BSc Business Administration
Management in the Digital Age
Bachelor Thesis
Female solo travelling:
Exploring the needs of Muslim women
By
Elizaveta Bessonova
11573414
June 2020
Supervisor:
Dr D.M. Dekker
University of Amsterdam
2 Statement of Originality
This document is written by Student Elizaveta Bessonova, who declares to take full responsibility for the contents of this document.
I declare that the text and the work presented in this document are original and that no sources other than those mentioned in the text and its references have been used in creating it.
The Faculty of Economics and Business is responsible solely for the supervision of completion of the work, not for the contents.
3 Contents
Abstract ... 4
Introduction ... 4
Literature review ... 6
Islam and travelling... 6
Women and travelling ... 7
Drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction ... 8
Methods... 9
Design ... 9
Sample and Procedure... 9
Data analysis ... 11
Codification... 11
Validity check ... 12
Results ... 12
Discussion and Conclusion ... 16
Limitations ... 17
Practical implications ... 17
References ... 19
Appendix ... 21
Appendix 1. The NVivo codebook ... 21
4 Abstract
While the trend of Muslim Arab women travelling solo continues to substantially grow, the understanding of their needs is often limited to the availability of religious attributes. To expand on the understanding of the drivers of their satisfaction and dissatisfaction, this paper makes use of Kano’s model. It was applied to a sample of 151 TripAdvisor hotel reviews made by Arab women, who travelled solo to Dubai, United Arab Emirates. It was observed that the women do not put an exclusive focus on elements assigned to them by religion but find them as a pleasant addition. They experience great levels of satisfaction from individual approach in service, attractive interior and ambiance and original details in room amenities. While underperformance in cleanliness, adherence to brand name and security led to dissatisfaction of reviewers. This suggests that the needs of Muslim Arab female solo travellers should be considered more broadly than in the context of religion and applied accordingly in practice.
Introduction
In the summer of 2018, Saudi Arabia granted women the right to drive, making it one of the steps to strengthen the role of women in Saudi society (Specia, 2019). However, Saudi women were still subject to strict guardianship codes that are strictly based on Shariah law and require the permission of a male relative for a range of activities and life choices. They included education, employment, registration of marriage and divorce and, finally, travelling. In 2019, the country relaxed the social control on Saudi women and they were allowed to apply for passports and travel abroad without authorisation. Although it is still a long way to go for long-held social norms to transform, modern Muslim women are taking advantage of current developments and are actively travelling abroad unsupervised (Ratthinan et al, 2018).
The concept of female solo travelling emerged as a way of expressing power, independence and self-awareness (McNamara et al, 2010). Majority of them travel to extend and challenge themselves, reach inner peace, practice self-empowerment, develop a feeling of autonomy, meet new people and leave personal comfort zones. These travel purposes are often associated with ways to fight gender stereotypes and discrimination. Especially in the case of Muslim women, who travel to overcome multiple cultural travel barriers imposed on them including constant misconceptions about Islam and its suppression of women leisure (Ratthinan et al, 2018).
5 Solo travelling has been covered very well by existing literature on the topic of drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction (Bianchi, 2016; Rodojevic et al, 2015). But when it comes to Muslim travelling, it has long been used as a synonym to Halal travelling, where the needs of travellers are limited to the availability of Muslim-friendly services such as halal food and entertainment, gender separated facilities and prayer rooms (Tan et al, 2018; Oktadiana et al, 2016). Although the new travelling Muslim women actively practice Islam and strictly adhere to religious rules, their travelling needs go beyond the necessities of Halal food and Shariah compliance. Thus, there is no sufficient information on the drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction of female Muslim solo travellers apart from religious needs.
In addition, scholars have studied the travel behaviour of Asian Muslim females more than of their sisters from the Middle East. Although both regions practice the same religion, Islam is varied by several school of thoughts (discussed later in the literature review section) that impose different restrictions related to gender (Ratthinan et al, 2018). This way, women in Arab countries are not entitled to the same freedom of actions as women in Asia. With recent relaxation in rules, the concept of Arab Muslim female solo travellers still remains a new concept and requires more attention.
With this literature gap in mind, the following research question is raised: what hotel attributes drive satisfaction and dissatisfaction of Arab Muslim female solo travellers?
By providing the answer to the main question, this paper contributes to the existing literature on solo and Muslim travelling as well as has implications for practice. First, it enriches the awareness of solo travellers’ types and their satisfaction drivers. It also sheds light on an underexplored concept of Arab solo female travellers. Most importantly, it advances the scholars’ understanding of Muslim travelling needs apart from those attributed by religion. In practice, it also facilitates hotels in adjusting their services to the fast-growing trend of Muslim travellers in order to stay attractive and competitive on the market.
6 Literature review
Islam and travelling
According to the Pew Research Center (2011), there are currently 50 Muslim-majority countries in the world. It means that more than a half of the population of those countries practices Islam. Being the largest religion with the total of 1.8 billion believers (24.1% of the total world population), Islam is concentrated in the Middle East-North-Africa region. Nine in ten people in this region today are Muslim and, in the next 20 years, their population is expected to grow by a third. Arabs constitute the biggest ethnic group in the Middle Eastern region. There is no universal definition of “the Arab nation”, but it is generally used for the 22 members of the Arab League, where Arab language is also recognized as critical to identity (Alahmad et al, 2012). The League includes Algeria, Bahrain, Comoros, Djibouti, Egypt, Iraq, Jordan, Kuwait, Lebanon, Libya, Mauritania, Morocco, Oman, Palestine, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Somalia, Sudan, Syria, Tunisia, United Arab Emirates and Yemen. All of them, except for Lebanon and Syria, have either endorsed Islam as their state religion or adopted it as the ideological foundation of state and constitution.
These states adjust their social and legal norms on the basis of Qur’an, the holy book that provides guidance to all aspects of human life (Jafari & Scott, 2014). The Sunni interpretation of Qur’an is most common among Muslims, it is varied by a number of school of thoughts that differ from one another in practices and restrictions. The Arab countries are characterized by Hambali, the most conservative of the schools. It offers the community a set of regulations that includes permissible acts (halal) and forbidden acts (haram). For this reason, religious and secular lives of Muslims are highly interrelated, and their travelling behavior is vastly determined by religious writings.
Thus, to further investigate the theory behind this paper, it is necessary to understand how travelling is presented in Islam. Ratthinan and Selamat (2018) studied Qur’an and found evidence that Muslims are by faith encouraged to travel and appreciate the world. In fact, Islam requires its followers to perform hajj, travel in a form of pilgrimage to Makkah, Saudi Arabia (Jafari et al, 2014). At its core, travelling in Muslim culture balances material and spiritual needs, Qur’an recognizes it as a tool for socialization, enhancement of health, acquisition of new knowledge and appreciation of God’s creations (Oktadiana et al, 2016). These travel
7 purposes should comply with Islamic teachings and principles and be accompanied by halal products and recreational activities. With such requirements, “Muslim travel” is often used interchangeably with the term “Halal travel”.
Oktadiana, Pearce and Chon (2016) noticed that modern Muslims travel beyond the purpose of pilgrimage, it is no longer an exclusive component of Halal travel. With globalization, travel was made easier but the practice of Islam was moderated by political and national policies that need to be followed when abroad. Nevertheless, Muslims actively travel around the world to both Muslim and non-Muslim countries and constitute for a fast growing segment in the travel industry. In 2013, Muslim travellers spent $140 billion outside their home countries, which was bigger than the US and China travel markets. According to State of the Global Islamic Economy Report 2018/19 (2018), the travel-only spending of Muslims was expected to reach US$220 billion by 2020. From the impressive current statistics and projections, it is evident that Muslim travellers are a segment of significance in the travel industry.
Women and travelling
Another relevant for this paper travellers’ segment is female solo travellers. Women have been travelling alone at increasing rates and constitute for one of the fastest growing groups of travellers (Wilson & Little, 2008; Su & Wu, 2020). According to recent statistics by Bond (2019) taken from a research on a number of travel companies and booking websites, 73% of solo trips are booked by females. As mentioned in the introduction, females travel for empowering reasons, to feel self-autonomy and leave their personal comfort zone (McNamara et al, 2010; Wilson et al, 2008).
Despite the growing popularity of female solo travelling, there are a lot of constraints to it on the socio-cultural, practical and personal dimensions. A number of researchers (Wilson et al, 2008; Su et al, 2020; Berryman, 2015) studied barriers that are imposed on females when they travel alone. The socio-cultural barriers were constructed by the society’s view on the roles and purpose of females. Historically, women were expected to live a family-like, domestic life and not possess any form of independency (Berryman, 2015). In the modern world, this primitive view is generally disappearing, however, women are still at a greater risk of violence when travelling alone (Wilson et al, 2008; Su et al, 2020). Tourists, not only females, may become victims to crimes due to their relaxedness or unfamiliarity with the surroundings. In
8 case of female solo travellers, sexual and emotional harassment are the most common crimes committed against them. For this reason, solo travellers adopted a number of restricting strategies such as avoiding potentially dangerous areas and walking in the dark hours. In addition, they are limited in the choice of activities and host locations. All of these concerns significantly hinder travellers’ freedom and ability to enjoy the experience.
In case of Muslim female travellers, they are subject to additional restrictions imposed on them by religion. In Qur’an, women are permitted to travel with family or a male custodian who guards her safety (Jafari et al, 2014). A custodian should be related to her either by blood or by marriage. Nevertheless, when there is sufficient safety in the place of travel destination, a woman can travel alone without a custodian. This way, the role of a supervisor is tied exclusively to the safety concerns and, thus, does not prohibit women from travelling. Ratthinan and Selamat (2018) explained that it is a common misconception about Islamic norms that males have a prevailing role over women. According to them, religious dogmas do influence the choices that should be made while travelling, but they do not make it a purely male notion.
Drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction
Despite Qur’an granting women arguably the same travel rights as men, Middle Eastern women live under stricter interpretations of it (discussed earlier in the Literature review section). For this reason, Arab female solo travelling is a relatively new concept that wasn’t studied as much as Asian female solo travelling was (Ratthinan et al, 2018; Tan et al, 2018).
Scholars explored their travelling habits on the topic of needs and meanings. Tan et al (2018) paid attention to the religious needs that travellers seek to find at the hotels they stay in and activities they participate in. The top priorities for Asian females in hotels turned out to be bidet sprays, proximity to Halal food eateries, exclusively Halal F&B offerings and availability of prayer rugs and Qur’an books. Nevertheless, the study held an exclusive focus on halal attributes of hotels and neglected the importance of other amenities for satisfaction of the Muslim female guests.
Muslim travellers’ needs, in general, were solely studied from the perspective of religious requirements. For example, Oktadiana et al (2016) presented the top 10 hotel features that
9 would satisfy Middle Eastern guests. In order of significance, they included Halal food, prayer facilities, gender-separate spa and pool facilities, female housekeeping, a Middle Eastern menu, alcohol free mini-bars or bars, Arabic TV channels, bathing suits for female guests, and the availability of the Qur'an in the rooms.
The assessment of the importance of each facility, however, doesn’t fully represent the real needs of the travellers (Berman, 2005). While the absence of these amenities can result in dissatisfaction, their presence doesn’t guarantee full satisfaction. Kano developed a model that allows for determining what factors lead to actual satisfaction of the guest or, as he calls, delight. He believed that one can not fully satisfy its guests by meeting their basic needs. The model divides the attributes into three categories: must-be’s, satisfiers and delighters. Must-be requirements are expected features that result in complete dissatisfaction if missing, but do not satisfy customers when present. Satisfying requirements are the kind of services or facilities that provide more satisfaction with a greater supply or, simply, when they exceeded the expectations of a guest. Delighters, or attractive requirements, are unexpected and surprising offerings that instantly lead to satisfaction. This way, on the basis of Kano’s model, one can more explicitly understand the needs of the guests.
Methods Design
In order to gain a deeper insight into the preferences and needs of Arab Muslim female solo travellers, this study followed a qualitative research design. It used secondary data in the form of reviews from TripAdvisor.com and followed a thematic analysis approach. Thematic analysis provides a detailed account of text, as it is not exclusively focused on the frequencies of certain words, but on the themes and patterns found throughout the dataset (Clarke, Braun & Hayfield, 2015; Vaismoradi, Turunen, Bondas, 2013). It is a more content-oriented and explanatory approach. This way, this type of analysis is a reliable way to make a better understanding of narrative data by continuously interpreting the meaning behind words.
Sample and Procedure
The reviews from TripAdvisor.com were manually collected for 4 to 5* hotels in Dubai, the United Arab Emirates. This city was chosen as the city of interest for this study because it currently represents one of the most attractive tourist destinations of the Middle East and, by
10 personal observations, received a great amount of Saudi female travellers after the lift of their travel ban.
The reviews were sorted by the type of travel, author’s gender and nationality. To answer the central questions of this paper, reviews from Arab females with a solo type of travel were extracted. Since automatic filters of gender and nationality are not available for TripAdvisor reviews, the necessary solo traveller reviews were identified by the provided location and names of the authors. The locations of interest included all countries of the Arab League (explained in the literature review section) and the names were checked for their origin and meaning. The reason behind the name origin check lies in the fact that Qur’an suggests all Muslim believers to give their children good names with meanings that would not compromise the Islamic identity. Thus, although it is not required, majority of Muslims choose among the Arab theophoric names for both girls and boys. This way, the names with the corresponding background suggested the review had been written by a Muslim female. To avoid collecting unnecessary data, reviews with missing locations or unclear names were not included. Two languages were used in the reviews: English and Arabic. Both of them were included in the dataset and the latter ones were then translated with the use of Google Translate translation engine.
There were some exceptional cases in the process of data collection: some reviews written in Arabic indicated the Arabic background of the author but were done under a nickname that did not reveal the actual name. If these reviews were made before the lift of the travel ban in Saudi Arabia, they were not included in the research, as they were possibly done by male solo travellers. However, some reviews were used despite an unclear name, because they included photos of a female reviewer; There were also reviews that indicated “solo” type of travel but mentioned travel companions in the text. These reviews were discarded, as the authors did not have a completely independent trip.
This procedure resulted in a sample of 151 reviews from 70 hotels, which represents 24% of all (293) 4-5* hotels in Dubai. This method of analysis and data collection allowed to create a bigger sample than the ones achieved through interviews in past papers on female solo travellers’ needs (Tan et al, 2018; Ratthinan, 2018), which made the current work more feasible.
11 Data analysis
The data was manually coded using NVivo, a digital qualitative data analysis software (Lei & Law, 2015). This process took an “abductive” approach, where theory-based coding was mixed with open coding. The Kano’s model of satisfaction was used to develop the codes (Berman, 2005). As mentioned in the literature review section, this model helps to classify attributes into the ones that bring satisfaction (satisfying), delight (attractive) and the ones that are expected and taken for granted by the guests (must-be).
Codification
First, different hotel attributes were distracted from the data, such as “staff friendliness”, “good view”, “speed of service” and others. Depending on the experience of the reviewer, all of them were assigned one of the indicators: 1) Positive – attributes accompanied by positive key words, e.g., “amazing”, “very good”, “super”, 2) Delightful – attributes described with surprise key words (e.g., “astonishingly”, “not many hotels offer this”, “I was amazed”, “unbelievable”, “made me feel like a VIP”) or attributes that were described exclusively and elaboratively and resulted in a high-rated review, 3) Must-be – attributes that did not meet the expectations and lowered the overall rate of the review or were clearly described as a must (e.g., “staff needs to be taught to be polite”, “what is important to me in a hotel”), 4) Neutral (or expected) – attributes described in a neutral and fact-stating manner such as “near a shopping mall”, “friendly staff”, “indeed” etc. This way, the first round of coding ended with 81 open-codes, each assigned an experience indicator.
In the next step, these codes were grouped into 10 themes: Service and Staff, Room amenities, Location, Ambience and Interior, Cleanliness, Food and Restaurants, Security, Money Value, Adherence to Brand Name and Hotel Amenities. Each category contained related open codes with different indicators (see full codebook in Appendix 1).
Finally, the themes were connected to the final theoretical codes of “Must-be”, “Satisfier” and “Attractive” elements, which match in their meaning with the corresponding elements in Kano’s model (Berman, 2005). Since every theme contained hotel elements with different indications of satisfaction, colour coding was used to keep track of all them (see Figure 1 in the Appendix). Green was used for satisfiers, blue for must-be’s and pink for attractive
12 elements. Solid lines indicated unanimous opinions (exclusively must-be, positive or attractive). Dashed lines were used to indicate that reviewers had contradicting opinions. In case the attributes included at least one “must-be” opinion, the dashed lines were assigned a blue colour. This was done because, possibly, the reviewers had different narrative styles and some described their experiences more emotionally than others. This could result in more perceived satisfaction than the items brought in reality. However, if the must-be element did not affect the overall rating of the review and was just mentioned as a must, the dashed line was made green (positive), like in case of restaurant variety. The pink dashed line (delight) was assigned to hotel attributes that had delight and positive opinions. It was done because the element had a potential for delight, if delivered in a certain way.
As a result, some patterns were identified in the data (refer to Figure 1 in the Appendix). All hotel attribute categories, except for Ambiance and Interior, had must-be items. However, only Service and Staff, Room Amenities and Ambiance and Interior could deliver true delight. As for satisfying requirements, they were observed in Location, Ambiance and Interior, Food and Restaurants, Money Value and Hotel Amenities.
Validity check
To establish content validity, before codification (described in the next section), 15 reviews (10%) were randomly taken out from the sample. According to Latham and Wexley (1980), if the initially left out data items required new categories to be added to the coding scheme after being taken back, the data did not hold content validity. The first two stage of coding were done with the remaining 90% of the reviews. After developing the open codes and grouping them into themes, the remaining 10% were integrated into the categorization framework and all items could be distributed in the existing categories. Thus, the chosen data set is valid in content and the data analysis could continue.
Results
The results of this study, which aimed to understand what drives satisfaction and dissatisfaction of female Arab solo travellers, are reported based on the patterns identified in the codification section (see Figure 1 in the Appendix) as well as the frequencies of coding themes (see Table 1). Due to the fact that TripAdvisor reviews are voluntary, every user is likely to write about what he/she considers important. Thus, from the concept of this paper and the chosen thematic
13 analysis approach, the quantitative count of the codes is interpreted as the importance of a certain hotel attribute to the reviewers. In other words, the more one hotel element is mentioned by the guests, the more value it holds for them.
It can be seen that Service and Staff is the most referenced category in the data set, which means Muslim Arab females pay attention to how they are treated when travelling solo. In addition, its significance was confirmed by the patterns identified earlier (see Figure 1 in the Appendix). It could be noticed that Service and Staff attributes are of big importance to the Arab female solo travellers, as they mostly contained necessary requirements (must-be’s) but could also bring the highest level of satisfaction (delight). More precisely, the female travellers were delightfully satisfied when the hotel delivered them an “at home” feeling or found an individual approach and kept the overall quality of service high. And, generally, when describing service, reviewers paid a lot of attention to the friendliness, attitude during rush hours, speed of service and consistency.
Table 1.
Frequency of coding themes.
Codes Aggregate number of coding references
Codes\\Service and staff 107
Codes\\Room amenities 52
Codes\\Location 51
Codes\\Ambience and interior 36
Codes\\Cleanliness 22
Codes\\Food & Restaurants 21
Codes\\Security 17
Codes\\Money value 13
Codes\\Adherence to brand name 10
14 Also, in a number of cases, the review was high-rated and the author perceived the hotel as her "home away from home", but the only thing explicitly mentioned was staff service and friendliness. One reviewer even referred to the members of the hotel staff as “foot soldiers, who build the structure of an experience with any hotel”. These observations pointed that the contact with the hotel personnel and their professionalism is highly valued by the target guests and proper performance on this index leads to great satisfaction. At the same time, service-related elements were one of the most frequent reasons for dissatisfaction when not fulfilled properly. To be exact, slow service, busy telephone line and inconsistency of information appeared to be the main drivers of dissatisfaction in this category of attributes. Thus, service quality was found to be an element of big importance, as its level of performance had a direct effect on the overall review of the Arab women.
The next category of big influence was Room Amenities. In addition to its reference count, it was high in the number of “must-be’s” as well as had a potential to deliver delight. Unexpected items in the rooms such as a controlling gadget or a praying carpet favourably influenced the overall review rate. Controlling gadgets were highly appreciated by women in the sample but the ease of their use was once mentioned as a must for satisfaction. Other guests reported room size, free mini bar, variety of toiletries and a good view as the key factors when choosing a hotel. One reviewer was even willing to leave the residence, when the view did not meet her expectations. Therefore, the presence or absence of certain room amenities was able to enhance or damage the impression from the stay.
The next most referenced category, Location, was found to be high in guests’ expectations and could also be a source of satisfaction. In the first instance, women from the sample chose the hotel because of its situation in the city: some needed it to be close to the business centre, others to the centre of the city. Having to pay a big amount of money on petrol because of the hotels’ inconvenient location led to a poor review. On the other hand, women that mentioned the location as a positive feature, usually added that it was situated close to a shopping centre. Hence, location was a category of subjective importance, as it highly depended on one’s purpose of travel: staying for work required different convenience of location than leisure stays.
Other themes that included satisfying and must-be requirements were Food and Restaurants, Hotel Amenities and Money Value. Reviewers were mostly consistent in the expectations for
15 the food quality and the availability of restaurants but differed in the perceived importance of the variety of food at breakfast. Here, some took the time to mention that the buffet was “amazing” or “very good and well organised”, others explicitly stated that they expected more of a five-star hotel. One woman didn’t try the food at the hotel but mentioned it in her review. This meant that the food quality is an aspect worth checking to make the final conclusions on the hotel. As for Hotel Amenities, reviewers were very clear in their expectations: they required free Wi-Fi, spa, a big pool and fresh newspapers. And they appreciated fast elevators and entertainment facilities. In case of Money Value, attractive prices were a positive addition to the stay, but the reviewers expected a fair price-to-quality ratio. Thus, these three hotel attributes held clear guest demands and, at the same time, contained elements that could bring satisfaction.
Ambiance and Interior turned out to be the most satisfying category, as its elements either brought delight or satisfaction to the reviewers. Once again, original details such as greeting with coffee and dates or a distinctive aroma in the lobby pleasantly surprised the guests. While original themes of the interior, Greek, Middle Eastern or Thai, were recognized as a nice bonus for the stay. However, one guest described it as “strange”, but it did not harm the overall experience with the hotel. Overall, Ambiance and Interior elements didn’t bring dissatisfaction and were only related to the positive points of the experiences.
Finally, Security, Cleanliness and Adherence to Brand name were found to be the most necessary and expected aspects in the hotel, as majority of reviewers held a “must-be” opinion on them. Security incorporated quietness in the room, safety features such as use of key cards in elevators and private ladies’ rooms and privacy with sound-proof walls and distant location of rooms from the meeting halls. The solo female travellers in this study all expected the rooms and public areas in the hotel to be clean. Failure to meet this expectation lowered the rating of initially positive reviews. Adherence to Brand name was applicable to stays in international hotel chains such as St Regis, Armani, Marriott and Dusit. The reviewers from this study counted on the hotels in Dubai to adhere to their brands and provide the same features as in other locations: aroma, bedding, luxury and the quality of service. A number of them did not meet such expectation and undermined the stay rating: “My review might be perceived as somewhat harsh. But this is only because I like the Dusit chain and expect more of it”. Clearly,
16 these hotel attribute groups had the strongest potential for causing dissatisfaction, as the women in the sample of this study had definite requirements for them.
Discussion and Conclusion
This study was set up to understand the travelling needs of the Muslim Arab females, travelling solo. More precisely, it aimed to explore the drivers of their satisfaction and dissatisfaction.
The results show that different hotel attributes such as service, location, room and hotel amenities, food and money value are of varying significance to the female Arabs. Majority of the women have clear requirements for standards of service and room amenities as well as expect the residence to be safe and adhere to its brand name. The underperformance in these aspects causes dissatisfaction of the guests and the overall fall in review ratings. At the same time, added personal approach and provision of an “at-home” feeling, together with original details in the hotel concept and in the rooms improved the reviews and delivered delight, the highest level of satisfaction (Berman, 2005). And lastly, the solo female travellers gain satisfaction from pleasant ambiance and interior of the hotels that set attractive prices and are located in convenient for them places.
These findings provide advanced information for past research and complement existing papers. In line with works on hospitality (Berman, 2005; Ariffin & Maghzi, 2012), this study confirms that guests are most satisfied with personalized and genuine service and perceive the highest level of satisfaction (delight) from unexpected and original details. It also points at the fact that expectations of a certain element are influenced by the purpose of stay of the guest. In addition, Muslim Arab females require their place of stay to be safe and provide the necessary level of security, just like the female solo travellers in past studies (Wilson et al, 2008; Su et al, 2020; Berryman, 2015).
At the same time, this paper highlights that Muslim travellers highly value non-religious hotel attributes, while Oktadiana, Pearce and Chon (2016) and Tan, Abu Bakar, Lim and Nair (2018) placed focus exclusively on the absence of Islam-conforming elements as the driver of dissatisfaction. However, the only religious attribute mentioned in this study was a praying carpet, which only delightfully surprised the reviewer. Thus, the absence of it would not cause dissatisfaction with the hotel. The analysis done on the TripAdvisor reviews confirms the
17
necessity of religion-unrelated elements in a hotel for Arab Muslim female solo travellers. It shows that studies of Muslim travelling should change its mainstream and consider travellers’ needs apart from those assigned by religion.
Limitations
Despite a large sample of reviews used in this research paper, alternative explanations for results can’t be completely ruled out. For example, the Arab female solo travellers possibly didn’t mention the presence of religious attributes because they considered it “a-priory”, since they were travelling to a Muslim country. Or simply because highly religious women prefer not to share their experiences due to the topic of solo travelling being slightly taboo. However, it was assumed that the fact of TripAdvisor reviews being completely voluntary should encourage women to write about what they really appreciate and consider important in a hotel stay.
To strengthen the validity of this finding, future research should incorporate the assessment of importance of both religious and religion-unrelated attributes. It can be done through sending out questionnaires to the research participants, where each attribute has to be put into the group elements of Kano’s model of satisfaction (Berman, 2005). This way, unlike assessing with Likert scale, it will be evident if the element is a necessary requirement for satisfaction or a bonus, and if it is crucial to avoid dissatisfaction.
Practical implications
Exploration of the needs of solo travelling Muslim Arab women and their drivers of satisfaction and dissatisfaction indicates that they don’t reach satisfaction by solely making use of Muslim-friendly services and amenities in a hotel. Thus, it suggests that employees in the hospitality industry should lose the exclusive focus on religious attributes when serving Arab customers. Instead, they should remember that the individual approach, genuine attitude and original gestures are the main drivers of satisfaction for Female Arabs as well as other travellers. Nevertheless, understanding religious needs and incorporating them into the offerings of the hotel can enrich the experience of Muslim guests. Hence, the managers of hotels should consider purchasing and keeping praying carpets and Qur’an books and placing stickers with the indication of direction to Mecca in the rooms. This inexpensive investment will bring significant improvements, as providing a Muslim guest with this religion-related set is a
18 surprising gesture and has a potential to bring delight. Given the current indexes of Muslim females solo traveling segment, it will be a significant part of the travel world. Thus, ignoring this trend can hinder the market competitiveness of the hotels. By following the recommendations based on this paper, the hotels will be more likely to better satisfy the customers and successfully accommodate the fast-growing segment of Muslim female solo travellers.
19 References
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21 Appendix
Appendix 1. The NVivo codebook
Name Files References
Adherence to brand name 1 10
Adherence to brand name del 1 2
Adherence to brand name mb 1 3
Adherence to brand name pos 1 5
Ambience and interior 1 36
Ambience pos 1 14 Luxury 1 6 Luxury del 1 2 Luxury exp 1 4 Music pos 1 1 Nice interior 1 1
Original details del 1 5
Original theme 1 9
Original theme del 1 4
Original theme neg 1 1
Original theme pos 1 4
Cleanliness 1 22
Cleanliness expected 1 5
Cleanliness mb 1 7
Cleanliness pos 1 10
Food & Restaurants 1 21
Breakfast variety 1 7
Breakfast variety mb 1 1
Breakfast variety pos 1 6
Good food 1 9
Good food mb 1 2
22
Name Files References
Restaurant variety 1 5
Restaurant variety mb 1 1
Restaurant variety neut 1 2
Restaurant variety pos 1 2
Hotel amenities 1 8
Big pool mb 1 2
Entertainment variety 1 1
Fast elevators pos 1 1
Newspaper mb 1 1 Spa mb 1 1 Wifi mb 1 2 Location 1 51 Location mb 1 4 Location neut 1 1 Location pos 1 28
Shopping location neu 1 9
Shopping location pos 1 9
Money value 1 12
Price quality mb 1 1
Room amenities 1 52
Amenities in the room pos 1 2
Bathroom amenities pos 1 2
Bedding comfort 1 6
Bedding comfort mb 1 1
Bedding comfort pos 1 5
Big windows mb 1 1
Ease of Gadgets use mb 1 2
Gadget control del 1 1
Mini bar mb 1 1
23
Name Files References
Room amenities del 1 1
Room size and space 1 13
Room space mb 1 2
Room space neu 1 2
Room space pos 1 9
Technology pos 1 2 Toiletries mb 1 1 View 1 19 View mb 1 4 Views pos 1 15 Security 1 17 Privacy mb 1 3 Prostitution 1 1 Quietness 1 6 Quietness mb 1 4 Quietness pos 1 2 Safety 1 7 Safety mb 1 3 Safety pos 1 4
Service and staff 1 107
Check-in and check-out 1 5
Early check-in mb 1 1
Fast check in mb 1 1
Fast check in pos 1 1
Free late check-out mb 1 2
Feeling at home 1 7
Personal touch 1 9
Personal touch del 1 6
Personal touch pos 1 3
24
Name Files References
Service quality del 1 9
Service quality neu 1 1
Service quality pos 1 20
Speed of service 1 4
Speed of service del 1 1
Speed of service mb 1 3
Staff cooperation mb 1 3
Staff friendliness 1 20
Staff friendliness mb 1 1
Staff friendliness neu 1 2
Staff friendliness pos 1 17
Staff helpfulness 1 16
Staff helpfulness del 1 3
Staff helpfulness mb 1 2
Staff helpfulness neu 1 2
Staff helpfulness pos 1 9
Staff proactiveness 1 6
Guiding to the elevator mb 1 1
Staff proactiveness mb 1 2
Staff proactiveness pos 1 3
Upgrade 1 6
25 Figu re 1 . E xp lan ator y c od in g sc h em e
