Análisis de la calidad de los equipamientos e instalaciones de los campos de golf de la Región de Murcia

Abstract

The sports sector in Spain has evolved in a very significant way, adapting to the social and economic context, in order to respond to the high quality standards demanded by the services. The golf sector has experienced a great boom in recent years. In this context, the Region of Murcia has registered the greatest growth in terms of golf facilities in the whole of the country and has gone from having 4 golf courses in 2003 to having 21 at present, consolidating an offer with great tourist, sports and economic potential for this region. On the other hand, the concept of service quality includes not only customer satisfaction but also the repetition and use of the service together with subsequent recommendations to other customers. Therefore, sports or sports-tourist facilities need to know the needs and wishes of users so that they can implement strategies aimed at meeting the current and future expectations of users, with the ultimate aim of generating greater user loyalty and fidelity in the centres they manage. There is a need for this type of sports equipment to have tools that help to properly evaluate the quality perceived by the user, a need that is also explicitly stated in the UNE:188001 (AENOR, 2011) standard for the provision of services on golf courses in terms of the need to evaluate the quality of these services. This occurs together with the fact that there are currently not enough tools available in the field of golf and that these have criteria of validity and reliability, in an environment of great importance for the golf sector both nationally and in the Region of Murcia. The main objective of this thesis is to make an empirical and sport-oriented approach to the analysis of the quality of the equipment and facilities of the golf courses in the Region of Murcia. The study of the quality perceived by users in golf courses supported by the use of valid and reliable tools allows us to see if the strategies implemented by managers in their courses to improve the services offered have an impact on the satisfaction of their users. 401 users of the golf courses in the Region of Murcia participated in the study and after the statistical analysis of the data, the results obtained in the study made it possible to check the validity and reliability of a psychometric scale to evaluate the quality perceived by the users and another scale to measure the loyalty of the users of the golf courses in the Region of Murcia. These results lead to the affirmation that these are reliable and valid measuring instruments, which accredit them as useful tools for research and management and guarantee their use by the managers of this type of golf sport facilities.