CHAPTER FIVE

CONCLUSIONS, DISCUSSION AND RECOMMENDATIONS

This chapter indicates (1) a summary of the study, (2) a summary of the
findings, (3) discussions of the study, (4) conclusions and (5) recommendations for
further research

5.1

SUMMARY OF THE STUDY

5.1.1 Objective of the Study
The study on Thai and foreign customers satisfaction with restaurant service

at Millennium Hilton Bangkok aimed to study the customers satisfaction in terms of

restaurant staff, products, facilities, pricing and hygiene. In addition, it aimed to
measure and compare customers satisfaction, find out the factors that influenced are
satisfaction or dissatisfaction of Thai and foreign customers with the restaurant service
and seek their suggestions on how to improve the restaurant service quality.

5.1.2 Subjects, Material and Procedure

The subjects used in this study consisted of 75 Thai and 75 foreign customers
who used the restaurant service at Flow, Yuan, Prime, Maya and ThreeSixty restaurant
at Millennium Hilton Bangkok in January 2010. They were selected using the quota
sampling technique.
The researcher distributed the questionnaires after customers finished their
meals during dinner. The respondents were asked to complete the questionnaire and
returned it on the same day. The questionnaires were processed in SPSS version 15 to
analyze the data to determine descriptive statistics, percentages and frequencies. TTest and F-Test were used for finding the factors that influences satisfaction with the
five service components- restaurant staff, food and beverage products, facilities,
pricing and hygiene.

5.2

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SUMMARY OF THE FINDINGS

The results of the study can be summarized as follows:-

5.2.1 Demographic Information of the Respondents

The results showed that the majority of the respondents were male
(55.7%).The percentage of the respondents aged between 31-40 years was 30.9% and
28.9% were above 50 years. Most of them had an average monthly income between
40,001 50,000 THB (40.3%) and 30,000-40,000 THB (38.9%). The researcher found
that 56.4% of the respondents were first time guests and 43.6% were repeating
customers.

5.2.2 Customer Satisfaction With the Hotel Restaurant Service at

Millennium Hilton Bangkok
It was found that the percentage of overall satisfaction in the five service
components was high i.e. restaurant staff (83.7%), food and beverage products
(88.2%), facilities (72.5%) and hygiene (50.3). However, pricing was rated with the
lowest level of overall satisfaction by the customers.
Apart from overall satisfaction, it was pointed out that most respondents were
strongly satisfied with the restaurant staff in term of their courtesy, grooming, speedy
service, product knowledge, problem solving ability and staff sufficiency. However,
some respondents were dissatisfied with the staffs friendliness, courtesy, speedy
service and product knowledge. In terms of food and beverage products, the
respondents were strongly satisfied with their variety, quality, taste and portion.
Additionally, the findings also showed that the respondents had a at high level
of satisfaction in terms of facilities based on the restaurants easy access, comfortable
atmosphere, comfortable chairs and tables, number of seats available, amount of
cutlery available and toilet adequacy. However, some were neither satisfied nor
dissatisfied with the comfort of chairs and tables, and the number of seats available. In
terms of food and beverage prices, most respondents were satisfied with food price
while neither satisfied nor dissatisfied with competitive and reasonable beverage
prices. Furthermore, most respondents were strongly satisfied with hygiene in terms of
food, beverage, restaurant area, equipment and utensil, linen and toilet.

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Comparing Thai and foreign respondents, the research found that both Thai
and foreign respondents were strongly satisfied with restaurant staff, food and
beverage product, facilities and hygiene. In terms of pricing, Thai respondents had a
moderate level of satisfaction while foreign customers felt satisfied.
With regard to the demographic information, nationality, age and average
monthly income were factors that influenced the level of satisfaction with restaurant
staff, food and beverage products, facilities, pricing and hygiene as the Sig. values
were lower than 0.05. However, gender and customer type were not influential factors
of the respondents satisfaction levels.

5.2.3 Suggestions and Comments

Some respondents suggested that some restaurant staff should pay more
attention and that there were insufficient numbers of staff at Flow and Yuan
restaurant. In terms of food and beverage products, the respondents suggested that
food menus should offer two food portions because the meals were big and could not
be finished. Furthermore, food and beverage prices were not reasonable and the prices
should be reduced. The restaurant should provide mosquito repellant because there
were many mosquitoes during dinner. However, some were satisfied with restaurant
ambience, friendly and helpful restaurant staff, variety of food and beverage and
excellent food and beverage despite the expensive price .

5.3

DISCUSSIONS OF THE STUDY

The overall results of this study show that the respondents had a high level of

satisfaction with the hotel restaurant service at Millennium Hilton Bangkok. However,
there are some points to be discussed.

5.3.1 General Information of the Respondents

The results showed that most of the respondents were male, aged above 30
years with over 40,000 THB in monthly income which corresponds to the study of
Prasit Matahnasirirat ( , 2541) which found that most respondents who
used the restaurant service were males aged 25-34 years old with an average monthly
income over 40,000 THB. However, it would be beneficial for the hotel to extend its

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profitability with other people who have an average monthly income lower than
30,000 THB. The hotel marketing should consider new middle price marketing plan to
reach and attract these people.

5.3.2 Customer Satisfaction With the Hotel Restaurant Service at

Millennium Hilton Bangkok
The results of the study showed that most of respondents had a high level of
satisfaction with restaurant staff, food and beverage products, facilities and hygiene.
Most respondents were strongly satisfied with restaurant staff according to Kotler
Concept (2003) who mentioned that the customers will access the service quality from
staff, place, ambience, equipment, material, symbols and price. In addition, the study
of Pariyada Taruyanon ( , 2545) found that foreign customers who used
service at hotel restaurant were strongly satisfied with service minded staff, the staffs
friendliness, grooming and politeness. Moreover, Suvitat Surasingtothong (

, 2543) mentioned that good service must consist of accurate and speedy service,
staff politeness, staff friendliness, good menu recommendation and staff hygiene.
Besides, the results are consistent with the study in Success Factors in Restaurant
Management done by Robert, Berry and Roberta (1990). It mentioned that there are
five elements that are important to the service which are providing timely service,
answering customer questions, handling complaints, delivery of accurately totaled
guest check and recommending appropriate menu items. Moreover, the two most
common complaints are speed of service and inattentive staff.
Apart from these, respondents were also strongly satisfied with facilities and
hygiene. This confirmed with the Physical facility by Mill (2001) which mentioned
that the success of the restaurant is good atmosphere, including table arrangement,
furniture, seating arrangement and lighting level.
However, some results of this study found that some respondents were neither
satisfied nor dissatisfied with pricing. According to the Four Ps Concept Market Mix
proposed by Kotler (1994), the customer will pay for a product or service which they
think that it is reasonable with their money. If not, the customer will have negative
feelings or be dissatisfied with the service given

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5.3.3 Influencing demographic information related to level of satisfaction

with the hotel restaurant service at Millennium Hilton Bangkok
From the findings, background of the respondents that are related to
satisfaction or dissatisfaction with service components, the factor of nationality, age
and average monthly income were related to the customers satisfaction. However,
there were no significance relationships between other backgrounds of the
respondents, i.e. gender and customer type with satisfaction of restaurant staff, food
and beverage products, facilities, pricing and hygiene.
Nationality of respondents provided different levels of satisfaction with
restaurant staff. It is possible that Thai and foreign expect to receive different levels of
service. Regarding Thai society, senior and wealthy people are accepted and respected
as first class while foreigners believe in human equality. Therefore, Thai people prefer
receiving special and more attention in service. Moreover, it can be inferred that
foreigners expect to receive friendly Thai service in accordance with Thailand being
the land of smiles. Moreover, nationality also leads to different levels of satisfaction
with facilities, pricing and hygiene. This finding is contrary with the research done by
Hathairat Ongthanawat (2008) who studied foreign customer satisfaction with Tip Top
restaurant at Patpong. Her results indicated that customer satisfaction was at the
highest level in terms of restaurant staff, facilities and hygiene. However, her results
were similar with this study in terms of price improvement.
In addition, the results showed that respondents over the age of 50 years were
satisfied with the pricing while respondents who were less than 50 years old were
neutral with the pricing. It is indicated that older and younger customers have different
levels of satisfaction with pricing. The older respondents have more buying power
than younger ones because they worked for many years so they can high level of
savings and can afford higher food and beverage prices.

5.4

CONCLUSIONS
According to the results of the study, the customers were strongly satisfied

with the hotel restaurant including restaurant staff, food and beverage products,
facilities and hygiene. Specifically, the customers felt rather strongly satisfied with
speedy service, helpful staff, variety of food and beverages, taste of food and

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beverages, restaurant ambience, hygiene of restaurant area, equipment and utensils,

linen and toilets. However, it was found that food and beverage prices should be
decreased to a reasonable level so as to compete with the other hotels. Furthermore,
both Thai and foreign customers were strongly satisfied with restaurant staff, food and
beverage product, facilities and hygiene. In terms of pricing, Thai customers were
neither satisfied nor dissatisfied, while foreign customers felt satisfied.
Moreover, it was found that nationality, age and average monthly income were
the factors that influenced the level of satisfaction while gender and customer type
were not related to customer satisfaction levels.

5.5

RECOMMENDATIONS FOR FURTHER RESEARCH

The recommendations for further research are as follows:5.5.1 In this research, because of time limitation, only 150 respondents were

included in the sample. To make the result of the study more accurate, researchers
should increase the sample size to get a better view of overall customer satisfaction
5.5.2 Regarding the customers time limitation, the questionnaire was
distributed during dinner only which is more comfortable and convenient for
customers to answer. Future studies should distribute the questionnaire during
breakfast and lunch as well to compare and find out the overall customer satisfaction
for the three dining periods so as to assess the entire food and beverage service in
hotel restaurant at Millennium Hilton Bangkok.
5.5.3 Future studies should include an interview of respondents to gather
further details.
5.5.4 In future studies, the questionnaire should be written in other languages
like Japanese or Chinese to improve the effectiveness of communication for nonEnglish speaking customers.
5.5.5 The researcher did not cover the aspect of promotion which is another
important marketing mix factor in the questionnaire. Therefore, future studies should
include promotion to measure the level of guests satisfaction with food and beverage
promotion. Besides, the result of promotion can improve and lead to the
implementation of a marketing plan which could increase the hotels future revenue.