Abstract
Customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction has received a lot of attention from research. Previous studies related to customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction have concentrated on hospitality products, such as hotels, resorts and restaurants. However, an increasing number of customers have been attracted by luxury cruise experiences (Poh & Cheng, 2017). This study concentrates on luxury cruise ships, and uses online comments to analyse the influences on customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction encountered on luxury cruise ship experiences. This study explores an explanation of satisfaction and dissatisfaction factors aboard luxury cruise ships. The online comments on TripAdvisor were used as a database in this dissertation.
The interpretivism paradigm was adopted in this study. This dissertation adopted a qualitative methodology. The method of data analysis applied was content analysis. The data for this dissertation covered 29 luxury cruise companies. The 570 comments (including ‘excellent’ comments and ‘terrible’ comments) were collected from 1st August to 31st August 2019 from TripAdvisor.
The main factors affecting customers’ satisfaction with luxury cruise ships were empathy, high food quality, and well-organised off-board excursions. Unhelpful customer service was the most important influence on customer dissatisfaction with luxury cruise ships. Poor food quality also played an important role in causing customer dissatisfaction on luxury cruise ships. The findings of this research are useful for luxury cruise managers, providing suggestions for them on how to increase customer satisfaction onboard, and improve cruise management. The findings also contribute to providing an understanding of customer satisfaction and dissatisfaction for current research in the tourism and hospitality field.
