Customers’ expectations factors in restaurants: The situation in Spain

This paper examines the attributes which influence customers’ decisions to return to a restaurant for another meal. The restaurant sector is one of the fastest growing sectors within the context of the Spanish economy and looks likely to continue its development into the future. The implementation of Total Quality (TQ) systems in the tourist industry is still a recent phenomenon in Spain. Hence the importance of the client’s satisfaction, resulting in the acquisition of an optimum quality level: i.e. cooking is culture and it has to be culturally adapted and promoted. The survey reported in this paper on the customers of Spanish restaurants has gathered the perception of quality according to a Likert scale from zero to ten. Male customers did not rate the attributes differently from female customers. Quality of food was rated as the most important attribute, followed by quality of service, cost/value of the meal, and place/ambience of the restaurant.