This study examines the influence of hotels' green practices, recent amenities, and traditionally salient attributes on customers' overall online evaluation, revisit intention and hotel performance. The researchers acquired data from more than one hundred US hotels located across different states with the assistance of an international hotel chain. In order to demonstrate the incremental information content of recently-adopted hotel amenities and levels of green initiatives, the study compared two extended models with the basic model, which incorporates only salient attributes such as cleanliness, location, room, service and value.
MethodsResearchers conducted focus-group interviews through video and telephone conferences with a total of eight managers. We controlled work experience and age in order to select the proper focus group members. They represented different functional departments: rooms, marketing, food and beverage, human resources, and engineering.
ResultsThe findings indicate that the availability of recently-added amenities such as free Wi-Fi, pet boarding, free self-parking, multilingual staff, and airport transportation, as well as green practice initiatives, have a strong, incremental predictive power in explaining guests' overall online review ratings, price premium and revisit intention.
ConclusionThis study confirmed the incremental predictive power of recent emerging attributes and green practices on guests' overall attitudes and their willingness to pay a price premium. Thus, traditional salient hotel attributes, for example, service, location, value for money, and room cannot fully meet guests' demanding expectations. This study's results corroborate the findings of Ottenbacher and Gnoth (2005) that hotels relying on the investment in these basic tangible or intangible facilities or services will not be any more successful.