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Tourism Management 30 (2009) 629–637

Contents lists available at ScienceDirect

Tourism Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/tourman

A multi-criteria assessment of tourist farm service quality


Crtomir Rozman a, *, Majda Potočnik b,1, Karmen Pa
zek a, 2, Andreja Borec a, 3, Darja Majkovič a, 2,
c, d, 4
Marko Bohanec
a
University of Maribor, Faculty of Agriculture, Vrbanska 30, 2000 Maribor, Slovenia
b
Muncitipality Rečica ob Savinji 55, 3332 Rečica ob Savinji, Slovenia
c 
Jozef Stefan Institute, Department of Knowledge Technologies, Jamova 39, 1000 Ljubljana, Slovenia
d
University of Nova Gorica, Vipavska 13, 5000 Nova Gorica, Slovenia

a r t i c l e i n f o a b s t r a c t

Article history: Farm tourism is a significant means of supplementing farmers’ incomes. This paper presents a meth-
Received 10 April 2008 odology for ranking tourist farms by using a multi-criteria model based on the qualitative multi-criteria
Accepted 14 November 2008 modeling methodology, DEX, to assess service quality. The software tool DEXi was used to achieve this
end. The model was then applied to seven tourist farms with data derived from questionnaires
Keywords: completed by tourist farm operators and guests. The results are shown as service quality assessments for
Rural tourism
individual farms. The potential of the model for assessing the farms is demonstrated with the aim of
Tourist farm
providing a comprehensive explanation and justification of the assessment technique. It also indicates
Service quality
Multi-criteria modeling potential improvements that farms can make through ‘‘what-if’’ analysis and visualization. Despite
DEXi limitations, such as use of qualitative data only, the approach is proposed as being both appropriate and
advantageous when compared with other means of ranking enterprises.
Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

1. Introduction addition to searching for comparative advantages and emerging

In many rural regions, tourism is accepted as a natural part of
the socio-economic fabric juxtaposed with agriculture (Fleischer &
Tchetchik, 2005). Tourist farms represent an increasingly signifi-
cant rural diversification option for chronically unstable agricul-
ture-based economies (Fennell & Weaver, 1997). Agro-tourism
activity, as one indicator of the growing importance of viability in
rural areas, has increased substantially in the last decade and is an
important feature in the concept of multifunctional agriculture
(Majkovič, Borec, Rozman, Turk, & Pa zek, 2005). Furthermore, the
biodiversity of the rural cultural landscape can attract tourists
(Kaligarič, Culiberg, & Kramberger, 2006; Kramberger, Gselman,
Borec, & Kaligarič, 2005).
For tourist farms to be successful, ongoing information about
market behavior, specialized offers, and education processes, in
* Corresponding author. Tel.: þ386 2 61 308 61; fax: þ386 2 229 60 71.
E-mail addresses: crtomirrozman1@gmail.com (C.  Rozman), majda.potocnik@
hotmail.com (M. Potočnik), karmen.pazek@uni-mb.si (K. Pa zek), andreja.borec@
uni-mb.si (A. Borec), darja.majkovic@uni-mb.si (D. Majkovič), marko.bohanec@ijs.si
(M. Bohanec).
1
Tel.: þ386 3 839 18 30; fax: þ386 3 839 18 35.
2
Tel.: þ386 2 61 308 62; fax: þ386 2 229 60 71.
3
Tel.: þ386 2 61 308 40; fax: þ386 2 229 60 71.
4
Tel.: þ386 1 477 3309; fax: þ386 1 477 3315.
opportunities, is crucial (Pa
zek, Majkovič, & Borec, 2005). In the
ever-growing competitive market, service quality is becoming
more and more important for survival. The service quality of rural
tourism suppliers is a decisive factor considered by customers/
consumers when choosing a farm to visit or stay at (Potočnik,
2006). Therefore, there is a clear need to evaluate the service
quality of those farms, but due to the many diversified services, the
problem of measuring service quality on tourist farms is complex.
The literature uses different methods for measuring service
quality, such as SERVQUAL (Asubonteng, McCleary, & Swain, 1996;
Buttle, 1996; Carman, 1990; Parasuraman, Zeithaml, & Berry, 1985,
1986, 1988, 1991, 1993, 1994; Sahney, Banwet, & Karunes, 2004).
The SERVQUAL method assumes that the customers’ (guests’)
perception of service quality is the only relevant factor when
measuring service quality. The method is based on a questionnaire
consisting of 22 items pertaining to guests’ expectations and
perceptions. Other SERVQUAL applications have been reported by
Chen, Chang, and Lai (in press), Lee and Yom (2007), Wilkins,
Merrilees, and Herington (2007), Nowacki (2005), and López Fer-
nández and Serrano Bedia (2004). A detailed literature overview of
SERVQUAL is provided by Buttle (1996).
Apart from SERVQUAL, other studies measure service quality in
rural environments (Fleischer, Rotem, & Banin, 1993; Reichel,
Lowengart, & Milman, 2000). The approach by Reichel et al. (2000)
measures service quality in rural tourism establishments (B&Bs) in

0261-5177/$ – see front matter Ó 2008 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
doi:10.1016/j.tourman.2008.11.008
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Israel, using the instrument developed by Fleischer et al. (1993) and
Fleischer and Felsenstein (2000) to evaluate consumers’ experi-
enced and expected levels of service quality. Khan (2003) presented
an ECOSERV model aimed at investigating the service quality
expectations of ecotourists by developing an adapted version of the
SERVQUAL scale.
Despite its wide application, SERVQUAL has some deficiencies,
and its conceptual foundation and empirical operationalization
have been discussed (Asubonteng et al., 1996; Babakus & Boller,
1992; Buttle, 1996; Carman, 1990; DeMoranville & Bienstock, 2003;
Fick & Ritchie, 1991; Higgs, Polonsky, & Hollick, 2005; Landrum,
Prybutok, & Zhang, 2007). SERVQUAL does not include two
important criteria: service implementation and the relationship
between service quality and price (Potočnik, 2006). The service
attributes that are used to measure service quality may not repre-
sent exact levels of service quality and/or may not measure all the
important characteristics of a particular service. In addition, there
are real limitations related to interviewing respondents before and
after the consumption of a given service; this is the so-called gap
measure (Akama & Kieti, 2003). Additional evidence is provided by
Augustyn and Seakhoa-King (2004), who concluded that the
SERVQUAL scale is a necessary but insufficient measure of quality
within the tourism sector and specified implications for future
research.
Due to some shortcomings of the SERVQUAL method, Štambuk
(2002) and Potočnik (2006) proposed a methodology based on
multi-criteria decision analysis (MCDA). According to Rozman et al.
(2006), MCDA can be applied when the evaluation involves several
variables that cannot be easily transformed into quantitative units,
and the assessment process is likely to be influenced by multiple
competing criteria. The commonly used approaches for MCDA are
multi-attribute utility theory (MAUT) and the analytical hierar-
chical process (Belton & Stewart, 2002). Matsatsinis and Samaras
(2000) suggested that Von Neumann and Morgestern’s (1947)
utility theory is consistent with the descriptive models, which
attempt to rationalize consumers’ decision-making process. In
these models, consumers’ preferences and choices result from
comparing products according to a set of criteria. This implies that
a utility function may be used to model the preferences and
‘‘optional choice’’ of consumersdfarm visitors. According to utility
theory, tourist farm A will be preferred to farm B if the expected
utility of A is greater than the expected utility of B with respect to
the defined set of criteria.
Currently, MCDA methods are commonly used for different
kinds of evaluations. In particular, some methods, such as DEX
(Bohanec & Rajkovič, 1990; Bohanec, Zupan, & Rajkovič, 2000),
facilitate the design of qualitative (symbolic) decision models. In
contrast to conventional quantitative (numeric) models, qualitative
models use symbolic variables. These seem to be well-suited for
dealing with ‘soft’ decision problems, that is, less-structured and
less-formalized problems that involve a great deal of expert judg-
ment and where qualitative scales can be more informative than
quantitative scores. This is exactly the case in service quality
assessment. The DEX method has already been successfully used
for the estimation of hotel service quality (Štambuk, 2002) and has
been applied in the case of tourist farms (Potočnik, 2006).
The aim of this paper is to address the tourist farm service
quality assessment problem with an application of the qualitative
multi-criteria decision modeling methodology DEX. The article is
organized as follows. First, we define the study area and data
sources, followed by a short description of the methodology and its
application to the problem observed. The developed DEX model is

Landscape
Architecture
Order and cleanliness
Environment
Access to the farm
Premises Parking
Equipment
Homeyness
House
Cleanliness
Spaciousness
Taste
Look
Food
Guest Variegation
Serving
Diversity
Tourist farm service quality Services
Drinks Serving
Tradition
Personnel to customer
Attitude Personnel to personnel
Personnel cleanliness
Sports
Additional services Animation
Souvenirs
Repeat visits
Plans for the future
Work comparison
Farm operator Income
Satisfaction
Labor distribution
Interesting work?

Fig. 1. Tree of attributes.

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Fig. 3. Example of decision rules for the assessment of tourist farm service quality
from the Guest’s perspective. The rules map qualitative values of Premises, Services,
Fig. 2. Attribute scales.
Additional services and Repeat visits into the attribute Guest.

described in Section 3. Section 4 presents and discusses the results

of service quality assessment for seven representative tourist farms.
The article concludes with a summary of the main findings and
suggestions for further study.
2. Methodology
This study is based on multi-criteria decision analysis. Hierar-
chical multi-criteria decision models (MCDM) are a general deci-
sion support methodology aimed at the classification or evaluation
of options that occur in decision-making processes (Bouyssou,
Marchant, Pirlot, Tsoukiàs, & Vincke, 2006). Decision models are
typically developed through the decomposition of complex deci-
sion problems into smaller and less complex sub-problems; the
result of such decomposition is a hierarchical structure that
consists of attributes and utility functions (Rozman & Pa
zek, 2005).
Typically, an application of MCDM involves two main stages: (1)
model development and (2) model application for the evaluation,
assessment, and analysis of decision alternatives. In this study, we
closely followed this pattern. We first developed a qualitative
multi-criteria decision model using the DEX methodology and then
traditional quantitative models, DEX uses qualitative variables
whose values are usually represented by words rather than
numbers, such as ‘‘low,’’ ‘‘appropriate,’’ and ‘‘unacceptable.’’
Furthermore, to represent and evaluate decision alternatives, DEX
uses ‘if-then’ decision rules. For instance, a decision rule can be:
‘‘if the net present value is negative, then the alternative is
not acceptable’’ or ‘‘if the labor usage in the investment project
is low, then the alternative is excellent.’’ This is in contrast with
the more common quantitative MCDA, which uses utility func-
tions that employ weights, such as the expected value or weighted
sum.
The DEX method is implemented with the software program
DEXi (Bohanec, 2008; Jereb, Bohanec, & Rajkovič, 2003). To date,
the method has been applied to numerous real-life decision prob-
lems (Bohanec, Rajkovič, Semolič, & Pogačnik, 1995; Bohanec &
Zupan, 2004; Bohanec et al., 2000; Leskovar, 1993).
Table 1
The structure of guest questionnaires with respect to national background.

applied it to assess seven tourist farms. Background Number of questionnaires

Farm Slovenian German English French Total

2.1. Multi-criteria modeling methodology DEX A 7 1 8
B 24 3 2 29
DEX is a methodology for qualitative multi-criteria decision C 2 1 8 11
D 1 1 2
modeling and support (Bohanec & Rajkovič, 1990). DEX combines
E 10 3 1 14
traditional multi-criteria decision-making with some elements F 13 4 2 19
of Expert Systems and Machine Learning. The distinguishing G 15 2 3 20
characteristic of DEX is its capability to deal with qualitative vari- Total 72 14 9 8 103
ables. Instead of numerical variables, which typically constitute
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Table 2 In this study, we followed these steps to develop the tourist farm
Properties of the analyzed tourist farms. assessment model, which is presented in detail in Section 3.
Farm Rooms Apartments Number Possible Size Above
of seats activities sea level 2.2. Data sources
A 2/3 / 20 hiking 14 ha 600 m
¼ cycling According to the developed model, two questionnaires were
children
constructed to derive priorities and values for individual criteria.
playground
fishing The first questionnaire was issued to tourist farm operators and
swimming staff and the second questionnaire to customersdguests of the
(river, lake) farm. Farm operators were asked two types of questions. The first
skiing set of questions was derived from the tree of attributes (Fig. 1) so
B 5/2 / 50 hiking 68 ha 680 m
3/3 cycling
that each question corresponded exactly to one input attribute
¼ children (terminal node). The second set of questions consisted of general
playground questions about the operators’ satisfaction level with working in
1/5 archery farm tourism. The guest questionnaires were set according to the
C 7/2 1/2 þ 1 50 hiking 14 ha 150 m
recommendations of Taylor, Allardyce, and Macpherson (1992).
2/2 þ 1 table tennis
archery They suggested multidimensional scaling of three different areas:
children attribute selection, number of attributes taken into account by the
playground guests, and assessment of the relative importance of the attributes.
cycling Furthermore, the authors listed the set of attributes that influence
D 2/3 / 60 archery
7/2 sauna 14 ha 340 m
guests’ decisions and whether they select a specific vacation place
cycling according to their preferences.
skydiving A total of seven tourist farms were included in this research, and
hang-gliding guest questionnaires were issued to a total of 103 guests from
bowling
different national backgrounds (Table 1). The obtained answers
bocce
children were used as input data for the multi-criteria model presented in
playground Fig. 1, as well as for the assessment of the decision rules in the DEXi
hunting model (see Section 3). Namely, the answers obtained provided the
fishing background for the assessment of the importance of individual
E 8/2 / 20 hiking 12 ha 442 m
1/3 cycling
attributes and the formulation of decision rules.
(disabled children The characteristics of the seven farms and the results of their
people) playground assessment are presented in Section 4.
hunting
table tennis
3. DEXi model for the assessment of tourist farm service
bocce
archery quality
F 7/2 / 60 hiking 27 ha 583 m
3/3 cycling The initial hierarchy of the model was established through the
1/6 children brain-storming of experts involved in model development and was
playground
(joint beds) hunting
decomposed further according to the answers obtained from the
table tennis questionnaires. The final structure of attributes for the assessment
ice skating of tourist farm service quality is shown in Fig. 1.
G 2/1 / 50 hiking 45 ha 850 m In the model, two primary evaluation dimensions were taken
8/2 children
into account: Guest perception and Farm operator perception. For
playground
2/3 tennis each of these, the most relevant attributes were identified. Guest
1/4 hunting perception was decomposed into Premises, Services, and Additional
services. Premises consists of attributes that describe the farm’s
location and buildings: Landscape, Environment, and Farm house.
The DEXi model is typically constructed through the following Environment describes the farm’s surroundings (Architecture, Order
stages (Bohanec, 2003): and cleanliness, Access to the farm, and Availability of parking spaces),
while the inside of the farm building was embedded in the attribute
1. The decision problem is hierarchically decomposed into less House (Equipment, Homeyness, Cleanliness, and Spaciousness). The
complex individual problems. The decomposition yields a tree services were divided into farm Food service (Taste, Look, Variega-
of attributes (see Fig. 1) that represents the hierarchical ‘‘skel- tion, and Quality of service), Drinks (Diversity of drinks offered,
eton’’ of the model. Terminal nodes (‘‘leaves’’) of the tree Serving quality, and their Tradition), and Attitude of farm personnel
represent inputs to the model, and the root node represents the (Personnel to customer, Personnel to personnel, and Cleanliness of the
main output: overall assessment of evaluated alternatives (in personnel). The attribute Additional services describes the avail-
our case, tourist farms). ability of additional services provided on the farm (such as Sports,
2. Each sub-problem is represented by a qualitative attribute with Animation, and Souvenir sales). The attribute Repeat visits represents
a defined value scale. The value scale is discrete and typically important information: whether the guest is willing to visit the
consists of words (see Fig. 2). In principle, the scale can be farm again.
preferentially ordered (from ‘bad’ to ‘good’ values) or unor- The second part of the tree, the sub-tree Farm operator, is
dered. In Fig. 2, all scales are ordered. divided into Plans for the future (whether the operator is planning to
3. Utility functions for each aggregate attribute are defined. In continue with the tourist farm operation; yes/no attribute) and his/
DEX, utility functions are represented by decision rules, which her Satisfaction with the tourist farm operation (Comparison to
are acquired from the model developer and presented in other farm work, Income, and Labor distribution, and whether he/
a tabular form (see Fig. 3). she finds running a tourist farm operation Interesting or not).
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Attribute A B C D E F G
Tourist farm service quality good very good very good good good; very good very good very good
Guest good very good very good good very good very good very good
Premises very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable suitable
Landscape very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable suitable
Environment very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable suitable
Architecture very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable suitable
Order and cleanliness good excellent excellent excellent excellent excellent good
Access to the farm good good good good good good acceptable
Parking acceptable good good good good good acceptable
House acceptable good good good good good good
Equipment suitable very suitable very suitable suitable very suitable suitable suitable
Homeyness yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
Cleanliness good excellent excellent excellent excellent excellent excellent
Spaciousness very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable very suitable suitable
Services acceptable good good acceptable good good good
Food acceptable good good acceptable good good good
Taste excellent excellent excellent good excellent excellent excellent
Look excellent excellent excellent good excellent excellent excellent
Variegation variegated very variegated very variegated variegated very variegated very variegated very variegated
Serving acceptable good good acceptable good good good
Drinks acceptable acceptable acceptable good good good acceptable
Diversity diversified diversified diversified diversified diversified diversified diversified
Serving acceptable good good good good good good
Tradition typical typical typical extra extra extra typical
Attitude friendly friendly friendly * friendly friendly friendly
Personnel to customer friendly friendly friendly * friendly friendly friendly
Personnel to personnel friendly friendly friendly * friendly friendly friendly
Personnel cleanliness suitable suitable suitable * suitable suitable suitable
Additional services poor poor poor poor good acceptable good
Sports not available not available not available not available available available available
Animation not conducted not conducted not conducted not conducted conducted sometimes not conducted conducted sometimes
Souvenirs few not available not available not available few few few
Repeat visits yes yes yes yes yes yes yes
Farm operator very good very good very good very good * very good very good
Plans for the future yes yes yes yes * yes yes
Satisfaction good good good good * good good
Work comparison more pleasant more pleasant more demanding more pleasant * more demanding more demanding
Income acceptable good good good * good good
Labor distribution very suitable suitable very suitable very suitable * very suitable very suitable
Interesting work? very interesting very interesting very interesting very interesting * very interesting very interesting

Fig. 4. Results of DEXi evaluation of seven tourist farms, showing all the values of input and aggregate attributes.

Each attribute is assigned to a set of possible qualitative values aggregate attribute Guest. Notice that the Guest attribute appears at
as described in Fig. 2. the second level of the tree in Fig. 1.
In the last step of the DEXi model development, the decision In Fig. 3, the decision rules are presented in a so-called complex
rules were defined. Decision rules define the aggregation of values form where the asterisk ‘‘*’’ denotes any value and the ‘‘’’ stands
in the model from its inputs through intermediate attributes for ‘‘equal or better.’’ The relative importance of attributes is also
toward the root. Therefore, decision rules have to be defined for all expressed by weights at the top of the table. These weights have
internal attributes, including the root; in the presented model, this been estimated from the rules by DEXi using a linear regression
gives twelve utility functions in total. Here, in Fig. 3, we show only method (Bohanec, 2008). Interpreting Fig. 3, we can see, for
one utility function, the one that aggregates the four attributes instance, that the attributes Premises and Services are sufficient to
Premises, Services, Additional services, and Repeat visits into the spoil the guest’s perception of the farm; rule number 1 states that if
both are ‘bad’ (that is, ‘unsuitable’ and ‘poor,’ respectively), the
value of Guest is ‘poor,’ regardless of the remaining two attributes,
Additional services and Repeat visit. In contrast, rules 27–30
G explicitly state the conditions under which the guest’s perception
of the farm is ‘very good.’
F
4. Results and discussion
E
Total service quality was analyzed on seven tourist farms using
D the developed model. Here, we call these farms A, B, C, ., G, but
these are actually real livestock-oriented farms, lying mainly in less
C favorable areas (the hilly region) in Slovenia. Some characteristics
of these farms are shown in Table 2.
B The data for these farms were obtained from guest question-
naires (see Section 2). The guests’ majority answer was taken as the
A
value of each corresponding input attribute in the model. For
poor average good very good instance: for the attribute Landscape on farm A, 2 guests described
the landscape as ‘‘suitable,’’ and 6 guests described the landscape as
Tourist farm service quality
‘‘very suitable.’’ The value ‘‘very suitable’’ was then taken into
Fig. 5. Graphical representation of the overall farm assessment results. consideration in the DEXi model. The same procedure was used in
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C.

A Guest
B Guest

good

Premises Repeat visits Premises Repeat visits

acceptable

Services Additional services Services Additional services

C Guest
D Guest

good

Premises Repeat visits Premises Repeat visits

acceptable

Services Additional services Services Additional services

E Guest
F Guest

Premises Repeat visits Premises Repeat visits

acceptable

Services Additional services Services Additional services

G Guest

Premises Repeat visits

suitable

Services Additional services

Fig. 6. Graphical presentation of the assessment of the attribute Guest for individual farms.

the case of the low numbers in the responses regarding guests’
expectations of farm D. In the case of conflicting values provided by
the respondents or in the case of missing answers, the lower value
in the model was used. Afterwards, the quality of service of tourist
farms was assessed by the DEXi model. The results are shown in
Figs. 4–7. Fig. 4 shows the aggregate results, and Figs. 5–7 represent
parts of the results graphically.
Fig. 4 shows the input data and evaluation results for all seven
analyzed farms. The data items that appear next to the terminal
nodes (such as Landscape and Architecture) represent inputs, i.e.,
data that were collected through the questionnaires. The items next
to the aggregate nodes (such as Guest and Premises) have been
determined by DEXi from the input data and according to the
defined decision rules. The asterisk (‘‘*’’) means that no data were
available for the particular input attribute. In this case, DEXi
assessed the farm using the set of all possible input values at that
point. In general, this may result in evaluations that are sets rather
than single values.
Overall, the farms were assessed as indicated in the top data row
of Fig. 4 (next to Tourist farm service quality). The highest
assessment (‘very good’) was obtained for farms B, C, F, and G. This
is followed by farms A and D, which were assessed as ‘good.’ Farm E
is a special intermediate case because, due to missing data, we
could not obtain the overall value precisely as a single value;
instead, we used the set ‘good; very good.’ This is still a useful
answer, clearly indicating that the farm is perceived as ‘good’ at
least (see Fig. 5 for graphical assessments).
The fact that the farms were all evaluated as ‘good’ or ‘very good’
can be attributed to the fact that they were all professional tourist
farms, where the expected level of service quality is high.
4.1. Practicability of the proposed model in practice
An important feature of using MCDM is the ability to ‘‘drill-
down’’ through the tree structure of the model, look at data and
assessments at the lower level of the model, and see how they
contribute to the overall assessment. This is very important for
better understanding and justification of the assessment process.
Furthermore, such analysis can be easily and comprehensibly
visualized using various charts. As an example, Fig. 6 presents radar
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A Premises
B Premises

Services Satisfaction Services Satisfaction

acceptable

Additional services Plans for the future Additional services Plans for the future

Repeat visits Repeat visits

C Premises
D Premises

Services Satisfaction Services Satisfaction

acceptable

Additional services Plans for the future Additional services Plans for the future

Repeat visits Repeat visits

E Premises
F Premises

Services Satisfaction Services Satisfaction

acceptable

Additional services Plans for the future Additional services Plans for the future

Repeat visits Repeat visits

G Premises

Services suitable Satisfaction

Additional services Plans for the future

Repeat visits

Fig. 7. Graphical representation of attributes at the second level of the model.

charts that show the evaluation of service quality for each farm for
the aggregate attribute Guest, according to the defined decision
rules (these are shown in Fig. 3). Individual points other than Guest
show values of the four attributes that influence the Guest attribute.
The ideal guest assessment is achieved when the line is at the edge
of the pentagram (farm E). In a non-ideal assessment, the line is
shifted toward the center, clearly indicating an attribute and its
value contributed to a less than ideal assessment. For example, it is
easy to identify the reasons why farm D was perceived as ‘good’
instead of ‘very good’: because of ‘acceptable’ Services and ‘poor’
Additional services. The low number given by the respondents has to
be recognized as a potential problem for the assessment of farm D
(Table 1).
Another example demonstrates the ability of the model to
identify possible weaknesses of the analyzed farms. This is
illustrated in Fig. 7, which is similar to Fig. 6, but the former uses
a different selection of attributes: those that appear at the
second level of the tree structure (see Fig. 1). From these charts,
it is easy to identify the obstacles that negatively affect farm
assessment. For the first four farms, these are the ‘poor’ Addi-
tional services. For farms A and D, this is combined with the non-
ideal ‘acceptable’ Services. Farm E has no weak points at this
level. The slightly weak points of farms F and G are Additional
services and Premises, respectively. The identification of such
weak points can provide useful guidelines for further develop-
ment of the farm.
The DEXi software also enables ‘‘what-if analysis.’’ For instance,
one might consider improving the availability of sports and
animation on farm A. Accordingly, the attribute Additional services
changes to ‘good,’ which improves the general assessment of
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Service quality to ‘very good.’ In this way, the farm operator gets
important information about possible improvements in service
quality.
A potential problem of DEXi is that it currently supports quali-
tative attributes and utility functions but provides no facilities for
dealing with quantitative attributes. The quantitative attributes (for
instance, the number of beds or number of rooms) therefore must
be transformed into discrete values (categorization). As this seems
highly desirable for many practical problems such as assessment of
the service quality that embeds many qualitative attributes or that
cannot be easily numerically quantified (for instance, quality of
food or drinks, personnel’s attitude), further study should be
particularly focused on the integration of qualitative and quanti-
tative modeling techniques in the assessment of service quality as
well as the inclusion of direct farm activities in the DEXi tree. A
direct comparison between the farms is difficult due to the diver-
sity of the services offered. It should be stressed here that the
sample of analyzed farms consisted of farms, which were all sorted
in the same quality range (the quality ranges from one to four
apples, a quality system established by the Slovene tourist farms
associations). Although farm tourism is widely recognized as
a service that enables guests’ direct involvement in farm activities,
this option is not yet offered by the majority of Slovene tourist
farms. In this case, when the analyzed farms offer such an option,
this aspect should be further analyzed and included in the decision
tree.
Further research could be made in combination with the
analytical hierarchical process (Saaty, 1980) and the analytical
network process (Saaty & Ozdemir, 2005), including inter-criteria
dependencies and feedback as well as a detailed comparison of the
proposed methodology to the better-known SERVQUAL model. The
inclusion of other quantitative methods (such as multi-attribute
utility theory or multi-aspect taxonomic estimation) would also
enable precise farm ranking.
5. Conclusions
In this paper, an attempt was made to employ multi-criteria
analysis to assess the service quality of tourist farms. The DEXi
methodology, based on qualitative attribute values and utility
functions in the form of decision rules, was applied to assess tourist
farm service quality. Guest and farm operator questionnaires were
used as the main data source. The model was used to assess the
service quality of tourist farms in Slovenia. The presented multi-
criteria models enable precise estimation of tourist farm service
quality. The value added of this approach in practice is detailed
analysis of attribute values with the model features (radar charts),
which can provide substantial information on possible improve-
ments in farm service quality for farm operators.
Despite the deficiencies described (such as the use of quali-
tative data only), we found that the approach fulfilled most of
our expectations and revealed considerable advantages in
comparison with other approaches. In particular, we emphasize
the use of the qualitative multi-criteria DEXi model, which was
suitable in a field where judgment prevails, thus making it
difficult to give numeric answers. This kind of model is
comprehensible to a wide range of users in the evaluation
process. The model is based on the use of decision rules defined
by experts responsible for model development. The DEXi multi-
criteria method enabled similar yet more precise ranking of
tourist farms in comparison with arbitrary guest assessments.
The multi-criteria approach also provides some useful features,
such as ‘‘what-if’’ analysis and visualization, which contribute to
the comprehensibility and justification of the assessment process
and which may also give specific advice to farm operators about
how to improve the quality of their farms.
The multi-criteria DEXi model can therefore be regarded as
a useful alternative tool for service quality measurement and could
also be used by government institutions responsible for tourist
farm certification as well as for assessment of applications for
different rural developments. Further research is needed in the
field of integrating quantitative data into the DEXi modeling
framework, as well as comparing it to the SERVQUAL method and
other multi-criteria methods.
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