摘要：Malaysia hotel industry especially luxury hotel industries are undergoing a challenging time because of stiff and intense competition from other hotels such as Airbnb, as well as heritage and budget hotels (The Borneo Post, 2017). Additionally, excessive hotel projects have saturated the market, with many more in the process of being constructed or about to be built, making the cutting-throat situation worst (The Star Online, 2017). The hotel market is pretty saturated at the moment and with more hotels opening, the demand for rooms is going to drop even further (The Metro News, 2017). In fact, due to the excessive supply of rooms as the number of Airbnb, budget hotels and guest-houses continued to increase significantly, it can be seen that hotels under the Malaysian Association of Hotels is either seeing stagnant or declining in terms of occupancy rates (Malaysia Tourism Statistics, 2016). The way in which hotels gain a competitive edge falls into two main categories: Price based, by establishing a low-cost management through discounting; and quality based, by providing customers with a unique experience to achieve customer loyalty (Ooi, 2014). Although low-cost management through discounting helps increase a hotel’s market share in the short term, it may negatively impact on profitability in the long term (Maslanka-Wieczorek, 2014). Many hotels therefore have turned to quality improvement for achieving a competitive advantage marketplace (Dimanche, 2014). Meanwhile, correct implementation of TQM practices could enhance the quality of products/services delivered and enable hotels to remain competitive (Ho, 2010).
