When I talk about the QUALITY in Tourism, I mean the whole exercise of services rendered to a certain tourist/tourists, should be in acceptable quality according to the agreement and the costs. In example, if someone paid for light camping, the services should be equal to what he/she paid and what was clearly explained and agreed between the two parties. But, some tourists are very new to ceratain areas, its a responsibility of a service render to disclose everything about her services, for a tourist to understand and make his choice. Then, implementation of the contract MUST be between the lines. My qusetion is, do all operators know and fulfill this? If not, what can be done?
Article Perspectives on Quality Tourism Experiences: An Introduction
Communicating quality is one of the most difficult thing to do because quality is a relativistic notion. So because of that the goal of the service deliverer is often to achieve a "marginal surplus" of quality delivered over expectations. Doing less than meeting expectations is not only unethical/illegal, but may incur retaliation in this day and age through word of mouth. The bullwhip effect from it may still linger for years before it dies off. Hence there is always incentive to deliver on promise, but what is "promised" is often a moving target when you have two parties involve. This component of asymmetric information (what the provider "knows" about the service is usually more than the consumer, what the consumer "expects" is usually more than the provider) can be very large in the transaction if price discovery/value discovery is still in its infancy, especially for newer waves of tourists and newer innovations in tourism. So the level of information symmetry and by extension "delivery on promise" tends to converge with time in the long run, but I think both the provider and tourists are myopic in the short run. Reliance on third party to vouch for quality will likely to wane in effectiveness as more and more providers jump on the bandwagon and lobby these intermediaries for a better "rating".
Chapter 3 of the book in the link is particularly insightful...
http://www.elsevier.com/books/quality-tourism-experiences/jennings/978-0-7506-7811-7
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