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In today's service-dominated hotel business environment, improvements in the level of service quality is critical. An understanding of academic theories as well as the today's competitive environment of hotel market will form the basis of this research. Due to the intensive environment of global hotel business industry, it is urgent to provide a high level of service quality for customers in the hotel industry. A high level of service quality results in a high level of customer satisfaction, which means more repeat businesses as well as higher profits for hotel business. This research is mainly focused on the international customers' perspectives, with the understanding of their needs and expectations towards the hotels services. Parasurman et al. (1985) defined service quality as the gap between the customers' expectation of a service and their perception of the service received. This definition was developed based on the exploratory focus group interviews in four service sectors. This research assesses the level of service quality of the 5 star luxury hotels in Shanghai from the perspectives of international customers. One of the most dominant service quality measurements - SERVEQUAL model (PZB 1985) is adopted for this research. The analysis is based on how exact service performance is delivered and the customer expectation of how service performance should be delivered. By comparing these two perspectives, an in-depth insight will be provided on how to improve the service quality of 5 star hotels in Shanghai. The purpose of the research is to explore the superiority and inferior within the service quality level of 5 star hotels in Shanghai, identify the key issues result in the existing service gap and propose suggestions for future improvements. This research consists of six chapters; each examines different issues and has specific aims. These will be outlined further at the beginning of each chapter and identify the pivotal role each chapter plays in the reliability as well as validity of the entire research.
