Customer Complaint Handling and Patronage of Hotels in Owerri, Imo State, Nigeria

Abstract

This study examines the relationship between customer complaint handling and Patronage of Hotels in Owerri, Imo State. The research design adopted was descriptive survey research design, and questionnaire served as the instrument of data collection. Data collected were analyzed using mean statistic. Pearson product moment correlation coefficient, with the help of SPSS 21.0 and Microsoft Excel software, were used to test the hypotheses. The study revealed that there is significant relationship between apology and customer retention, apology significantly enhances customer loyalty, there is significant relationship between compensation and customer retention and compensation significantly enhances customer loyalty. The study concludes that the achievement of organizational goals in hotel firms depends on the extent customer complaints are managed. It was therefore recommended that whenever there is poor service, the staff of the hotel firms should apologize to customer to achieve customer retention and the hotel firms should make provision for compensation of customers based on poor services so as to enhance customer loyalty.