Guest delight involves providing unexpected benefits along with the basic services to the guests in hotels. However, as the hotels continue to delight guests by providing delighter features along with the basic service, their expectations continue to increase. In every successive stay, they become inclined to expect the earlier delighter features. These may affect hotels’ profitability. Literature review has pointed out that reenacted and transitory delight may play an important role in the management of guest delight in hotels. The present study has attempted to explore these roles played by these two forms of delight in hotels. A survey was conducted by interviewing 500 repeat guests of 65 hotels in the 5 star deluxe, 4 star, 3 star, Heritage Grand and unclassified categories in India. This study has established the possible role of reenacted and transitory delight in management (continuation) of guest delight in hotels. Reenacted delight in hotels is connected with guests’ anticipation of similar value addition in their subsequent visits. Transitory delight in hotels is linked with guests’ expectation of changes in value addition in their consequent visits. This study has also determined certain categories of guests who could be targeted for delight through staggered delivery of pleasant surprises in order to create reenacted and transitory delights among them.

It is not an exaggeration that the present-day competitive environment calls for continuous and consistent delivery of customer delight in any sector of the business. The studies conducted by separate researchers across different settings suggest the existence of a common model sequencing the events that lead to customer delight. This study attempts to empirically establish the model after conceptualizing it. Discriminant analysis is used as a basic tool to establish the relationship between different events using the data generated from a sample of repeat hotels guests. The results show that surpassing of expectations of the hotel guests affect their perception on pleasant surprises, which in turn affect their consequent happiness. Such happiness along with their perceived excitement and perceived positive feelings create a delighting experience for them. It is hoped that the findings shall encourage other researchers to test this model in different business environments.

No abstract

No abstract