Generic dimensionality of hospitality in the hotel industry: A host–guest relationship perspective

The main objectives of this study are to identify the generic facets of hospitality for hotel services irrespective of their star rating, as well as to determine the impact of generic dimensionality on guest satisfaction. The responses of 305 local and foreign hotel guests in a questionnaire survey were analysed using a Structural Equation Modelling technique. The generic facets of hotel hospitality were identified as personalisation, comfort, and warm welcoming. Of the three, only personalisation and warm welcoming contributed significantly to predicting guest satisfaction. This study is aimed at adding to the body of related literature by sharing new insights on how the generic dimensionality of hospitality in its entirety differs from that of upscale hotel hospitality.     

Understanding guests’ behavior to visit green hotels: The role of ethical ideology and religiosity

The main aim of this study is to develop and test a model to understand guests’ behavior to visit green hotel by merging the theory of planed behavior (TPB) with theories of ethics and religiosity in a single model. Furthermore, it examines the moderating role of ethical ideology. This research utilized a quantitative method to assess the suggested conceptual framework. Data were gathered from 871 participants and analyzed through Structural Equation Modelling (SEM). According to the study results, the suggested model shows a favorable prediction level of guests’ behavior, which confirmed the superiority of the proposed model. Our study indicated that TPB and ethical theory adequately explain guests’ behavior to visit green hotel. Ethical ideology was found to be a key driver of guests’ green decision-making process. Our study makes several contributions to the practice and theory by providing useful insights on drivers of consumers’ behavior to visit green hotels in the Egyptian hospitality environment.     

Gender,loyalty card membership,age, and critical incident recovery: Do they moderate experience-loyalty relationship?

The study examines the critical role of customer experience in determining hotel brand loyalty and the moderating role of gender, loyalty card membership, age, and critical incident recovery in this relationship. Based on a sample of 408 hotel guests and employing structural equation modeling approach, dimensions that comprise ‘customer experience with hotel brands’—hotel location, hotel staff competence, hotel stay, and ambience, hotel website and social media, and guest-to-guest experience—are found to have relative effects on hotel brand loyalty. The results contribute to hospitality realm by suggesting the moderating effect of gender, loyalty card membership, age, and critical incident recovery on customer experience-loyalty relationship. Implications for managerial practice and theory are discussed together with limitations and further research directions.     

A preliminary study on customer expectations of hotel hospitality: Influences of personal and hotel factors

This study attempts to explain the influence of personal and hotel factors on the expectation level of hotel hospitality as well as to propose a scale to measure commercial hospitality for hotel services. A total of 101 local and international hotel guests were involved in the study. The results revealed that the expectations of hotel hospitality are influenced by personal factors such as gender, purpose of stay, nationality, and private domain of hospitality. The hotel's star rating is the only hotel factor that might have strong association with hotel hospitality.     

The role of language in the online evaluation of hospitality service encounters: An empirical study

In an increasingly global travel market, hospitality services encounters involve growing interactions between providers and customers often belonging to different nationalities and cultures and speaking different languages. Extant hospitality management literature has explored the influence of language on service evaluations mostly in offline settings. This study innovatively captures the effect of the language used in online hotel reviews on online consumer ratings in two distinctively different destinations located in culturally different countries: Italy and Russia. Based on almost half a million Booking.com online reviews written by hotel guests in Moscow and Rome, we illuminate if and to what extent domestic vs. foreign language use affects online customer satisfaction. We find that the use of domestic language exerts a positive impact on online ratings in both countries. Implications for hospitality practitioners and managers, developers and managers of online review platforms, and customers of hotel services are discussed.     

“I have to watch my back”: Exploring Chinese hotel guests’ generalized distrust and coping behavior

The hospitality industry has been suffering from a pervasive climate of suspicion among guests who are concerned about potential hygiene or safety issues. From the perspective of protection motivation theory, this study presents a conceptual model elucidating the underlying mechanism through which generalized distrust shapes hotel guests' defensive coping behavior. Exploratory semi-structured interviews and online posts were combined to identify hotel guests' on-site coping strategies and underlying mechanisms. Then, an online questionnaire was distributed to 532 respondents, and structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed research model. Results provide empirical support for the “cognition–emotion–coping behavior” pattern in cognitive appraisal theory. This study offers valuable insight into the management of hotel guests’ generalized distrust.     

Testing the Moderation Effect of Hotel Ambience on the Relationships Among Social Comparison,Affect, Satisfaction,and Behavioral Intentions

This study incorporated the social service environment in the hotel guest affect–satisfaction–behavioral intention model in order to elucidate the effect of social comparison on consumption-based affect by factoring in the moderation effect of hotel ambience on relationships. Structural equation modeling of survey data from hotel guests revealed that social comparison significantly influences hotel guests’ affect, and that affect has a critical role in inducing satisfaction and behavioral intentions. Hotel ambience moderates the model’s relationships – high ambience strengthens the relationships more so than low ambience. Results affirm the inclusion of social environments in predicting hotel guest experiences and shed light on managerial implications for bettering service provision.     

Hotel safety and security systems: Bridging the gap between managers and guests

Safety and security are important factors in guests’ selection of a hotel. Hoteliers normally follow local regulations when designing a hotel's safety and security systems, but which system features hotel guests perceive to be the most important and which they expect to find in place remain open questions. The main aim of this research is thus to investigate the gap between hotel safety and security managers’ and hotel guests’ perceptions of the relative importance of safety and security facilities. Two sets of questionnaires – designed for managers and guests, respectively – containing 32 attributes were used to gauge respondents’ perceptions of different hotel safety and security system installations. Independent t-tests and one-way ANOVA were employed to examine significant differences in the way managers and guests rate the importance of hotel in-house safety and security systems.The findings reveal that guests perceive “well-equipped fire prevention systems in accordance with local regulations”, “an emergency plan”, “an emergency lighting system”, “a 24-h uniformed security guard” and “the regular testing of hotel safety and security systems” to be the top five in-house safety and security systems, whereas hotel managers perceive “closed-circuit television systems for hotel public areas”, “emergency lighting systems” and “application of a guest key to activate the lifts to guest floors” to be the third through fifth most important. The results also indicate two good matches, six under-perceptions and four over-perceptions, indicating that managers may require a better understanding of guest expectations.In addition to gap analysis, this study discusses the importance of staff safety and security training, the acceptance of high-tech safety and security systems and the need for female guest floors, and provides a number of insights to help hotel managers better understand the needs of their customers, thereby allowing them to employ measures that are likely to keep customers’ satisfied.     

Servicescape,positive affect,satisfaction and behavioral intentions: The moderating role of familiarity

This study is the first to assess the relationships between substantive and communicative servicescape, positive affect, satisfaction, and behavioral intentions in a highly substantively staged hotel setting, as well as the moderating effects of brand and architectural familiarity. One hundred fifty online responses were obtained from guests who stayed at a hotel in the Rioja region of Spain, designed by world-renowned architect Frank Gehry, famous for creating architectural landmarks that disrupt the local landscape. Data were analyzed utilizing Partial Least Squares – Structural Equation Modeling (PLS-SEM). Findings show that both substantive and communicative servicescape positively influence hotel customers’ positive affect, which has a positive impact on satisfaction, and which in turn significantly increases behavioral intentions. Brand familiarity moderates the relationship between substantive servicescape and positive affect, with the influence being greater for participants with low familiarity than for those with high familiarity. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed in detail.     

How Does the Work Status Affect Employees’ Job Attitude and Behavior in the Hotel Industry?

The study focuses on how work status impacts employees’ perception of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance in the hotel industry. Also, it explores whether supervisors perceive employees’ job attitudes and behavior in the same way as they perceive. Data were collected from a self-administered survey for five-star hotel employees and supervisors in Seoul, South Korea. A total of 335 valid responses were collected from 280 employees and 65 supervisors and analyzed by using structural equation modeling. The results of the study indicated that nonstandard employees expressed higher job satisfaction and higher organizational commitment but perceived lower job performance than standard employees did. Work status had no significant moderating effect on the relationships between job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance; however, the results of this study indicated that supervisors’ perceptions of nonstandard employees’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance were quite different from those of the nonstandard employees themselves. This study suggests that hotel operators should develop strategies to fully utilize nonstandard employees who reveal potential for quality service to guests.     

Hospitality diversity management and job satisfaction: The mediating role of organizational commitment across individual differences

The present study examines the effects of diversity management on hospitality employees’ organizational commitment and their job satisfaction taking into account individual differences. A representative sample of hotel workers were surveyed in the Canary Island, one of the main tourist destinations in the world, which receives over fifteen million tourists a year. Using moderated mediation analyses, the study confirms our hypothesis that employees’ perceptions of diversity management have a positive and significant direct effect on job satisfaction. In addition, an indirect effect through employees’ organizational commitment was found. Results support the moderating role of age, but not of ethnic origin or gender on the proposed mediation. From a managerial perspective, hoteliers should be encouraged to consider diversity management when they plan their human resource policies due to its positive effects on employees’ job satisfaction and organizational commitment.     

A diary study of work consequences for hotel employees victimized by supervisor from a demand-resource perspective on employee emotions

How would perceiving oneself as a victim of abusive supervisor behavior affect one’s work attitudes? This study examines the mediating role of emotional change on the detrimental work outcomes caused by hotel employees’ perceived victim identity. It further investigates how emotional exhaustion moderates the relationship between perceived victim identity and two outcome variables, daily job satisfaction and work engagement. The research hypotheses were tested by a multi-level analysis (cf., hierarchical linear modeling) using a sample of 128 hotel employees in China who took surveys twice per day over 14 consecutive days. The findings show that emotional change significantly mediates the negative effect of hotel employees’ perceived victim identity on their work attitudes, and emotional exhaustion moderates this effect such that higher exhaustion exacerbates the negative relationship. Theoretical and practical implications of the findings for hospitality researchers and practitioners are discussed.     

“I am so ashamed of my body”: Obese guests’ experiences in hotels

The hotel experience of obese people is examined in this exploratory study, addressing a segment of the population thus far ignored by hospitality scholars. The findings are based on 32 semi-structured interviews with American obese men and women living in the Virginia area. The results revealed that almost all participants’ hotel experience was affected by constraints arising from the physical environment, but more so, from other guests gazing at them. The thematic analysis of the experiences of obese hotel guests suggest that two relevant spaces in the hotel can be distinguished: the guest room and the public space accessible to all guests. These spaces differ in the difficulties experienced as well as the emotions that evoked among those guests. Overall, the findings indicate that people’s body and its image is crucial for the understanding of the hotel experience, as lookism is a critical barrier obese people face.     

The effect of perceived error stability,brand perception,and relationship norms on consumer reaction to data breaches

The issue of data breaches has received increasing attention in the hospitality industry. Companies’ efforts to fix such errors affect consumers’ evaluations and behavioral intentions toward those companies. This study investigates the impact of perceived error stability on hotel guests’ intentions to spread positive word-of-mouth (WOM) about a hotel. The findings reveal that when a data breach occurs, consumers are likely to spread positive WOM about a company that is typically considered competent if the consumers perceive the error stability to be low rather than high. Consumers have similar reactions to companies with which they have communal relationships. This research suggests that hotels should strategically allocate their resources on the basis of brand perception in the minds of their target consumers as well as their relationships with their target markets.     

Comparing local and foreign perceptions of service quality of five-star hotels in Sri Lanka

Using the SERVQUAL model, this study analyses the survey data from 400 local and foreign guests of five-star hotels in Sri Lanka. The study discovered local visitors were less satisfied with the assurance aspect of hotel service, while foreign visitors were less satisfied with the empathy aspect. Overall, foreign visitors had higher expectations and perceptions of hotel service compared to locals. The study demonstrates variations between local and foreign visitors’ perception and satisfaction of hotel service quality. This sheds light on differing treatments expected by foreign visitors than their domestic counterparts which is useful in strategic decision-making and service improvement.     

Big data for big insights: Investigating language-specific drivers of hotel satisfaction with 412,784 user-generated reviews

This study leveraged the advantages of user-generated reviews with the aim of offering new insights into the determinants of hotel customer satisfaction by discriminating among customers by language group. From a collection of 412,784 user-generated reviews on TripAdvisor for 10,149 hotels from five Chinese cities, we found that foreign tourists, who speak diverse languages (English, German, French, Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, Japanese, and Russian), differ substantially in terms of their emphasis on the roles of various hotel attributes (“Rooms,” “Location,” “Cleanliness,” “Service,” and “Value”) in forming their overall satisfaction rating for hotels. Chinese tourists domestically exhibit distinct preferences for room-related hotel attributes when compared to foreign tourists. Major interaction effects are revealed between the attributes “Rooms” and “Service” and between “Value” and “Service”.     

Non-verbal communication in hospitality: At the intersection of religion and gender

Given the criticality of successful bilateral (guest–employee) interactions in the increasingly internationalised hospitality business environment, the overarching aim of this study is to determine whether religion (Buddhism, Islam, Hinduism, and Christianity) plays a role in how hotel employees’ non-verbal communication is perceived by guests. In addition, we are interested in understanding perceptions of hotel employees’ non-verbal behaviour from the perspective of the intersection of religion and gender. This exploratory research is based on cross-sectional data collected from 384 hotel guests in Dhaka, Bangladesh. Results showed that Christian guests perceived proxemics, physical appearance and paralanguage of hotel employees less favourably than Muslim guests did. Effects of religion on kinesics and proxemics also depended on gender. Implications are discussed theoretically in terms of cross-religious discourse and practically in terms of workforce training.     

Web reviews influence on expectations and purchasing intentions of hotel potential customers

The objective of the paper is to study the impact that hotel guests reviews posted on consumer-generated websites have on the consumer decision-making process and service expectations.An experimental study has been conducted to test the hypotheses and the research question. 349 young adults were involved in an online survey that asked to imagine searching for a hotel and reading other customers’ reviews of a hypothetical chosen hotel. Three scenarios were created by studying a few comments posted by customers on the main websites used by tourists.Results show a positive correlation between both hotel purchasing intention and expectations of the customers and valence of the review. On the contrary, the presence of hotel managers’ responses to guests’ reviews has a negative impact on purchasing intentions.The study enriches the stream of research on word-of-mouth in the hospitality industry and analyses a new operational problem for lodging managers. Hotels should reply to online customer reviews or not?     

Service quality and its effect on customer satisfaction and customer behavioral intentions: hotel and ryokan guests in Japan

This study analyzes the effect of service quality on customer satisfaction and customer behavioral intentions at hotels and ryokan (traditional Japanese inns). In this empirical research, questionnaires were sent to guests at seven sites: three hotels and four ryokan. Service quality, as perceived by guests, affected customer satisfaction and customer behavioral intention. Results from this empirical study show strong evidence of service quality as perceived by guests being influenced by the type of accommodation. Also, among service quality factors, “physical aspect” had the most powerful impact on customer satisfaction and customer behavioral intention. “Creativeness” ranked second, followed by “unexpected service” and “encounter performance”. The prominence of physical aspects probably reflects the distinctiveness of the service of offering a one-night stay. However, as a certain level of physical facilities is taken for granted at lodging facilities above a certain price, “creativeness”, the second most powerful factor, becomes decisively important.     

Hotel customers’ environmentally responsible behavioral intention: Impact of key constructs on decision in green consumerism

Since rapidly growing numbers of customers prefer environmentally responsible products, efforts to “green” hotel operations are becoming increasingly important. The study reported here was designed to investigate guests’ intention formation when selecting an environmentally responsible hotel. The intention was to extend the Model of Goal-directed Behavior (MGB) by integrating several essential variables (environmental awareness, perceived effectiveness, and eco-friendly behavior and reputation) in explicating customers’ eco-friendly behavior. Findings from the measurement model indicated that study variables included a satisfactory level of reliability and validity. Results from the structural modeling revealed that the proposed theoretical framework had a strong ability to anticipate intention; incorporated constructs that played a vital role in hotel guests’ decision formation; and identified attitudes and desires that acted as mediators. The role of established variables in the original MGB was redefined. Our model had superior prediction power over the MGB, accounting for guests’ environmentally friendly buying behavior accurately.