ABSTRACT
Service quality is a critical determinant of success in the tourism and leisure industries (Kotler, Bowen, and Makens, 1999; Perdue, 2000). In the Colorado resort industry, at least 80 percent of the guests are a direct result of service quality, either as satisfied repeat guests or first-time guests there as a result of a word-of-mouth recommendation. The “services marketing triangle” has been proposed as a foundation for understanding quality in service environments (Zeithaml and Bitner, 2000). This concept postulates that quality is a function of the interactions between a services firm and two populations—service consumers and service employees. Based on research conducted in the Colorado ski industry over the past ten years, this chapter contends that in resort environments this concept must be extended to examine the interactions between a resort and three populations—resort consumers, resort employees, and resort-community residents.
