Tourism Services, Service Quality and Tourism Service Quality

+ Passive international tourism or also known as service import: is the act of taking Vietnamese citizens to travel abroad. Developing this type of tourism with the purpose of helping people broaden their horizons, interact with different ethnic groups, expand economic relations, learn experiences to apply in the country, etc. Besides, when going abroad, tourists consume a large number of foreign goods and services, so people call this type of tourism service import.

* Based on the purpose of the trip

People travel for many different purposes, but among them is the main purpose of the trip. Based on this criterion, we can divide the following types of tourism:

+ Cultural-historical tourism. This is the most popular type of tourism and is the core of tourism programs. People travel for different purposes, but the core is still to learn about the cultural traditions, customs, and lifestyles of the communities where they travel. Therefore, exploiting human and social tourism resources here to serve tourists (including both domestic and international tourists) plays a decisive role.

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+ Resort tourism. Tourism is considered a means to restore human labor after months and years of hard work. This type of tourism has existed for a long time, especially when tourism had not yet become a popular social phenomenon but was only for the wealthy and ruling class. Today, resort tourism has attracted a large number of people to participate. The most populous are workers with relatively high incomes, people living in cities under a lot of pressure from noise, environmental pollution due to smoke and dust, the elderly with money accumulated after many years of work or having successful children who subsidize their vacations.

Resort tourism is classified according to geographical criteria as follows:

Coastal and island resort tourism: The sea and islands not only have a fresh climate, swimming in clear blue sea water has good healing effects, but also often come with diverse types of tourism such as: scuba diving, windsurfing, boating, etc.

Mountain resort tourism: especially suitable for tourists who are elderly. Mountainous areas have fresh climate, quiet space, beautiful landscapes that help people quickly recover their health.

Mineral water resort tourism: Mineral water areas are not only ideal places for relaxation but also places for mineral water medical tourism through soaking in mineral water and drinking mineral water to treat many diseases.

Business tourism: is a type of tourism for people who travel for work, attend conferences, seminars, investment and trade exploration, and combine it with tourism purposes.

Family visit tourism: this is a type of tourism that develops strongly in the open world, people can work and settle anywhere on earth, they want to return to their homeland to visit relatives combined with tourism.

Medical tourism: In the past, this type of tourism was mainly developed in places with mineral water sources, mountainous areas and coastal areas with the aim of exploiting natural resources (land, water, air, natural plants, etc.) to serve the care and treatment of people. Nowadays, with modern medicine, many countries have developed medical tourism as a basic type of tourism to attract visitors from all over the world to travel and receive medical treatment.

Sports tourism: includes two groups, which are sports tourism for competing athletes and tourists who go to watch sports events.

Religious tourism: Beliefs and religions have been formed and existed for thousands of years, the lives of a part of the population depend on gods and lords. In addition to material life, people also have a spiritual life, including spirituality. A part of the population has formed religions: Catholicism, Protestantism, Buddhism, Cao Dai Hoa Hao, Christianity, Islam... Religious followers have formed a need for belief that is clearly expressed in pilgrimages to places of spiritual significance. Originating from the above needs, religious tourism has been formed, existed for a long time and is popular in countries.

Recreational tourism: Recreation is an active resting activity of people after tiring working days to rest and restore physical and mental strength. To satisfy human needs, an entertainment industry has been formed.

Human service facilities include: theaters performing various art forms, cinemas, dance halls, casinos (gambling centers), horse racing betting, theme parks, etc.

Adventure tourism: This is a type of tourism for adventure lovers to demonstrate their courage and strong will, such as: climbing high mountains, crossing waterfalls, crossing ocean waves, etc.

Ecotourism: Ecotourism is a type of tourism based on nature, associated with local cultural identity with community participation for sustainable development. Tourists choose this type of tourism to enjoy beautiful natural scenery and return to wild nature. This is a form of nature tourism with a high level of education on ecology and environment, which encourages all social classes to protect the environment and culture, ensuring socio-economic benefits for local communities.

* Based on the use of tourist transport vehicles.

When traveling, tourists must use different means of transportation not only from their regular place of residence to the tourist destination but also within the tourist destination. On that basis, people often give two types of criteria to determine the type of tourism, which are:

+ Based on the use of means of transport for tourists to tourist destinations.

Air travel: This is the type of travel that most tourists use. With the application of scientific and technological achievements in the production of air transport vehicles, people today can travel to anywhere on earth.

Road tourism: When the road system develops, not only connecting localities within a country but also connecting with other countries, road tourism will promote the strong development of tourism activities. Not only are there large vehicles to transport tourists, but tourists can also drive themselves to take their families and relatives on domestic and international tours.

Travel by rail: Today, modernized railway transport with luxurious amenities, fast speed and safety is competing with airlines for tourists.

Cruise tourism: Usually a cruise program lasts for months and passes through many countries with seaports, they stop and go ashore for sightseeing.

Cruise tourism: This type of tourism is mainly developed in areas with many rivers and with rivers flowing through many countries. Tourists traveling on this cruise visit the countries that the river passes through. This type of waterway tourism is very developed when combined with cultural-historical sightseeing tourism.

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1.1.3. Tourism services, service quality and tourism service quality

1.1.3.1. Tourism services

In economics, services are understood as things similar to goods.

but in an intangible form. Services play an increasingly important role in the national economy. Countries around the world today tend to gradually increase the proportion of service industries in economic development.

The concept of tourism services according to the Law on Tourism issued by the National Assembly in

2005:

“Tourism services are the provision of travel, transportation, and storage services.

accommodation, food, entertainment, information, guidance and other services to meet the needs of tourists".

The characteristics of tourism products and services can be summarized as intangible, non-storable, high-end, synthetic, direct consumer participation, and dependence on technical facilities.

1.1.3.2. Service quality

Product quality is a concept that has existed for a long time and is the basis for the formation of the concept of service quality. However, assessing the quality of service products is much more difficult than assessing the quality of tangible goods. This difficulty and complexity originates from the distinctive characteristics of services, which are: intangibility, indivisibility, variability and perishability. Service quality is understood as the result of the customer's comparison, created between their expectations of that service and their feelings about it.

their perception when using that service. Thus, the concept of service quality in service theory is the quality perceived by customers. It originates from comparing customers' expectations before using the service with what customers feel after consuming the service. When customers' perceptions of service quality meet their expectations, the service provider is considered to have perfect quality. Customers' expectations of service quality are different from their perceptions of that service quality. When customers feel that there is no difference between the quality they expect and the quality they feel when consuming a service, the quality of the service is considered perfect. Customers' expectations and customers' perceptions of that service quality depend on the comparison, including:

- The difference between customer expectations of service quality and the business's perception of these expectations

- Discrepancies arise when service firms have difficulty translating their perceptions of customer expectations into service quality characteristics.

- Discrepancies occur when service employees do not deliver services to customers according to established criteria. In service industries, employee contact with customers is very important to customers' perceptions of service quality, but many times, employees of the business do not accurately implement the established procedures and criteria.

- Disparity occurs when there is a gap between the service delivery and the information provided to the customer. This means that the service is not advertised and presented to the customer as what they receive from the service provider. In addition, customer expectations of service quality are influenced by other factors, such as the reception of information from various sources, individual needs and experiences of that customer.

1.1.3.3. Quality of tourism services

The quality of tourism services comes from the quality of tangible tourism products and intangible tourism products. It is the result of comparing tourists' expectations of tourism services and their feelings after using those tourism services.

* Characteristics of tourism service quality

Service quality is difficult to measure and evaluate:

This characteristic is due to the heterogeneous nature of tourism services. Setting output standards for service quality is very difficult, so it needs to be linked to the standards of tangible factors in the tourism business.

Service quality depends on customer perception:

As analyzed above, service quality is the customer's comparison of their expectations of the service before consuming it and their feelings after consuming the service. A service has good quality when the customer sees no difference between expectations and feelings.

The quality of tourism services depends on the quality of the physical conditions for performing the service. To overcome the invisibility of tourism services, to create a good impression for customers about their tourism services, tourism businesses need to pay attention to the physical conditions for performing the service, which are tangible factors such as: the architecture of the tourist area, the decoration items in the hotel, the equipment and utensils in the restaurant, the uniforms of the service staff... need to be commensurate with the price of the service that the unit provides and suitable for the income of the target customer group. Tourism businesses that use good, branded, expensive technical facilities are often associated with the perception of a high-class service.

The quality of tourism services depends on the tourism service provider. In the tourism service business, the human factor is especially important. The quality of tourism services depends a lot on the quality of the direct service staff. Customers often evaluate service staff through the following aspects: service attitude shown through agility, thoughtfulness, enthusiasm with customers...; service skills and communication skills shown during the work process; situation handling skills and are very interested in the costumes and dressing style of service staff. Currently, many businesses have paid great attention to training, fostering skills and service skills to meet the increasingly high demands of customers.

The quality of tourism services depends on the service provision process of the tourism business. The process of providing tourism services is often very laborious.

However, for customers after using the tourism product, what they retain is mainly in an invisible form, which is the experience, the feeling of satisfaction or dissatisfaction. Therefore, the quality and the way each stage of service is provided is very important, and the role of the stages in creating customer feelings is equally important. Suppose a group of customers come to have lunch at a restaurant, the dishes are cooked very well, the price of the menu is reasonable, but because there are too many customers, the waiters do not bring the dishes out in time, even when paying, the customers have to wait a long time; so some customers seem very upset when leaving. This is a very common situation and has proven that in tourism, to be rated as having good service quality, all stages in the service provision process must be performed well.

1.1.2 Sea tourism and characteristics of sea tourism

1.1.2.1 Concept of sea tourism :

Sea tourism is a type of tourism developed based on the potential of the sea, taking place in areas with sea potential, aiming to satisfy people's needs for entertainment, relaxation, sightseeing, swimming, research, etc.

1.1.2.2. Characteristics of sea tourism

- Intangibility:

The product of tourism services is an implementation, customers cannot see, taste, touch, smell… before buying.

- Heterogeneity:

With this characteristic, it is often difficult to achieve the output standards of tourism services. To have a good service depends on many different factors such as service delivery stages, service staff including the participation of customers.

- Non-ownership: When paying for a service, the customer can only use the service for a certain period of time, without owning it. A hotel room, a seat on an airplane, a seat in a theater can be sold many times to many different customers. Most of the process of creating and consuming products

Tourism products overlap in space and time. They cannot be stored or inventoried like other ordinary goods.

- Seasonality of services: Because tourism services have this characteristic, tourism businesses need to proactively plan for peak and low tourist periods to carry out tourism business activities most effectively.

1.1.4. Socio-economic significance of tourism development

1.1.3.1. Economic significance of tourism development

* Economic significance of domestic tourism development :

Economically, domestic tourism redistributes income among different classes of people and redistributes income among regions and localities in the country. High-income visitors in big cities and industrial zones will spend in regions and provinces that develop tourism.

* Economic significance of international tourism development :

Positive impact on increasing national income through foreign currency earnings, playing a major role in balancing the international balance of payments. Tourism is the most effective export activity, encouraging and attracting foreign investment, contributing to consolidating and developing international economic relations. Increasing revenue for the national budget, contributing to promoting the development of other economic sectors.

1.1.3.2. Social and cultural significance of tourism development :

Socially, domestic tourism will create many direct and indirect jobs serving tourism and create exchanges between people in the country. Culturally, this is a means of educating the love of the homeland, pride in the historical and cultural traditions of the nation for all citizens in the country. Domestic tourism will contribute to the preservation, maintenance and restoration of historical relics, architectural works, art forms and traditional craft villages. This is the premise for the proactive development of international tourism.

Tourism is an effective means of advertising and promoting a country's image.

Tourism increases solidarity, friendship and international relations.

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