COMPETITIVENESS THROUGH QUALITY IN THE HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY - THEORETICAL ASPECTS AND MEASUREMENT METHODS IN THE INTERNATIONAL PRACTICE

In an increasingly competitive market, ensuring the quality of tourism and of hospitality industry services is very important for preserving or increasing the number of visitors. This is why companies in this industry are becoming increasingly aware of the importance of quality as a source of competitive advantage. The present paper attempts through a theoretical but pragmatic approach to identify the quantifiable elements taken into account in the tourism competitiveness and hospitality industry and the measurable elements of the quality level in this industry. The paper reviews the ways to quantify the competitiveness of tourism and of the hospitality industry based on the World Economic Forum's tourism competitiveness and hospitality industry index, as well as the main methods of quantifying the quality of services in this industry, with a focus on the SERVQUAL method. The main conclusions of the paper refer to the fact that due to the particularity of the hospitality industry and especially of the subjective factors that determine the qualitative level of the tourists' level, it is still difficult to standardize the quantification of quality in this industry. Also, even if we have identified in the literature a proposal to quantify tourism competitiveness and the hospitality industry including the Satisfaction of Visitors indicator, we have not yet encountered this indicator quantified globally.