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University
Service quality and university students’
students’ satisfaction on the satisfaction
travel agencies
299
An empirical investigation from
Northern Cyprus
Salih Turan Katircioglu
Department of Banking and Finance, Eastern Mediterranean University,
North Cyprus/Mersin 10, Turkey
Salime Mehtap-Smadi
Department of Business Administration, Eastern Mediterranean University,
North Cyprus/Mersin 10, Turkey
Ceyhun Kilinç
Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Selçuk University,
Konya, Turkey, and
Doğan Ünlücan
Department of Business Administration, Eastern Mediterranean University,
North Cyprus/Mersin 10, Turkey

Abstract
Purpose – There are international students studying in the universities of Northern Cyprus that
come from more than 68 countries. Travel agencies are among those firms which are affected the most
from these international students. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to investigate how
international students perceive travel agency services by using the SERVQUAL instrument.
Design/methodology/approach – A total of 579 university students studying at the universities of
Northern Cyprus responded to a revised version of the SERVQUAL instrument. After a descriptive
analysis, a multivariate regression was used to estimate the impact of service quality dimensions on
overall student satisfaction and positive word of mouth.
Findings – Research results reveal that the expectations of university students are not met and that
the largest gap was found in the “empathy” dimension. Results also reveal that the service quality
perceptions of Turkish students coming from Turkey significantly differ from that of Turkish Cypriot
and other overseas students. The “responsiveness” dimension has the largest influence on student
satisfaction in the case of Turkish Cypriot and other overseas students, and the “empathy” dimension
has the largest influence on the satisfaction of Turkish students coming from Turkey. Finally, overall
satisfaction of all students has a positive and statistically significant impact on their word of mouth.
Originality/value – Millions of students pursue their higher education abroad; therefore, they
extensively benefit from travel agencies. The present study is the first of its kind that investigates
service quality evaluations and satisfaction levels of international students for travel agencies in International Journal of Quality and
Northern Cyprus, a non-recognized small island state that managed to attract international students Service Sciences
from more than 69 different countries. Vol. 4 No. 3, 2012
pp. 299-311
Keywords SERVQUAL, Customer satisfaction, Travel agencies, Higher education, Students, Cyprus q Emerald Group Publishing Limited
1756-669X
Paper type Research paper DOI 10.1108/17566691211269602
IJQSS 1. Introduction
4,3 Services sector has increasingly become a major contributor for national economies in
the last few decades, especially in industrialized ones. Tourism sector is also locomotive
of the economy in many nations (Katircioglu, 2009). Increased competition necessitiated
the upgrading of service quality in this sector. Therefore, service quality is increasingly
recognized as being a key strategic value for organizations in both the manufacturing
300 and service industries (Lewis, 1991). It is also considered as a critical determinant of
competitiveness (Lewis, 1989). Increased competition, technology, social and cultural
factors are the chief drivers of service quality initiatives apart from 1990s (Newman,
2001, p. 126). “Quality” in a service organization is a measure of the extent to which the
service delivered meets the customer’s expectations (Ghobadian et al., 1994, p. 49). It is
known that the higher quality in services results in improved customer satisfaction
( Johns et al., 2004).
The transportation industry was traditionally among the most important as well as
regulated and protected sectors of the economy (Dana and Vignali, 1999). Travel
agencies play a fundamental role in the development of the tourist sector through the
development of the transportation industry. Interaction between service quality and
customer satisfaction in tourism organizations deserve attention from researchers with
that respect. On the other hand, there are millions of students who pursue their studies
in the overseas countries every year; therefore, travel agencies and airline industries
benefit from international student flows for many years. This reality reveals that
evaluation of the tourism organizations from students’ point of view deserves also
attention from the researchers.
Against this backdrop, the present study as a first time investigates how
international students perceives the services provided by travel agencies in such a
small island and their satisfaction levels for these agencies in the Turkish Republic of
Northern Cyprus (TRNC).
There are important implications of doing this research:
.
although there are many studies on service quality in the airlines industry,
research on travel agencies is not well investigated; and
.
after the division of Cyprus in 1974, Turkish Cypriots (TCs) established their
own state in the north of the island, which is not recognized by countries other
than its mainland, Turkey, and based their livelihood on the services sector.

This was because of the fact that TC cannot easily promote manufacturing sectors and
engage in foreign trade relationships with the other countries. In spite of political
non-recognition TRNC has succeeded in developing higher education institutions
which attracted many international students from more than 69 countries since the end
of 1980s (SPO, 2011). This development in higher education sector of the island had
significant impacts on the other sectors of the economy by job, employment and output
creation (Katircioglu, 2010). Travel agencies are only one of them. There are more than
160 travel agencies in TRNC (Tourism Planning Office, 2011). They are mostly
family-owned businesses (Johns et al., 2004). Total number of students studying at the
universities of the island is well above 45,000 of which 20 percent are TC; at least
70 percent are students from Turkey and about 10 percent from more than 69 countries
(SPO, 2011). Therefore, to the best of our knowledge, this study is unique in the sense
that it also makes cross-country comparison of the service quality perceptions
of university students about travel agencies in the case of Northern Cyprus. As also University
mentioned by Johns et al. (2004), inbound and outbound travelers regularly complain students’
about the services of the local travel agencies indicating that the expectations of
customers are not being met. Since Northern Cyprus is a small island and higher satisfaction
education is the locomotive of its economy (Katircioglu, 2010), the evaluation of travel
agency services would be important not only for the relevant literature but also for
policy makers. Thus, this study will search to see if international students are satisfied 301
from the services of travel agencies in this small island, which could be also
generalized for the other destination countries.

Higher education in North Cyprus

Services sector was given priority in North Cyprus due to the political problems. The
1980s marked a shift from the manufacturing industry to the services sector (mainly to
tourism and higher education). The tourism sector also faced many obstacles because of
the political reasons that restricted direct flights to the north; thus, the northern part of
the island has not been able to attract considerable number of international tourists
over the years. On the other hand, the demand for higher education sector in
North Cyprus picked up the slack and was the main economic driver by the late 1990s.
There are seven universities in North Cyprus: Eastern Mediterranean University
(EMU, the oldest and the largest one, established in 1979), Near East University, Lefke
European University, Girne American University, Cyprus International University,
the North Cyprus campus of Middle East Technical University from Turkey and
the North Cyprus campus of Anadolu University again from Turkey. Table I gives
total number of students in those higher education institutions of North Cyprus.
Overseas students have been coming to North Cyprus for higher education since
1982. Afterwards there has been a steady increase in the number of overseas students
as more universities were established in North Cyprus. The majority of overseas
students in North Cyprus come from Turkey, Pakistan, Palestine, Iran, Jordan, China,
Albania, Japan, Korea, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Ukraine, Russia, Nigeria, Nepal,
South Africa, Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates. The expansion of tertiary
education facilities in the universities of North Cyprus continues at an unprecedented

Academic year TC TR OTHER Total

1979-1980 105 – – 105

1989-1990 1,943 2,502 521 4,966
1994-1995 5,448 8,717 718 14,883
1998-1999 8,006 12,157 1,331 21,494
2001-2002 9,539 14,830 1,952 26,321
2002-2003 10,137 15,307 2,304 27,748
2003-2004 9,922 18,398 2,285 30,605
2004-2005 10,371 22,626 2,476 35,473
2005-2006 10,586 28,565 2,714 41,865
2006-2007 9,239 26,873 2,667 38,799
2007-2008 9,886 29,837 3,298 43,021
2008-2009 9,310 33,288 3,036 45,634 Table I.
Number of students
Source: SPO (2011) in higher education
IJQSS rate, and the infrastructure facilities at these institutions may now be compared
4,3 favorably at an international level. As such, this sector has become the most important
sector for the island bringing foreign exchange and contributing to socio-economic life.
The study is organized as follows: Section 2 presents a brief review of literature on
the issue; Section 3 defines methodology and data as well as the hypotheses of the
study; Section 4 provides results of questionnaire research along with discussions and
302 Section 5 concludes the study by also providing policy implications and room for
further research in the field.

2. Literature review
The instrument of Parasuraman et al. (1985, 1988) led to the development of a service
quality model (SERVQUAL), which was the result of a comparison of the expectations
and perceptions of customers regarding a particular service. Since they introduced the
SERVQUAL instrument, many researchers have used, extended and developed this
22-item scale to study service quality in different sectors of the services industry. There
have been also studies that used the SERVQUAL instrument partially or completely to
measure service quality in travel agencies that also provide a basis for our study.
Ladhari (2009) reviews theoretical and empirical criticisms of the SERVQUAL
instrument and conclude that concludes that the SERVQUAL instrument still remains
a useful instrument for service quality research.
Santouridis et al. (2012) examine the applicability of the electronic service quality
measurement instrument E-S-QUAL and its factor structure in the context of
e-commerce in the case of Greece, which is one of major tourist destinations; they also
investigate the impact of E-S-QUAL factors on perceived quality and loyalty.
Santouridis et al. (2012) find that efficiency is the highest ranking dimension and has
positive and significant impact on perceived quality, value and loyalty.
Sultan and Wong (2010) study on the critical research issues in terms of service
quality in higher education and find that there still exist potential and critical research
agenda in the field of service quality in higher education sector. Lam and Zhang (1999)
conducted research on travel agents in Hong Kong to assess customers’ expectations
and perceptions of service provided by travel agents and to explore how the service
factors related to overall customer satisfaction. They concluded that customers’
perceptions of service quality fell short of their expectations and that overall customer
satisfaction was statistically related to five service quality factors as suggested by
Parasuraman et al. (1988).
Millán and Esteban (2004) developed a multiple scale for measuring customer
satisfaction through the services offered by travel agencies in Spain. They proposed a
factor model composed of six basic highly co-related dimensions: service encounters,
empathy, reliability, service environment, efficiency of advice and additional attributes.
Johns et al. (2004) examined the service quality delivered by travel agencies in
North Cyprus using the SERVQUAL scale. They conducted a survey with 337 current
users of travel agencies in the island and they found that respondents were concerned
most with the efficiency and least with the personalization of the services offered. They
also concluded that promptness, empathy, efficiency and service-scale aesthetics were
the main determinants of customer satisfaction.
As mentioned before, the SERVQUAL instrument was extensively applied in
empirical studies in the field of service marketing despite the problems and criticisms
related to the instrument and its applications. It has been applied in different service University
sectors of particular countries such as in the banking industry, higher education students’
institutions, airport services, tourism sector services, accounting firms, hospitals,
dental services, etc. (Buttle, 1996, p. 8). satisfaction
The criticisms about the SERVQUAL instrument in the literature have been mainly
on the interpretation and implementation of the instrument (Buttle, 1996; Babakus and
Boller, 1992; Lam et al., 1997; Smith, 1995; Newman, 2001). A major problem with the 303
SERVQUAL instrument is related to its dimensional structure. A number of researchers
have reported different dimensions for expectations, perceptions and gap scores. Thus,
the universality of SERVQUAL’s five dimensions has been questioned (Buttle, 1996;
Carman, 1990; Cronin and Taylor, 1994). Nevertheless, despite the criticisms, the
SERVQUAL instrument has been widely used in various contexts in numerous studies.

3. Methodology
Sample and data collection
The aim of this study is to investigate service quality and customer satisfaction as
perceived by the students from the universities of Northern Cyprus. The revised
SERVQUAL instrument as proposed by Parasuraman et al. (1988) was administered
during April-June 2011 to 579 undergraduate students of which 131 are TC, 254 are TR and
194 were OTHER students. Non-probability convenience sampling was used in the present
research. Students who had benefited from travel agencies’ services were randomly
selected and asked if they had used the services of travel agencies during their studies in
Cyprus. Those students fulfilling this criterion were then asked to fill in the questionnaire.
A total of 600 questionnaire forms were distributed to the students, of which only 21 were
not usable. Thus, the response rate of the questionnaire distribution was 96.5 percent.

Survey design
The revised instrument of Parasuraman et al. (1988) in the present study is comprised of
three parts: part A contains the questions about personal profiles of the students
including gender, age, nationality and current university. Part B includes expectations
(E) and perceptions (P) of students according to the five dimensions. These dimensions
were tangibles, reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy. A seven point Likert
scale ranging from “strongly disagree ¼ 1” to “strongly agree ¼ 7” was used to
measure the 22 items. Expectation, perception and gap scores for each item were given
individually for all of the respondents. E (expectations) – P (perceptions) were used to
find gap scores since customer satisfaction depends on a product’s perceived
performance in delivery value relative to a buyer’s expectations. Thus, based on
the expectancy-disconfirmation paradigm, if E . P; the customer is dissatisfied and if
E , P the customer is satisfied (Kotler and Armstrong, 1999; Parasuraman, 1998;
Parasuraman et al., 1991). Part C contains two items that measure the dependent
variables of the study; namely “degree of overall satisfaction with the travel agency” and
“degree of recommendation of the agency to others”. A seven point Likert scale ranging
from “1 – very bad” to “7 – very good” was used to measure these two variables.

Statistical methods
Descriptive statistical techniques were used to compute students’ expectation and
perception scores. After computing mean scores of each dimension in the instrument,
IJQSS independent sample t-tests were executed to test for significant differences between
4,3 the two means of expectations and perceptions across TC, TR and OTHER students.
At the final stage, two regression models have been estimated to, respectively,
investigate the possible impact of the five service quality factors on overall students’
satisfaction with the agencies and the overall students’ satisfaction based on their
positive word of mouth as can be seen from Figure 1 in the next section.
304
Psychometric properties of the scale
Prior to testing for the suitability of the entire sample for factor analysis, were followed
a pretest as recommended by Comrey (1978). Accordingly, the Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin
measure of sampling adequacy was 0.944 and the Bartlet tests of sphericity was
significant at p , 0.001.
The results of these tests as shown in Table II indicate that the sample was suitable
for factor analytic procedures. On the basis of Cattel’s (1966) study criterion, factors
with eigenvalues greater than 1.0 and factor loadings that are greater than 0.50 were
retained. A factor analysis was conducted on both the expectation and perception
scales using varimax rotation. All of the 22 items loaded cleanly onto five factors
(Hair et al., 1998). Thus, the principle component analysis indicated that a five factor
solution is appropriate for the study sample.
Items for each subscale were subjected to reliability analysis. The a-coefficient for
the total scale was 0.96, and 0.86, 0.90, 0.87, 0.86 and 0.86, respectively, for the
dimensions of tangibles, reliability, assurance and empathy. Usually a reliability
coefficient above 0.70 is considered sufficient for exploratory studies (Nunnally, 1967).

Hypotheses of the study

The hypotheses to be tested in this study are given below as:
H1. International students studying in Northern Cyprus do not have different
expectations about service quality of travel agencies in terms of the tangibles,
reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy dimensions of the
SERVQUAL instrument.
H2. International students studying in Northern Cyprus do not have different
perceptions about service quality of travel agencies in terms of the tangibles,
reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy dimensions of the
SERVQUAL instrument.

Tangibles +

Figure 1. Reliability +
Hypothesized relationship Overall + Word
between the SERVQUAL Satisfaction of Mouth
+
dimensions, overall Assurance
student satisfaction and
recommendation of travel +
agencies to others Empathy
 University
Eigen Factor % Cum. Cronbach’s
Variables and items value loadings variance % a students’
Tangibles 13.917 31.63 31.63 0.86
satisfaction
XYZ banks have modern looking
equipment 0.68
XYZ bank’s physical facilities are visually 305
appealing 0.76
XYZ bank’s reception desk employees are
neat appearing 0.56
Materials associated with the service (such
as pamphlets or statements) are visually
appealing at XYZ bank 0.68
Reliability 9.680 21.99 53.63 0.90
When XYZ bank promises to do something
by a certain time, it does so 0.68
When you have a problem, XYZ bank
shows a sincere interest in solving it 0.71
XYZ bank performs the service right the
first time 0.70
XYZ bank provides its service at the time it
promises to do so 0.63
XYZ bank insists on error free records 0.62
Responsiveness 2.253 5.12 58.75 0.87
Employees in XYZ agency tell you exactly
when the services will be performed 0.65
Employees in XYZ agency give you
prompt service 0.68
Employees in XYZ agency are always
willing to help you 0.63
Employees in XYZ agency are never to
busy to respond to your request 0.68
Assurance 1.635 3.72 62.47 0.86
The behavior of employees in XYZ bank
instills confidence in you 0.68
You feel safe in your transactions with
XYZ bank 0.71
Employees in XYZ bank area consistently
courteous with you 0.66
Employees in XYZ bank have the
knowledge to answer your questions 0.66
Empathy 1.103 2.73 65.20 0.86
XYZ bank gives you individual attention 0.68
XYZ bank has operating hours convenient
to all its customers 0.68
XYZ bank has employees who give you
personal attention 0.65
XYZ bank has your best interest at heart 0.68
The employees of XYZ bank understand
your specific needs 0.76 Table II.
Results of factor analysis
Notes: KMO (Kaiser-Meyer-Olkin test of sampling adequacy) ! 0.944 Bartlett’s test of on 22 attributes and its
sphericity ! 12,311.83 ( p , 0.0001); overall a-coefficient ¼ 0.96 five dimensions
IJQSS H3. International students studying in Northern Cyprus do not have different gap
4,3 scores about service quality of travel agencies in terms of the tangibles,
reliability, responsiveness, assurance and empathy dimensions of the
SERVQUAL instrument.
H4. There is a positive significant impact of service quality factors on overall
students’ satisfaction for the travel agencies in Northern Cyprus.
306
H5. There is a positive significant impact of overall student satisfaction on students’
word of mouth for the travel agencies in Northern Cyprus.

4. Findings and discussion

Of the 579 participants, 131 (22.62 percent) of the students were TC, 254 (43.86 percent)
were Turkish students originated from Turkey (TR) and 194 (33.50 percent) were from
other countries (OTHER). Table III shows that more than half of the respondents were
male for TR and OTHER students, which females are more than half of TC student
respondents.
Table IV gives the grand mean and gap scores of the SERVQUAL dimensions
across different nationalities. The table shows that all of the average perception scores
are less than expectation scores for all of the respondents. This shows that for
respondents participating in this research fall short of their expectations regarding the
quality of the travel agency services in the TRNC. The largest gap scores appear in TR
students, and the smallest ones are found for OTHER students.
In the next step, t-tests were carried out on the results of Table IV to see if there is
any statistically significant difference in expectations, perceptions and gap scores

TC students Turkish students from Non-Turkish overseas

(n ¼ 131) Turkey (n ¼ 254) students (n ¼ 194)
Frequency % Frequency % Frequency %

Age
Less than 20 47 35.88 36 14.17 24 12.37
21-30 81 61.83 218 85.83 167 86.08
31-40 3 2.29 – – 3 1.55
Total 131 100.00 254 100.00 194 100.00
Gender
Male 229 39.50 450 77.70 362 62.50
Female 350 60.50 129 22.30 217 37.50
Total 579 100.00 579 100.00 579 100.00
Current university
EMU 35 26.87 72 28.39 83 42.89
NEU 62 47.21 68 26.93 58 30.04
GAU 6 4.77 31 12.36 24 12.42
ICU 1 0.70 32 12.42 9 4.84
LEFKE 3 2.34 23 9.19 16 8.33
METU 1 0.62 9 3.42 3 1.48
ANADOLU 23 17.49 19 7.28 – –
Table III. Total 131 100.00 254 100.00 194 100.00
Demographic breakdown
of students Note: n ¼ 579
between TC, TR and OTHER students. Table V displays these t-test results. As can be University
seen from the first column of Table V, there are statistically significant differences students’
between TC and TR students’ evaluation of service quality items, except for the
responsiveness dimension in expectations scores; and, reliability, responsiveness and satisfaction
assurance dimensions in the perception scores. Table V shows that there is not any
statistically significant difference between TC and OTHER students regarding the
service quality dimensions, except for empathy. And finally, results show that there 307
are statistically significant differences in the service quality evaluation between TR
and OTHER students, except for empathy in expectation scores and assurance in
perception scores.
If the results of Table V are to be generalized, it can be said that the TR students is
more pessimistic about the evaluation of service quality dimensions for travel agencies
in North Cyprus than that of TC and OTHER students, whereas the views of TC and
OTHER students do not generally differ. Table VI provides the summary of decisions
about the first three hypotheses of the study, namely H1-H3.
Finally, two regression models were estimated so that they would enable us to
investigate the relative importance of five SERVQUAL dimensions in predictioning
overall student satisfaction. The possible impact of the dimensions of service quality
on overall students’ satisfaction (for TC, TR and OTHER students) and the impact of
this satisfaction on positive word of mouth is conceptually shown in Figure 1.
As shown in Figure 1, five SERVQUAL dimensions are assumed to have a positive
impact on the overall student satisfaction. And furthermore, a student who is satisfied

TC TR OTHER
SERVQUAL dimensions E P G E P G E P G

Tangibles 5.88 4.69 1.19 6.20 4.31 1.89 5.68 4.63 1.05
Reliability 6.02 4.92 1.10 6.51 4.60 1.91 5.84 4.69 1.15
Responsiveness 5.99 4.76 1.23 6.26 4.58 1.68 5.91 4.87 1.04
Assurance 6.14 4.99 1.15 6.51 4.88 1.63 6.00 4.90 1.10
Empathy 5.36 4.16 1.20 5.95 3.78 2.17 5.89 4.67 1.22 Table IV.
Average 5.88 4.70 1.18 6.29 4.43 1.86 5.86 4.75 1.11 Comparison of grand
means on expectations,
Notes: TC stands for Turkish Cypriot students; TR for Turkish students from Turkey; OTHER for perceptions and
overseas students other than Turkey gap scores

TC and TR TC and OTHER TR and OTHER

SERVQUAL dimensions E P G E P G E P G

Tangibles 1.9a 2.1b 3.2c 1.1 0.3 0.7 3.9c 2.1b 4.8c
Reliability 3.1c 1.5 3.6c 1.0 1.1 0.2 5.2c 0.5 4.4c
Responsiveness 1.6 0.9 1.9a 0.5 0.6 0.8 2.8c 1.9b 3.7c Table V.
Assurance 2.3b 0.5 2.2b 0.8 0.4 0.3 4.2c 0.1 3.1c t-test results for
Empathy 3.2c 1.8a 3.5c 2.8c 2.5b 0.1 0.4 5.3c 4.8c significant difference
between expectations,
Notes: a, b and c denote the rejection of the null hypothesis at 10, 5 and 1 percent, respectively; perceptions and gap
TC stands for Turkish Cypriot students; TR for Turkish students from Turkey; OTHER for overseas scores across different
students other than Turkey nationalities
IJQSS will display his/her satisfaction by engaging in positive word of mouth about the travel
4,3 agency (Zeithaml et al., 1996).
Table VII provides regression results of the two models. “S” is the overall
satisfaction level of students, “T” the average of perceived tangible items, “R” the
average of perceived reliability items, “RS” the average of perceived responsiveness
items, “A” the average of perceived assurance items and “E” is the average of perceived
308 empathy items. Model 2 shows the impact of the overall satisfaction level of students
on their positive word of mouth behavior. “PWM” represents the variable of positive
word of mouth about travel agencies. And finally, et is the error term of models 1 and 2.
Results from model 1 suggest that the highest impact (coefficient) belongs to the
reliability dimension (0.61) for the TC students, which is statistically significant at
a ¼ 0.01; the empathy dimension (0.24) for TR students, which is statistically
significant at a ¼ 0.05; and the reliability dimension (0.44) for OTHER students, which
is statistically significant at a ¼ 0.01.

TC and TR TC and OTHER TR and OTHER

SERVQUAL dimensions H1 H2 H3 H1 H2 H3 H1 H2 H3
p p p
Tangibles X X
p X p p p X X
p X
Reliability X
p p X p p p X X
Responsiveness p X p p p X X
p X
Assurance X X p X p X
Empathy X X X X X X X
Table VI. Notes: TC stands for Turkish Cypriotpstudents; TR for Turkish students from Turkey; OTHER for
Summary of hypothesis overseas students other than Turkey; indicates the acceptance of the related hypothesis where X
test results indicates the rejection

TC TR OTHER
Variables Coefficient Coefficient Coefficient

Model 1. S ¼ b0 þ b1(T) þ b2(R)

þ b3(RS) þ b4(A) þ b5(E) þ et
b0 1.75 * 1.31 * 1.43 *
b1 2 0.08 0.07 2 0.09
b2 0.61 * 0.13 0.44 *
b3 0.05 0.23 * * * 2 0.06
b4 2 0.09 0.17 * * * 0.11
b5 0.19 * * * 0.24 * * 0.29 *
R2 0.53 0.44 0.55
F-statistic 16.95 * 23.64 * 30.00 *
Model 2. PWM ¼ b0 þ b1(S) þ et
b0 2 0.2 2 0.07 0.01
b1 1.03 * 0.98 * 0.96 *
Table VII. R2 0.62 0.57 0.48
Regression models for F-statistic 128.1 * 201.2 * 106.8 *
students’ overall
satisfaction and positive Notes: Significant at: *1, * *5 and * * *10 percent levels, respectively; TC stands for Turkish Cypriot
word of mouth students; TR for Turkish students from Turkey; OTHER for overseas students other than Turkey
Model 2 in Table VII provides regression results for the impact of the overall University
satisfaction level of TC, TR and OTHER students regarding the quality in travel students’
agencies’ services on their positive word of mouth (recommendation to others). The
highest impact of the overall satisfaction on positive word of mouth has been obtained satisfaction
in the case of TC students (1.03), and the second is that of the TR students. The overall
satisfaction variable for each nationality is statistically significant for positive word of
mouth at the a ¼ 0.01 level. This proves that overall satisfaction has a direct, positive 309
and significant impact on positive word of mouth.
Thus, both hypotheses; H4: there is a positive significant impact of service quality
factors on overall students’ satisfaction, and H5: there is a positive significant impact
of overall student satisfaction on students’ positive word of mouth about the travel
agencies in the TRNC are supported.

5. Conclusion and discussion

The present study has attempted to contribute to the existing literature by investigating
service quality and customer satisfaction in travel agencies from university students’
point of view due to the fact that international students benefit from the services of
travel agencies during their higher education. The study is also important due the fact
that Northern Cyprus is a small island, small economy, and attracts more than 45,000
international students from more than 69 countries. Therefore, many sectors benefit
from this happening; travel sector is a distinguished one in that respect. Our research
finds that service quality expectations of university students fall short of their
perceptions no matter what their nationality is. On average, the largest gap between
expectations and perceptions of the service quality factors have been obtained in
Turkish students coming from Turkey, where the smallest ones have been obtained in
the other overseas students. Service quality evaluation of Turkish students from
Turkey about travel agencies statistically differs from that of TC and other overseas
students. This reflects both the emotional side of decision-making, and the application
side of advertisement.
Additionally, “empathy” is the dimension with the largest gap between expectations
and perceptions for the TR and the OTHER students, and the second largest gap for
the TC students. Since it is more expensive to find and attract a new customer than it is
to retain an existing one (Schlesinger and Heskett, 1991), this result gives us a signal
that travel agencies need to give more individual attention to their customers. This
becomes more obvious when the importance of higher education sector for the TC
economy comes into mind. Thus, besides carrying out successful marketing activities
for both international tourists and foreign students, travel agencies should give more
individual attention to their customers. Keeping in mind that there are some
complaints about the local travel agencies as mention earlier (Johns et al., 2004),
providing more individual attention to customers now seems more important in the
case of university students in Northern Cyprus.

Future of the study

First, at the national level, this type of study could be replicated in other service sectors
of the island where international students engage in, such as banking, higher education,
tourism and health. This study could be extended by looking at the relationship
between SERVQUAL, customer satisfaction and other behavioral outcomes.
IJQSS Second, further research into the cultural context of evaluation of service quality
4,3 and satisfaction on the travel agency services as well as the effects of race, ethnicity,
value, custom, normative influences and quality and possible quantity of information
may yield more of an understanding of this issue.
And finally, with further investigation, it may be possible to examine the influence
of the input of behavioral aspects in order to finely tune the evaluation of service
310 quality and satisfaction on travel agency service process to gain maximum benefit.
The only genuine advice we can give is to take a note of influences such as the quality
perception of the students, make sure you have good information on which to make
judgements and make sure they are allowed a room for the subjective input rather than
wearing the blinkers of objectivity.

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