The study focused on service quality and customer patronage: a moderating role of staff remuneration. To achieve the objective of the study, survey research design was adopted. The researcher adopted primary data in getting the required information through the use of structured questionnaire. The population for this study is made up of all the customers of the selected hotels in Umahia, Abia state. Since the actual population of customers cannot be ascertained, the study will adopt infinite sampling. Therefore, sample size of the study is 196 after adopting infinite formula. The data generated from questionnaire administration were analyzed using frequencies, percentages and mean deviation while the hypotheses were tested using multiple regression analysis. The findings revealed that service reliability, service tangibility, service assurance, service responsiveness and service empathy have significant influence on customer patronage. The findings also revealed that staff remuneration has a moderating influence on the relationship between service quality and customer patronage in hotels. Based on the findings, the study recommends that employees of the hotels should give proper concentration to customers and should be willing to attend to them at every given time in order to gain their trust. That will guarantee repeat patronage. Also, hotel owners and managers should ensure that employee remunerations are provided as at when due. This would motivate employee to deliver quality service which will in turn affect customer patronage positively.
Keywords: Assurance, Customer patronage, Reliability, Service Quality, responsiveness and empathy., staff remuneration, tangibility
