively ponder the fuzzy
correlation between ‘‘hows’’, we adopt T e kj which can be interpreted
as the incremented changes of the degree of attainment of the jth
‘‘how’’ when the attainment of the kth one is unitary increased.
Thus, the fuzzy weighted importance ReI j can be computed as
X
ReI j ¼ ReI j  Te kj  ReI k ; j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; m: ð4Þ
k¼j
3.3. Fuzzy cost and marginal benefit of service designs
In order to complete the assessment of service designs, their
cost of implementation should be considered. In this situation, fuz-
zy logic becomes a fundamental tool in dealing with ill-defined is-
sues such as the evaluation of costs. While hotel managers may
find objective difficulties in quantitatively assessing the costs of
implementation of service designs, he/she can more easily give a
judgement on a linguistic scale, ranging for instance from Very High
to Very Low. This is why, in the lower part of the HoQ, a fuzzy
parameter C e j is added to consider the cost of implementing the
jth service design.
The fuzzy marginal benefit U e j of service designs can be calcu-
lated through the ratio between benefits and costs, as expressed
by the following equation:
e j ¼ ReI   1 ;
U j ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; m: ð5Þ
j
ej
C
In this way, strategic action which scores the highest impact on
service design and therefore whose implementation should be
 L.-Z. Lin et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 7738–7745
considered by the hotel top management to improve the service
performance.
4. Empirical results
4.1. Data collection
In this paper, the methodology developed is applied to a tour-
ism industry, which refers to a major company operating in Penghu
island. Penghu archipelago, located between Taiwan and Mainland
China, covering an area of 127 km2, has been a place of military sig-
nificance ever since the ancient times. Penghu is rich in natural
ecology as well as in culture and history. Competitive features of
the island include its climatic conditions, archaeological sites
(e.g. Old Battlefield, Heritage), diverse natural attractions (e.g.
Stone-watching, Bird-watching, Oceanic Ecology) and wide range
of cultural activities. All these make Penghu an internationally
famous scenic spot. In the past decade, it has become one of the
hottest recreational spots in Asian travel.
4.2. Survey framework
The study conducted two separate surveys to collect data from
departing travelers at Makung airport, Penghu. The main reason for
selecting an airport for a survey site was that most hotels were
reluctant to do surveys for customers inside their hotels. Tourists,
after entering the lounge at the departure gate of the airport, were
interviewed at various times of the day on 4 weekdays and the
weekends over a 4-week period in 2006. Tourists were approached
and informed about the purpose of the study prior to distributing
the questionnaire. At the beginning of the survey, one screening
question was asked to identify if tourists had stayed at a hotel in
the last 1 year. If tourists who met this criterion, they continued
to answer the self-administered questionnaire. Instructions in-
cluded in the cover letter stipulated that the questionnaire be com-
pleted and returned directly to the researchers who had
administered the survey. A hotel of 220 travelers were approached,
of which 188 (85.4%) responded and completed the questionnaires.
Sixty-eight of them were excluded, since they had not been fully
completed. Thus, hotels of the 120 questionnaires were used for
further analysis. The high response rate of 85.4% was partly attrib-
uted to the US$4 gift certificates offered in return for participation.
Pervious studies showed the effectiveness of using various mone-
tary incentives in improving mail survey response rates (Brennan,
1992; Brennan, Hoek, & Astridge, 1991).
In order to evaluate various service innovation designs of hotels
and the relationship between service attributes and service designs
in accommodation, four top managers from four famous interna-
tional hotels in Penghu participated in filling the questionnaire.
This study sets up the three principles of selecting the top manag-
ers of hotels: (a) the manager should work in the hotels industry
for more than 15 years; (b) the chosen manager should be the
top manager; (c) the chosen manager should be responsible for
Table 1
List of viable indicators for the evaluation of service attribute.
Customer needs Service attributes
Intangibles Confidence
Courteous
Problem handling
Prompt service
Willingness to help
Tangibles Modern equipment
Visual appearance
Professional image
7741
the planning of service innovation designs in the hotel. These top
managers realize the administration and hotel management dee-
ply, and have certain level of understanding about consumers’
requirements. This study finally selects four outstanding top man-
agers of international hotels in Penghu.
5. Results and discussion
5.1. Identifying the service attributes and service designs in the
accommodation
The study conducted by Oberoi and Hales (1990) is notable, as it
identifies the nature and number of service quality dimensions in
UK conference hotels for the first time. According to this study,
perception of service quality is two-dimensional, and consists of
tangibles and intangibles. A subsequent study undertaken in busi-
ness hotels indicates that the same dimensions are valid (Gunder-
sen et al., 1996). Ekinci, Riley, and Fife-Schaw (1998) also support
the validity of these dimensions in seaside resort hotels from the
perspective of British holidaymakers. Initially, the performance
part of the SERVQUAL scale and its hotel version, ‘‘LODGSERV,’’
developed by Knutson, Stevens, Wullaert, Patton, and Yokoyama
(1990) are tested, but both scales fail to support the five dimen-
sions (Ekinci & Riley, 1997, 2000). After modifications, the data
fit into the two-dimensional structure of tangibles and intangibles.
‘‘Tangibles’’ refer to the aesthetic quality and functionality of the
physical environment, whereas ‘‘intangibles’’ refer to the compe-
tence and caring of hotel employees. In other words, tangibles refer
to what people get from hotel services (benefits such as a nice
room) and intangibles refer to the manner in which people get
these services. Hence, this study modified some service attributes
and their relative dimensions from the work of Oberoi and Hales
(1990).
When applying the proposed HoQ to the accommodation,
appropriate ‘‘whats’’ have to be identified. The main service attri-
butes ‘‘whats’’ to be considered in the real case application have
emerged from a preliminary survey phase, which is performed
through direct interviews carried out on 120 tourists by academi-
cians. Table 1 shows the relevant service attributes ‘‘whats’’, to-
gether with a brief description.
The second part of this study is to establish service deliver pro-
cess of accommodations through an in-depth interview with top
managers of hotels to collect relational variables. The key question
to ask in this step is ‘‘how’’ the hotel delivers service of accommoda-
tion. Table 2 shows a list of possible ‘‘hows’’ for improving the cus-
tomer needs related to service design/management requirements.
The third part of application focused on the assessment of
viable service designs ‘‘hows’’, their mutual correlations, as well
as the relationships judgments between service attributes and
hotel service designs. Since the top managers adopt a linguistic ap-
proach, a first instructive phase is required to introduce the service
design members to fuzzy set concept. In a similar manner, appro-
priate linguistic scales were set up for the evaluation of relative
Description
The behavior of employees of the hotel instill confidence in customers
Employees of the hotel were consistently courteous with you
When you had a problem the hotel showed a sincere interest in solving it
Employees of the hotel gave you prompt service
Employees of the hotel were always willing to help you
The hotel had modern looking equipment
Materials associated with the service (such as menu, furniture) were visually appealing at the hotel
The hotel had a décor in keeping with its image and price range
7742 L.-Z. Lin et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 7738–7745

Table 2
Service designs considered in the accommodation.

Service delivers Service designs Description

Front desk Relations Giving tourism information regarding the traditions, celebrations and history of the place
Fast check-in Prompt response to tourist check-in
Complain handling Reliability in handling customer service complains
Housekeeping Cleanliness Individual and communal areas are clean
Timely arrangement Giving prompt service to the tourist at the promised time
Room items in order Individual rooms, along with its fittings, are in good state of repair
Food Food quality Providing quality cooking
Employee friendliness Offering tourist guide and advice menu
Sanitation Hygiene and cleanness of cooking facilities
Variety Providing multi-traditional homemade cooking
Price Price is in accordance with the service and food provided

and weighted importance of SAs, the relative and weighted impor-
tance of SDs, together with values in the relationships and correla-
tions matrixes.
5.2. Relative importance ratings in the service requirements
5.2.1. Fuzzy linguistic spreads of service attributes in the
accommodation
During the survey phase, the 120 tourists have also been asked
about the importance of service attributes for determining the rel-
ative importance of service attributes and to assess the distance
between the service delivered for each attribute and the perfor-
mance that is perceived as superior. The 120 tourists have been
asked to rank the relative importance of each service attribute on
a 9-point linguistic rating scale, ranging from VL (Very Low) to VH
(Very High). The fuzzy scale is shown in Fig. 2.
w~ i;x is the fuzzy triangular number which is adopted to translate
the linguistic importance judgement given to the ith SA by the xth
tourist, w ~ i;x fuzzy numbers have been pooled to determine an
aggregate value to be used in the HoQ, which is the relative impor-
tance W f i defined previously. To this extent, the relative impor-
tance W f i of ith service attribute can be computed as a weighted
average of w ~ i;x . The weighted average takes into account the issue
that not all tourists are equal. In the specific case, the following
equation is applied:
X
120
fi ¼
W ~ i;x ;
Ix  w i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n:
x¼1
Ix being the importance of xth tourist surveyed (x = 1, 2, . . . , 120).
The importance of each tourist have been weighted through the
percentage of staying in the hotels. We suggest that the data from
frequent guests, perceptions may be more important, needs to be
weighted more heavily than that from first time visitors.
The importance of each tourist has been expressed with a fuzzy
importance judgment using the same 9-point linguistic scale. The
f i . Table 3 shows the computed results. A comparison of the
W
spread of fuzzy number among the service attributes in Fig. 3
shows that the triangular have relatively heavy area in ‘‘Problem
Handling’’ and ‘‘Prompt Service’’. This shows that the tourists have
more recognition discrepancy in these two service attributes. Be-
sides, the triangular areas in the service attribute of ‘‘Confidence’’
and ‘‘Willing to help’’ are relatively small, meaning tourists with
recognition relatively unanimous and more consistently. Further,
the triangular area is more similar in ‘‘Visual Appearance’’ and
‘‘Modern Equipment’’ with significant overlap in the area. This
shows that the weighted difference is not large between the two
service attributes. By all accounts, the tourists consider profes-
sional image, problem handling, visual appearance and modern
equipment as the important service attributes.
5.2.2. Fuzzy weighted importance by tourists’ cognition gaps
Once W f i are calculated, the weighted importance W f  ½n  1 of
i
SAs is computed in according with Eq. (2). With regard to the crisp
distance di between the accommodations’ performance and the
one that is perceived by tourists as superior, the parameter has
been computed as the average of crisp distances di,x, the generic
xth tourist perceives against ith service attribute, as shown in Eq.
(7):
P120
x¼1 di;x
di ¼ ; i ¼ 1; 2; . . . ; n: ð7Þ
120
ð6Þ The parameters di,x are obtained based on the survey results and
by applying Eq. (1). To this extent, a section of the survey was ded-
icated to performance judgments about the service delivered by
the hotel to its customers. The customers were asked to judge
the service level they were receiving for each service attribute,
using the linguistic scale shown in Fig. 2. Moreover, for each SA,
the customers had to indicate the judgment which best matched
their perception of a superior service. di,x parameters, di values,
and the corresponding weighted importance W f  are shown in
i

resulting fuzzy numbers have been used in the computation of
Table 4. The outcomes from the analysis reveal that customers per-
ceive a significant difference between the hotel’s service perfor-
mance and optimum one in terms of ‘‘Prompt service’’, ‘‘Problem
Handling’’, ‘‘Visual Appearance’’ and ‘‘Professional Image’’. Tourists
consider that ‘‘Professional Image’’, ‘‘Visual Appearance’’ and
‘‘Problem Handling’’ are the three most important service attri-
butes (see Tables 3 and 4), but since the performance delivered is
far from meeting customer requirements, they should be consid-
ered as the key service attributes to tune.

5.3. Fuzzy relationship matrix assessment

5.3.1. Fuzzy comparisons matrices between service attributes and

service designs
This step in the construction of HoQ was the assessment of fuz-
Fig. 2. The tourists’ linguistic importance terms. zy relationship matrix R e i;j ½n  m. To this extent, service designs
 L.-Z. Lin et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 7738–7745 7743

Table 3
fi.
~ i;x assigned to service attributes by tourists and the relative importance of service attributes W
Fuzzy importance w

Service Confidence Courteous Problem Prompt Willing to Modern Visual Professional

attributes handling service help equipment appearance image
Importance C1 L L SH L M AH H VH
judgment C2 SL SL VH M AH H SH VH
C3 AL M AH AL AL H SH SH
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . . . . .
C120 VL L AH M M VH VH H
Relative C1 (0.2, 0.3, 0.4) (0.2, 0.3, 0.4) (0.7, 0.8, 0.9) (0.2, 0.3, 0.4) (0.4, 0.5, 0.6) (0.5, 0.6, 0.7) (0.6, 0.7, 0.8) (0.8, 0.9, 0.9)
importance C2 (0.1, 0.2, 0.3) (0.1, 0.2, 0.3) (0.8, 0.9, 0.9) (0.4, 0.5, 0.6) (0.5, 0.6, 0.7) (0.6, 0.7, 0.8) (0.7, 0.8, 0.9) (0.8, 0.9, 0.9)
~ i;x
w C3 (0.3, 0.4, 0.5) (0.4, 0.5, 0.6) (0.5, 0.6, 0.7) (0.3, 0.4, 0.5) (0.3, 0.4, 0.5) (0.6, 0.7, 0.8) (0.7, 0.8, 0.9) (0.7, 0.8, 0.9)
.. .. .. .. .. .. .. .. ..
. . . . . . . . .
C120 (0.1, 0.1, 0.2) (0.2, 0.3, 0.4) (0.5, 0.6, 0.7) (0.4, 0.5, 0.6) (0.4, 0.5, 0.6) (0.8, 0.9, 0.9) (0.8, 0.9, 0.9) (0.6, 0.7, 0.8)
Relative (0.19, 0.21, 0.28) (0.22, 0.31, 0.43) (0.67, 0.79, 0.86) (0.30, 0.40, 0.50) (0.40, 0.50, 0.55) (0.48, 0.65, 0.73) (0.52, 0.61, 0.75) (0.70, 0.85, 0.88)
importance
of service
attributes
fi
W

Table 5
Degree of relationship, graphic symbols and corresponding fuzzy numbers.

Degree of relationship Graphic symbol Fuzzy number

Strong d (0.7, 0.8, 0.9)
Medium s (0.4, 0.5, 0.6)
Weak N (0.1, 0.2, 0.3)

5.3.2. Fuzzy comparisons matrices of interdependencies with service

Fig. 3. The spread of fuzzy number among the service attributes.
SDs for customer satisfaction listed in columns, and service attri-
butes SAs crossed over in rows. Four top managers of the hotels
using linguistics cognitions, usually adopted in crisp QFD ap-
proaches, express the degree of relationship (weak, medium,
strong) between SDs and SAs. Since fuzzy logic is exploited to well
cope with the ill-defined nature of linguistics judgments, graphics
symbols and linguistics should be translated into as many fuzzy
triangular numbers as possible instead of crisp ones. Table 5 shows
the correspondence between symbols and fuzzy numbers.
In the center of Table 6 shows the resulting relationship matrix
between service attributes and service designs from four top man-
agers’ linguistic cognitions.
designs
The roof of correlations was built up in a similar manner. Tradi-
tional QFD linguistics are used to express the correlations between
service designs (strong negative, negative, positive, strong positive)
and the symbols are translated into fuzzy numbers, as shown in
Table 7.
Once the relationship matrix and the roof of correlations are
compiled, the fuzzy relative importance ReI j and the fuzzy weighted
importance ReI j of each service design are computed in accordance
with Eqs. (3) and (4), respectively. Fig. 4 shows the computed re-
sults of interdependencies with service innovation designs.
The backward 5th row in Fig. 4 shows that the correlations of
the eleven service designs that are associated with customer base
from the total scores. Food Quality occupies the important hub
relationship with other service designs, such as Cleanliness, Sanita-
tion, Variety and Price. The result also demonstrates that for differ-
ent service innovation designs Food Quality represents the ability
of its innovation and outperforms other service innovation designs.

Table 4
f  of each service attribute.
Distance di from the optimum performance and weighted importance W i

Performance judgments Optimum performance Distance di,x Distance Relative f

W i
di importance
C1 C2 C3 ... C120 C1 C2 C3 ... C120 C1 C2 C3 ... C120
Confidence H SH AH ... H H VH SH ... H 0 0.1 0.15 ... 0 0.072 (0.19, 0.21, 0.28) (0.013, 0.015, 0.020)
Courteous M AH H ... AH M H H ... VH 0.1 0.1 0 ... 0.2 0.093 (0.22, 0.31, 0.43) (0.020, 0.028, 0.040)
Problem AL M M ... L H SH H ... SH 0.2 0.15 0.15 ... 0.3 0.371 (0.67, 0.79, 0.86) (0.248, 0.293, 0.319)
handling
Prompt service M AH AL ... H AH AH H ... SH 0.2 0 0.2 ... 0.1 0.284 (0.30, 0.40, 0.50) (0.085, 0.113, 0.142)
Willing to help H AH SH ... AH H H SH ... AH 0 0.1 0 ... 0 0.049 (0.40, 0.50, 0.55) (0.019, 0.024, 0.027)
Modern AH AH M ... AH AH AH VH ... AH 0 0.1 0.1 ... 0 0.164 (0.48, 0.65, 0.73) (0.078, 0.11, 0.12)
equipment
Visual AH H M ... H AH H VH ... H 0 0 0.15 ... 0 0.525 (0.52, 0.61, 0.75) (0.273, 0.32, 0.394)
appearance
Professional AL SL M ... L H H VH ... SH 0.2 0.3 0.25 ... 0.35 0.358 (0.70, 0.85, 0.88) (0.251, 0.304, 0.315)
image
7744 L.-Z. Lin et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 7738–7745

Table 6
The relationship between service attributes and service design in house of quality.

Service attributes Service designs

Relations Fast Complain Cleanliness Timely Room items in Food Employee Sanitation Variety Price
check-in handling arrangement order quality friendliness
Confidence Medium Strong Strong Medium Strong Weak
Courteous Medium Weak Strong Medium Medium Strong Weak
Problem handling Weak Medium Strong Weak Weak Weak Medium
Prompt service Strong Strong Medium Strong Medium Medium
Willingness to Strong Medium Medium Weak Weak
help
Modern Strong Medium Strong Strong Weak
equipment
Visual appearance Strong Strong Strong Medium Strong
Professional Weak Medium Weak Strong Medium Medium Strong
appearance

design, by using the 9 value fuzzy scale previously shown in

Table 7
Fig. 2. As shown in Fig. 4, the results indicated that fuzzy logic is
Degree of correlation, graphic symbols and corresponding fuzzy numbers.
a very flexible tool to handle such a vague, imprecise and ill-de-
Degree of correlation Graphic symbol Fuzzy number fined issue as cost estimation for service designs.
Strong positive d (0.7, 0.8, 0.9) From Fig. 4, ‘‘Sanitation’’ emerged as the strategic action with
Positive s (0.5, 0.6, 0.7) the highest implementation priority, since, despite the very high
Negative h (0.3, 0.4, 0.5) cost for implementation, it makes it possible to improve the impor-
Strong negative j (0.1, 0.2, 0.3)
tant service attribute, such as ‘‘Modern Equipment’’ and ‘‘Visual
Appearance’’. In addition, ‘‘Sanitation’’ has positive interdepen-
However, the conducted cost adds to the service innovation de- dence against other service designs. In particular, the results find
signs for further evaluating the final importance. that there is a strong positive relationship between the ‘‘Food Qual-
ity’’ implementation, and there is a positive relationship between
5.4. Final importance ratings of service designs in the accommodation the ‘‘Cleanliness’’.

Then, the fuzzy cost C e j for the implementation of each service 6. Conclusion
design was determined to evaluate the fuzzy marginal benefit U e j.
To this extent, the four top managers were asked to express a lin- This study has addressed the applicability of FQFD in the tour-
guistic judgment about the investment required for each service ism and service design management context. The proposed

Fig. 4. The fuzzy weighted importance evaluation of service designs in HoQ.

 L.-Z. Lin et al. / Expert Systems with Applications 38 (2011) 7738–7745
methodology developed could be rightly considered as a useful
tool for selecting the efficient and effective service leverages to
reach tourist satisfaction. In particular, the methodology allows
the identification of service attributes that are perceived to affect
service design performances from the tourist’s point of view,
enabling the assessment of possible gaps between tourists’ and
hotel’s perception of service delivery. As a matter of fact, this is
why hotel’s perception should not be considered as the starting
point in developing service strategies, while direct interviews with
tourists are required. In our approach, such an issue is addressed
through the computation of the distance between hotel perfor-
mance in terms of service attributes and that perceived by tourists
as superior.
Based on the importance of tourists, the weighted importance
of service attributes allows the hotel to identify the key factors of
intervention in order to improve the perceived service quality.
For example, ‘‘Professional Image’’ emerges as the most important
attribute from tourists’ point of view, while, based on the distance
judgments the tourists give on the performance and optimum,
then, The result suggests that ‘‘Visual Appearance’’ and ‘‘Problem
Handling’’ is the key service attributes to tune.
In order to assess viable service strategic designs, we have
introduced a utility factor, which considers the costs of implemen-
tation for each ‘‘how’’. The study adopts the utility factor as a syn-
thesis parameter to select the suitable strategic action to
implement. In addition, the FQFD approach proposed has made it
possible to appraise the beneficial impact of strategic leverages
over service attributes in the accommodations as well as the posi-
tive correlations with other strategic service designs.
Since personal judgments are required when building the ser-
vice accommodation HoQ, fuzzy logic is adopted as a useful tool.
Through fuzzy logic linguistic judgments, tourists and hotel man-
agers give to weights, relationships and correlations are appropri-
ately translated into triangular fuzzy numbers. Moreover, fuzzy
logic has allowed coping well with uncertainties and incomplete
understanding of the relationships between ‘‘hows’’ and between
‘‘hows’’ and ‘‘whats’’. In addition, fuzzy logic becomes fundamental
to dealing with several parameters that seem difficult to express in
a quantitative measure. For example, detailed information about
costs of implementation for service designs are usually not avail-
able, while linguistic judgments on costs can be accessible easily.
Finally, with tourist’s satisfaction to service project design con-
tents, it can utilize the concept of fuzzy linguistic inference to com-
pare the original and new added accommodations that hotels
offered in the transition situation of their cognitive satisfaction.
Through measuring tourists’ perceptions of service quality in hotel
allows for the management to better tailor marketing efforts to en-
sure that customer needs are met. As a result, the top managers
can recognize, prioritize and improve areas of service weakness
and allocate important resources to the most effective areas. Thus,
the results from this research may have some significant implica-
tions for managers of accommodations.
References
Albacete-Sáez, C. A., Mar Fuentes-Fuentes, M., & Javier Lloréns-Montes, F. (2007).
Service quality measurement in rural accommodation. Annals of Tourism
Research, 34(1), 45–65.
Bigné, J., Sánchez, M., & Sánchez, J. (2001). Tourism image, evaluation variables and
after purchase behaviour: Inter-relationship. Tourism Management, 22,
607–616.
Brennan, M. (1992). Techniques for improving mail survey response rates.
Marketing Bulletin, 3, 24–37.
7745
Brennan, M., Hoek, J., & Astridge, C. (1991). The effects of monetary incentives on
the response rate and cost-effectiveness of a mail survey. Journal of the Market
Research Society, 33(3), 229–241.
Chang, D., Lee, S., & Shin, C. (2002). A comparative study on the quality of De-Luxe
Hotel Services in Seoul – Focusing on foreign customers. South Korea: Kyonggi
University, Osan College and Jungmyung High School.
Chekitan, S. D., & Schultz, D. E. (2005). A customer-focused approach can bring the
current marketing mix into the 21st century. Marketing Management, 14(1),
16–17.
Chien, C. J., & Tsai, H. H. (2000). Using fuzzy numbers to evaluate perceived service
quality. Fuzzy Sets and Systems, 116, 289–300.
Chu, R. (2002). Stated-importance versus derived-importance customer satisfaction
measurement. Journal of Services Marketing, 16(4), 285–301.
Ekinci, Y., & Riley, M. (1997). A critique of the issues and theoretical assumptions in
service quality measurement in the lodging industry: Time to move the goal-
posts? International Journal of Hospitality Management, 17, 349–362.
Ekinci, Y., & Riley, M. (2000). Validating quality dimensions. Annals of Tourism
Research, 28(1), 202–223.
Ekinci, Y., Riley, M., & Fife-Schaw, C. F. (1998). Which school of thought? The
dimensions of resort hotel quality. International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management, 10(2), 63–67.
Enright, M. J., & Newton, J. (2004). Tourism destination competitiveness: A
quantitative approach. Tourism Management, 26(6), 777–788.
Fleischer, A., & Pizam, A. (1997). Rural tourism in Israel. Tourism Management, 18,
367–372.
Frochot, I. (2005). A benefit segmentation of tourists in rural areas: A Scottish
perspective. Tourism Management, 26, 335–346.
Ghosh, B., Mehta, B., & Vera, A. (1990). Strategies for hotels in Singapore:
Segmentation in Singapore. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration, 31(1),
74–88.
Govers, P. M. (2001). QFD not just a tool but a way of quality management.
International Journal of Production Economics, 69, 151–159.
Graessel, B., & Zeidler, P. (1993). Using quality function deployment to improve
customer service. Quality Progress, 59–63.
Gundersen, M. G., Heide, M., & Olsson, U. H. (1996). Hotel guest satisfaction among
business travelers. Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 37(2),
72–79.
Hauser, J. R., & Clausing, D. (1988). The house of quality. Harvard Business Review, 66,
63–73.
Hisdal, E. (1988). The philosophical issues raised by fuzzy set theory. Fuzzy Sets and
Systems, 25(3), 349–367.
Johnston, R. (1995). Determinants of service quality: Satisfiers and dissatisfiers.
International Journal of Service Industry Management, 6(5), 53–71.
Johnston, R. (2004). Towards a better understanding of service excellence. Managing
Service Quality, 14(2/3), 129–133.
Knutson, B., Stevens, P., Wullaert, C., Patton, M., & Yokoyama, F. (1990). LODGSERV:
A service quality index for the lodging industry. Hospitality Research Journal,
14(2), 227–284.
Lam, T., & Zhang, H. (1999). Service quality of travel agents: The case of travel
agents in Hong Kong. Tourism Management, 2, 341–349.
Laws, E. (1991). Tourism marketing service and quality management perspective.
London: Stanley Thrones Publishers Ltd.
Lewis, R. C. (1987). The measurement of gaps in the quality of hotel services.
International Journal of Hospitality Management, 6(2), 83–88.
Oberoi, U., & Hales, C. (1990). Assessing the quality of the conference hotel service
product: Towards an empirically based model. The Service Industries Journal,
10(4), 700–721.
Parasuraman, A., Zeithaml, V., & Berry, L. (1985). A conceptual model of service
quality and its implications for future research. Journal of Marketing, 49, 41–50.
Pizam, A. (2004). What happened to the ‘quality of services revolution?’.
International Journal of Hospitality Management, 23(3), 201–202.
Poon, A. (1993). Tourism, technology and competitive strategies. Wallingford: CAB
International.
Qu, H., Ryan, B., & Chu, R. (2000). The importance of hotel attributes in contributing
to travelers’ satisfaction in the Hong Kong hotel industry. Journal of Quality
Assurance in Hospitality and Tourism, 1(3), 65–83.
Robledo, M. A. (2001). Measuring and managing service quality: Integrating
customer expectations. Managing Service Quality, 11(1), 22–31.
Ryan, C. (1995). Researching tourist satisfaction – Issues, concepts, problems. London:
Routledge.
Temponi, C., Yen, J. Y., & Tiao, W. A. (1999). House of quality: A fuzzy logic-based
requirements analysis. European Journal of Operational Research, 117, 340–354.
Tian-Cole, S., & Crompton, J. L. (2003). A conceptualization of the relationships
between service quality and visitor satisfaction, and their links to destination
selection. Leisure Studies, 22, 65–80.
Tsang, N., & Qu, H. (2000). Service quality in China’s hotel industry: A perspective
from tourists and hotel managers. International Journal of Contemporary
Hospitality Management, 12(5), 316–335.
Tsaur, S. H., & Lin, Y. C. (2004). Promoting service quality in tourist hotels: The role
of HRM practices and service behavior. Tourism Management, 25(4), 471–481.