CHAPTER 5 CONCLUSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS
5.1 Conclusion
5.1.1 Summarized Result Base on the Research Question
5.1.1.1 Research Question 1: What is international tourist behavior at Thai full-service restaurant?
The research objective was to identify the tourist behavior of international tourists in Thai full-service restaurant. A business can learn the preference of customers as well as able to design the best suitable product for each group of customers. From the result of the study, tourist behavior in Thai full-service restaurant can be defined as follows
1) International Tourist who visit Thai full-service restaurants regularly search the restaurant information from the online sources such as website, review application which provide more convenience and update information.
2) Majority of international tourists visited Thai full-service restaurant in group of 3-5 persons or in group of 2, most of them had closed relationship as the friend or family. The number of customers were relevance to how they normally ordered that meal, majority of the customer ordered the set menu.
3) The motivation factor that drives tourists to go to Thai full- service restaurants was to experience Thai food, which accounted for 29.17 percent.
From the further survey by the semi-structured interview, many tourists mention that they tried the local food as they want to experience something new and extraordinary.
Besides the experiencing the extraordinary meal from home, tourists can find that trying Thai food they can learn the authenticity of the local taste, culture especially going to the full-service restaurant. They can learn about culture through the artifact and decoration in the traditional style.
The other motivating factor is a chance that they can be socialized with friends since they can bond together As they are traveling in a group, go to Thai full-service restaurant allowed them to share food and exchanging the opinion about their perception and preference while enjoying Thai food.
4) The influence factors that make customer selected Thai full- service restaurants are the taste of Thai food and the cleanliness of the restaurant since the cleanliness is the big concern when tourists were travelling away from home.
As the revealed result, tourist behavior played the vital role in determining the customer experience model, since experience it is not happened by restaurant itself. Customer experience is rather happened from customer’s feeling about particular touchpoints that company try to orchestrate them together while customer interact with restaurant. Therefore, customer experience is all planed by the company to achieve customer’s positive feeling. As we all realized that customer is not the same, understanding their preference and their behavior is the vigorous role in determining the customer experience model.
5.1.1.2 Objective 2 Research Question 1: What are the customer experience touchpoints along the customer journey at a Thai full-service restaurant?
Customer journey refers to the series of the actions that customer interacted with the company throughout the process of service consumption. This study referred to customer experience management in Thai full-service restaurant, thus customer journey at Thai full-service restaurants range from Before – Encounter – After service. The entered customer journey consisted of 6 stages with 40 customer experience touch points which are.
1) Pre- arrival stage – customer is looking for some information about the restaurant to make decision, there are altogether 6 touchpoints
(1) Availability of information online (2) Availability of information offline
(3) Ease of access to the restaurant information (4) Availability of online /application booking (5) Availability of restaurant location on GPS (6) Ease of access to the restaurant
2) Arriving stage - customers arrived at the restaurant, they interacted with exterior and surrounding of the restaurant. There are 5 experience touchpoints which are
(1) Parking Space (2) Exterior Decoration
(3) Decoration of the waiting area (4) Greeting of the host staff (5) Waiting time for the table
3) Entering to the dining area stage -customers arrived at the restaurant, they interacted with interior and decoration of the restaurant. There are 5 experience touchpoints which are
(1) Decoration of the interior (2) Furniture
(3) Lighting (4) Airflow (5) Temperature
(6) Scent in the dining area (7) Sound and music
(8) Cleanliness of dining area
(9) Other customer appearance and behavior
4) Menu presenting and ordering – customer interacted with the restaurant through the communication channel which are menu and service provider when ordering the food and beverage There are 8 experience touchpoints which are
(1) Ease of the menu (2) Variety of choice
(3) Food and beverage price
(4) Promotion campaign at the restaurant (5) Communication skill of service staff (6) The appearance of service staff (7) Cleanliness of service staff (8) Professional service skills
5) Customer enjoying food and beverage – customer interacted with food and beverage that served to customer There are 7 experience touchpoints which are Decoration item on the table
(1) Equipment for each food item (2) Taste of food and beverage (3) Appearance of food and beverage (4) Freshness of food and beverage (5) Cleanliness of food and beverage (6) Authenticity of food and beverage
6) Billing and customer leaving stage– After the meal is finish, customer interacted with restaurant through the process of billing and payment There are 7 experience touchpoints
(1) The correction of bill (2) Responsiveness of staff (3) Loyalty program (4) Payment method
(5) The speed of the billing process
5.1.2 Objective 2 Research Question 2: How Important of Each