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Introduction
The globalisation of the economy and the increasing economic integration and liberalisation of markets have led to a generalised intensification of competitiveness. In highly competitive sectors, quality relationships are considered a key element of business differentiation through which firms pursue customer commitment through satisfaction, loyalty or positive word-of-mouth (WoM).
Specifically, relationship marketing is crucial in the services sector, since it provides services with tangibility ([6] Berry, 1983; [37] Grönroos, 1991; [38] Gummensson, 1987), through, for example WoM or information frequency ([85] Tarn, 2005). In this context, employees act as essential interfaces, since the service cannot be delivered without their participation ([94] Zeithaml et al. , 1985).
The high level of competition in the hotel industry is reflected by increasingly narrow margins and growing pressure to offer more and better services, with rising costs as a logical consequence. But at the same time, firms attempt to control costs so as not to add weight to the decline in margins. This costs tension transfers to the hotel managers.
A way of confronting this problem is to try to retain customers and encourage a pattern of continuous repurchase, since retaining one customer is more profitable than acquiring another ([73] Reichheld and Sasser, 1990). Thus, when marketing efforts have an increased focus on customer retention the likelihood of them becoming more efficient is greater ([80] Sheth and Parvatiyar, 1995). Customer retention is founded on the quality of the relationship established with them, which in turn, is based on the customers' evaluations and perceptions about their personal communication with the employees and how the latter behave. The relationship marketing strategy also offers a sustainable competitive advantage, since the intangible factors in a relationship are not easily imitated by competitors ([57] Lee et al. , 2005; [74] Roberts et al. , 2003).
Service quality is, therefore, one of the elements that can be used to respond to the increase in competitiveness, since it is positively related to the correspondence between the customers' ideal preferences and the characteristics of the service being offered ([76] Santos, 2002). Nevertheless, research on employee-customer relationship quality (RQ) (from now on RQ) in the hospitality industry is scarce, and not only in this industry but also in other sectors, for example banking ([64] Ndubisi, 2006), parcel...