Does Hygiene Still a Reason For Complain at the Restaurants? A Research through Online Customer Complaints on the A La Carte Restaurants in Mersin

Abstract

Hygiene has always been an important issue for restaurant businesses. However, due to the Coronavirus (Covid-19) outbreak experienced worldwide for the last 6 months, it has become a much more important issue. Hygiene, which is one of the important factors of service quality, is a subject that is frequently addressed in tourism literature, both in complaint management and eating out behaviors. Hygiene issue, often handled together with all the elements of the service quality, has been single-handedly examined within the scope of this research. Data were collected upon online hygiene complaints for à la carte restaurants in Mersin through Tripadvisor.com. Among the 1600 positive and negative comments made for 22 a la carte restaurants in Mersin on Tripadvisor.com between January 2013 and June 2020, 141 comments obtained from 106 people who pointed to the hygiene problem. The data were analyzed with the descriptive analysis technique under the qualitative research methods. Findings reveal that customer complaints about hygiene intensify in microbiological hygiene and hygiene dimensions for common use areas. The most common complaints are; "non-fresh product use", "dirty place", "dirty items", "dirty sink and toilet" and "dirty service equipment". In addition, hygiene problems arising from the service process and staff are also high enough to be taken seriously. Although these findings are similar to the previous research findings in the literature, it is seen that the microbiological hygiene, that is, the problems related to the food preparation process, are more dominant in the a la carte restaurants. The outcomes of the research also show that the restaurant managers should evaluate hygiene as an absolute must for all stages of the service process.