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Abstract
Hotels present an engine of tourism development. Their standard and orientation
towards specific target groups of customers determine the strength of tourism offer.
In addition, they contribute to the agricultural development, too, because they are
the great buyers of agricultural products. According to official data, the existing
potentials of Serbian tourism have been insufficiently valorised and Serbian hotels are
in pretty poor condition- compared to international standards. Taking these facts into
consideration, we can raise a question whether the key problems of Serbian hotels
lie exclusively in inadequate accommodation capacities, or perhaps that there is a
lack of customer- oriented business philosophy. Also the question is to what extent the
legal regulations contribute to the protection of customer rights and their satisfaction.
Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to ascertain the level of customer orientation
in Serbian hotels, so as to find out whether members of hotel staff are acquainted with
the notion of customer orientation and determine the degree to which this approach
has been applied in practice. Conclusions and recommendations for improvement of
competitiveness of hotels in Serbia are derived on the basis of research conducted by
interviewing the employees of a sample of hotels in Serbia.