Foreign Tourists’ Satisfaction Level of Three-Star Hotels Staff’s English Proficiency and Communication

Tourism and hospitality industry has had a significant development during the last
decades in Malaysia, and it is considered as one of the most intensive industries of the
country. The hotel industry is a service-based industry, and one of its principal
components is the human resource. Besides attraction, interest, service quality and
perhaps facilities, visitors want to be able to communicate well with the hotel staff,
and being satisfied during their stay in the hotel. Thus, the staff who come into faceto-
face contact with foreign customers have to be competent in the English language,
and it is always regarded as an asset for them. This study is aimed at identifying the
level of satisfaction among the foreign customers on the English proficiency of the
staff, working in 3-star hotels in the vicinity of Cameron Highlands. Data was
collected through a questionnaire survey and semi-structured interview. The overall
findings showed that grammatical accuracy and pronunciation were among
problematic areas that need improvement, suggesting some levels of expectations by
the tourist towards the accurate use of English among the hotel staff in their
workplace. However, the respondents’ attitudes towards the hotel staff’s low
proficiency in English were different based on their age, gender and education
background, signifying the need for comprehensive enhancement of language
training. The findings showed that the male respondents had better satisfaction level
on the general proficiency compared to the female respondents. The findings also
revealed that the younger respondents were more satisfied than the elderly
respondents in relation to hotel staff’s fluency, grammar accuracy and general
proficiency. Finally, respondents with higher education background were less
satisfied in terms of vocabulary and grammar, compared to those of lower educational
background. The findings of the study revealed that although the hotel staff have
English knowledge learned from their background, they are still lacking in some
aspects of the language.