Abstract:
The tourism industry plays a vital role in the Sri Lankan economy. The hotel industry is a
sub-industry of the tourism industry. The hotels accommodate various clientele and
airline crews are one of the clienteles that accommodates hotels for their stays. This study
examined the reasons for airline crew complaints at their stay in the hotels. The objectives
were to identify the relationship between factors with the complaints and to identify
solutions for the complaints at their stay in the hotels. The factors consisted of
organizational factors of the hotels and the behavioral factors of the airline crews. These
two were subdivided to obtain better findings: service quality, facilities provided,
amenities provided, quality of food, and quality of rooms in the hotel, attitudes,
perception, and personality of the airline crews. Three hotels close to Katunayake
International Airport were selected as the research site. These hotels have been used by
the airlines for their crew layovers for a long time. The researcher has used the
quantitative approach for the research. Using a stratified sampling technique, 162
questionnaires were distributed to the airline crews in the hotels. Also, 20 web-based
comments were analysed and have been used to justify the findings. Pearson correlation
coefficient and hypotheses testing were carried out. The results revealed that both
organizational factors and behavioral factors of airline crews werw reasons for the
complaints and have shown a positive relationship with the complaints. However, results
revealed the quality of food and attitudes of airline crews were not the reasons for the
complaints and showed no relationship with the complaints. It was identified that
organizations should focus on the reasons for the complaints and improve their standards
to delight the customer at their stay and focus on introducing training programmes for the
employees to have a better understanding of the customers to reduce the complaints.
Keywords: Airline crews, Complaints, Hotel stay, Organisational factors, Behavioural
factors
