Executive Summary

The aim of this research is to evaluate the UK visitors’ satisfaction on service quality of Spa tourism in Thailand with the purpose of understanding the importance of customer satisfaction and service quality that impact directly on the popularity of the destination.

Regarding Thailand as the chosen destination to focus on within this research, the spa tourism of Thailand has been developing continuously with an increasing in the number of spa resorts, spa services, and other amenities that facilitate the improvement of spa tourism around the country providing for both local and international visitors through the great supports of Thai governments and Thai Spa Association.

However, since the level of competition in spa tourism from each nation is considered as significantly high. Each destination needs to compete with others with the great effort in managing and marketing their tourism strategies. Although the valuable reputation that voted Thailand to be one of the best spa tourism destination in Asia, the spa service providers then should not ignore the importance of maintaining and constantly enhancing its service quality in order to receive the positive feedbacks, gain the customer loyalty, and reach customer satisfaction that will help Thailand to maintain in this existing position among other destinations. Hence, it is important to understand the factors that can cause the changes of customer satisfaction level regarding to the service quality.

Within this research, expectation, perception, and satisfaction of customers will be rated and analysed in order to study the factors and dimensions of service quality that affect to the level of customer satisfaction. In addition, this research will also demonstrate the recommendation that will be derived from the participants in the aims of improving and developing the quality of service of Thai spa tourism that will match with the need of the UK consumers.

The UK consumers perception in spa tourism in Thailand

After discussing the dissertation topic, the consumer perception of spa tourism in thailand, with my supervisor, she suggested me to narrow down my topic to focus only on specific nationalities or market groups as other factors can impact perceptions of customer satisfaction such as the difference of cultures. Therefore I am going to focus on customers from the UK as they account for a big number of tourists in Thailand. 

Thereafter I am going to continue my research process with generating ideas on research methods which probably can be both quantitative and qualitative methods at the same time. 

Spa Tourism

Spa tourism refers to the way of travelling with the purpose of rejuvenating the travellers with facilities and meditations available within specific places. The change in lifestyle of people towards a healthier way of living has become a major motivation in the historical development of spa tourism for more than two hundred years. Until now, there has been major development of wellness facilites providing travellers with wellness experiences such as holistic relaxation, healthy diet, gentle exercise, beauty and body care with many types of therapies.

Thai Spa

Regarding Thai Spa History, the health and spa resorts or the stand alone spa shops have grown rapidly in recent years with great support of the Thai government that aiming at facilitating and supporting Thai Spas to be outstanding and well known among visitors from all around the world. Therefore, it is important to identify the needs of customers to reach the maximum customer satisfaction resulting in positive referrals helping to promote Thai Spas.

According to the timeline of proposal due on 9th May, 2011

I am currently writing up the related infomation about the literature context as well as reading them from many sources such as from textbooks, journals, and online database which are available for the public.

Thereafter I am also going to read and gather infomation about Thai Spa and its development in term of building customer satisfaction through improving service quality.

The first two topics regarding introduction of dissertation proposal and literature review are planned to be written within 3 days.

Second Update: From the ideas to the real work!

Since submitting the draft of the dissertation proposal, I begin to plan and think more about my dissertation.
For the proposed topic, I would like to find out how the quality of service in spa tourism in Thailand is perceived among people who have experienced spa tourism in Thailand. The reasons I selected this topic for my dissertation are mainly from my personal interest. First of all, as I dream of being the owner of a Thai Spa shop when I graduate from Greenwich University, I would like to study and understand the background of the spa tourism in Thailand. Plus, the customer is deemed to be the most important for the success in operating the business. And then, I would like to know how these customers perceive the quality of the spa service.
To reach the aims of my research in discovering the visitors’ satisfaction on service quality of spa tourism in Thailand, the objectives of my research then are to explore the history and trends of spa tourism globally and nationally, to identify the importance of service quality in tourism industry, to determine the tools used in service quality evaluation and its benefits, to evaluate the level of tourists’ satisfaction towards spa tourism in Thailand, and to develop the result and recommend it to the spa tourism industry operators in Thailand how to improve their service quality.

With those objectives I set, I hope that my research will help me to understand and gain the knowledge about the spa tourism and the importance of the service quality.
Then, the key words I need to study and make a research are spa, spa tourism, services, service quality, customer satisfaction, customer perception, customer expectation, and SERVQUAL technique.
As stated in the draft of proposal, I would do the research based on the deductive approach and collect the quantitative data by following the SERVQUAL dimensions before using MS Excel programme to collect and analyse the data from the frequency of each dimension and the difference between customer expectation value and the customer perception value.

Although the draft of my proposal looks ok, but after I sent the email to my supervisor, there are many issues I need to fix such as the specific group of respondents and the way to gather the data. Another problem that I might find during conducting my research is the available data in the online database as I have already moved back to Thailand.

Any comments or suggestions are warmly welcomed!

Draft Research Proposal

Hello everyone,


Spas in Thailand are a relatively new phenomenon and one that has only very recently increased in popularity. Furthermore, Spas are not only popular and fashionable with foreign tourists and expatriates, but the local Thais are also enjoying this new alternative therapy, one which is often ideal to ensure a smooth natural balance as well.  Therefore, I am interested to know more about the Spas tourism industry, how tourist's satisfaction and the service could be improved for a better quality in Thailand. This is the reason why Thai Spa becomes my research topic.

Any other suggestions and additional information about this topic will be highly appreciated. Hope you will enjoy my topic and welcome to my blog.
Thank you,

Fern