MEASURING CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND LOYALTY IN SPA COMPANIES

The importance of balneology for the economy of the Czech Republic has always been crucial. At a time of an unstable political environment as well as turbulent legislative and other changes, there is nothing more important than to ensure that spa guests are satisfi ed and that they return. Building customer loyalty and fi delity is a priority and today, it is one of the vital characteristics of modern marketing. A customer-oriented policy may become one of the keys to business success. The centre point of the issue under review is the difference between the expected and perceived level and its positioning in the tolerance zone of a particular customer. The main objective of the research is to examine the possibilities of measuring loyalty and satisfaction of customers in a spa company based on comparably simple data collection. The secondary objective is to point out the specific nature of providing spa services along with the factors that substantially infl uence the overall result of satisfaction and loyalty. The research results showed that managers and customers perceive the importance of satisfaction factors differently: customers put more stress on boarding than expected. As well as differences in levels of customer satisfaction and loyalty indices were proofed for different segments of customers. Therefore, the Czechs are in general more satisfi ed than Germans. Customers who come more often tend to be less satisfied. The guests, whose stay is at least partially covered by public health insurance, are more satisfi ed than self-paying customers. In general, it seems to be possible to obtain essential information about the customers and their satisfaction and loyalty from rather simply structured data gained with an easy questionnaire.