HOTEL MANAGEMENTS’ STATUS OF MEETING THE NEEDS OF FAMILIES WITH CHILDREN

Abstract

This study was performed to identify whether the hotel managements met the needs of families with children aged 0-18 years. The research covered 84 hotels which had management permit obtained from the Ministry of Health of Turkey, agreed to participate in the research and were located in the city centers of Sivas, Kayseri and Ankara provinces of Turkey. Data were gathered with a questionnaire, constructed by the researcher in the light of the relevant literature, was consisted of two parts. The first part is comprised of 10 questions about the properties of the hotels. The second part is consisted of 34 questions aiming to evaluate whether the hotels satisfy the hygiene, security, comfort, entertainment, culture and arts, health and nutrition needs of the families with children. In the research in which hotel managements were assessed solely on the basis of whether they had the competency to meet the needs of families with children. For the analysis percentage and frequency distributions were utilized. It was found that, of the hotels, 60.0% were on the main street, 81.2% had no garden, 67.5% had no grab bar in the swimming pool, bathroom and toilet, 71.3% had no warning sign, 32.5% had no power outlet with child protection, 32.5% had furniture design incompatible with children’s safety needs, 43.8% had no break-resistant glassware, 60.0% had faucets with easy open handle, 38.7% did not offer any form of health service and 72.6% had no club or playground for children.

Keywords

• needs of families with children
• expectation of families
• hotel managements' status of meetinfg the needs of families with children

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