I. INTRODUCTION

For any business to thrive understand what the customer wants and needs is essential. The customer preferences are constantly changing. Quick Service Restaurants often referred to as 'fast food restaurants' they have a limited menu offering wraps, sandwiches, fried food such as: chicken, burgers, salads and soft drinks. They often offer food as take outs, drive-thru and dining in the restaurant. The interior decor is very less. Fine Dining restaurants offer elaborate food and Beverage in menu, they offer high end formal service and interior decor is elegant at a relatively higher price.

Over the last two years during the COVID-19 pandemic the hospitality industry has been affected and due to lockdown and restrictions there was a rise in home delivery, more customers opted for fast food restaurants but during the post COVID-19 new measures have been put in place so as customers can dine out. Factors affecting the customers preferences include: ambience, hygiene and sanitation, cost, quality of service, timeliness of service, courtesy of the service provider, variety of choices of food and beverage offered restaurants.

In the post COVID-19 era the new measures put in place do influence the customer preferences. These measures include social distancing, servers wearing masks, face shield gloves. Also, fine dining restaurants started offering food delivery.

Quick service restaurants cater to a youths as they are popular places to meet up with friends on their free time and convenient for a student budget. Now a days, young people are more interested for fast food as it tastes amazing, deep-fried food, grilled burgers, soft drinks, while also they are easily located in various places as most, quick service restaurants have franchises as compared to 5 star rated Fine Dining restaurants such as the one in Crowne Plaza greater Noida.

Nevertheless, Fine Dining Restaurant cater to a wider customer range, those seeking healthier options, variety of food and alcoholic and none alcoholic beverage selections, the MICE (Meetings, incentives, conference and exhibition) clientele that are looking to have meetings over lunch, the cooperate clients that use the banquet, spaces within the hotel. The families who plan an outing to celebrate an occasion among other

II. OBJECTIVES

To establish the customer preference between Quick Service Restaurants and Fine Dining Restaurant in Hotel Crowne Plaza Greater Noida. Therefore, the specific objectives that will be studied are below:

• Determining customer preference between Fast food restaurants and fine dining.

• Understanding factors affecting the customers choice when selecting their dining restaurants.

• Understand how the new Covid-19 measures affect customers choice when selecting between fine dining and Quick Service Restaurant.

III. IMPORTANCE

• Government

The study will be significant to the government as they'll be able to have a body knowledge that will help them create policies and regulations that can be beneficial or the hotel sector. They will be able to assist the hotel industry by providing a conducive business environment for the hotels to fulfill customers preferences.

- Scholars

This study will provide other scholars and other researchers with literature that can be used for further research on how customer preferences play a big role in the hotel industry especially in regards to Fine Dining Restaurants and Quick Service Restaurants.

- Crowne Plaza

Crowne Plaza hotel will gain information on how their customers prefer and this can be used to create a better experience and services for their customers.

IV. JUSTIFICATION

First of all, the understanding of what customers prefer is essential for every restaurant so as they are able to satisfy their wants and needs. Secondly the knowledge can be used to refine the standard operating procedures to better retain their customers and even attract new clientele as the best advertisers are the customers who are satisfied with the services rendered.

V. LITERATURE REVIEW

• As per David Njite, Greg Dunn & Lisa Hyunjung Kim (2008), In order to understand what customers would prefer between a Quick Service Restaurant or a fine dining restaurant one has to look at the factors affecting their choice. These factors can be physical such as the interior design or something that cannot be touched but experienced such as the politeness of etiquette of staff. When selecting whether to a quick service restaurant or a fine dining restaurant customers look at facilities availed such as parking, the type of furniture and decor which affects the ambience, cleanliness and hygiene aspects as well is considered. Intangible factors such how cordial the staff are, how willing are the staff when guests need helpand attend to guests even when the restaurant is fully packed and busy, getting the right orders ensuring the bills are correct, howattentive the staff are to the wants and needs of guests. Even a simple thing such as staff remembering the names of repeat customers.

• As discussed by Harr, Ko King Lily, "Service dimensions of service quality impacting customer satisfaction of fine dining restaurants in Singapore" (2008), COVID-19 pandemic has brought about changes in the hospitality sector and other service industries. The impact of it has been felt and there has been steady growth of the hotels and restaurants with implementation of new standard operating procedures. At the beginning when lockdown was imposed and there were lots of restrictions for public area meetings, new measures were taken by restaurant where they created partitions or offered private dining tables, social distancing was maintained in terms of sitting arrangements means fewer tables and sits.

• As explained by Nguyen, Q., Nisar, T.M., Knox, D. and Prabhakar, G.P. (2018), There was also a rise in home delivery which was capitalized by most fast-food restaurants who already were following the concept of takeaway, drive-thru, home delivery and dine inFive-star hotels also started home delivery as they experience less foot traffic in their restaurants an example being Crowne Plaza Greater Noida. Other measures taken include ensuring staff wear masks, gloves and face shield, frequent cleaning and sanitization, providing digital payment platform, QR code menus.

VI. METHODOLOGY

a) Introduction

The study will indicate the research design, population, and sample size, sampling procedure, data collection instruments, data collection procedures, and finally data analysis and presentation.

b) Research design

This study will use a descriptive research design. A descriptive research design allows researchers to gather information and summarize, present and interpret data for the purpose of clarification. Therefore, descriptive approach is the best to understand the comparative analysis between fine dining restaurants and quick service restaurants.

c) Study area

The study will be undertaken at Crowne Plaza, Greater Noida. Crowne Plaza is a 5-star hotel located at Greater Noida in India. The study involved customers as the study participants.

d) Study population

The population of this study will be customers from Crowne Plaza, Greater Noida. The target population will be the customers that will be present at the hotel during collection of data. The respondents will be 72 participants from Crowne Plaza. The participants must be proficient in English, are above 18 years old, and the participants who gave informed consent.

e) Sampling and Sample Size

Sampling is the procedure of choosing elements such as people or organization from a population of interest. Through the studying of a sample, researchers may impartially generalize their results on the entire population from the sample. A sampling design stipulates the population frame, sample size and its selection, as well as the process of estimating the sample size. Stratified sampling will be used to select the sample of the study. It will involve dividing the population into homogeneous subgroups and then taking a simple random sample in each subgroup. The sample size will be 50% of the target population. Therefore, the sample size will be 72 participants.

VII. DATA COLLECTION METHODS AND PROCEDURE

Questionnaire was prepared and participated were asked questions related to which the preferred fine dining or quick service restaurants. Questions about factors affecting their choice was asked such as, quality of food and service, quantity, cost and value for money, the ambience.

A total of 72 participants filled the questionnaire. Likert scale was used to ask participants to rate their satisfaction of Cleanliness of quick service restaurant and fine dining restaurants, to rate the ambience of Quick Service Restaurant, and to rate their overall experience in Fine dining restaurants of Hotel Crowne Plaza Greater Noida.

VIII. DATA ANALYSIS

The collected data in this study was first grouped, edited and checked for completeness. Quantitative data and descriptive statistics were used to analyse the data. The accuracy, reliability and validity of the data collected was done before the data analysis. The data collected was then analyzed and presented in graphs and pie chart along a descriptive analysis of the same findings.

IX. CONCLUSION

The reason for conducting this research was to study whether customers prefer to dine in Fine dining restaurants in Crowne Plaza Greater Noida or in Quick Service Restaurants. In our survey conducted most participants stated that they preferred to dine in the fine dining restaurants as compared to the Quick Service Restaurant.

In the past three years during the COVID-19 pandemic, there has been lots of changes in consumer trends due to the rise and fall of the number of people infected with Covid-19. Lockdown and other restrictions initially caused more people to order in more or have takeaway as compared to previously where people could easily dine out, in our conducted survey most participants preferred to dine in restaurants than to have food delivery.

From those who ordered online from Quick Service Restaurant majority ordered at least once a week. Participants visited Crowne Plaza greater Noida fine dining restaurants regularly too. Some people still preferred to eat at home due to concern about Covid-19 spread and considering dining out after ensuring the restaurants are following COVID-19 protocols such as social distancing, staff wearing protective gears such as gloves shield and mask.

In the survey conducted for this comparative study variety aspects that affect the customers choices for dining out in restaurants was looked at. The cost of the food and beverage, the quality of food and service, the quantity of food and beverages, the value for money and ambience where the factors were considered by all participants to be very important. Also, a comparison was done for some of these factors. When comparing the quality of food from both restaurants most participants found the food from fine dining restaurant of better quality as compared to Quick Service Restaurant.

When it came to variety of dishes fine dining restaurants had more variety in terms of courses, cuisine the types of beverages and cuisine. When asked about the value for money of food and beverages offered in the fine dining restaurant, the participants were very satisfied despite the prices of food being costlier than in Quick Service Restaurant.

When it comes to celebrating of particular events like birthdays anniversary, romantic dates during valentines or Christmas and new year most participants preferred to visit fine dining restaurants in Crowne Plaza Greater Noida than to celebrate. As the hotel has lavish offers for such holiday, themed décor, curated menu which can be tailored to individual guests. The ambience was considered to be better than that of Quick Service Restaurant.

In terms of cleanliness and Covid-19 measures being followed in the both Quick Service Restaurants and Fine Dining restaurants in Crowne Plaza Greater Noida, most guest were satisfied by the overall standard of practice, but there can be more improvements made in Quick Service Restaurant in terms of how frequently do the sanitization and clearance of table timings.

The overall guest satisfaction for quick service restaurants was rated neutral by most participants eluding that more improvements should be made to make guest have a better experience while for fine dining restaurants in Crowne Plaza Greater Noida the participants had a much higher rating with majority giving a five star or 4 stars.