Customer delight: perception of hotel spa consumers

Abstract

Delighted customers are those whose expectations have been exceeded by the service provider. Competitors in the hotel business need to go beyond what is expected in order to satisfy the guest with an unpredictable positive experience. This study was aimed to clarify the significance of customer delight as an antecedent to customer loyalty, in five-star hotel spas in Portugal. To better understand spa consumers' perception of delight, the development and testing of an integrated model was undertaken by examining the relationship between perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, loyalty and customer delight. The model was tested using surveyed data from 427 spa consumers and validated using partial least squares (PLS) technique. The results indicated that satisfaction had a direct positive effect on customer delight and, consequently, influences the effect of customer delight on customer loyalty.

Customer Loyalty During Pandemy: Understanding Loyalty Through The Lens of Online Ride Hailing Service Quality

“…It can be beneficially obtained in a way to improve service quality as proven on the empirical researches (Lai, 2014;Lemy et al, 2019;Lin et al, 2016;Nguyen-Phuoc et al, 2020). Furthermore, service quality that is defined as consumers' perceptions as well as expectations before receiving services and, the means by which services are provided simultaneously , has very strong influence on (Al-Hawari, 2011;Elias-Almeida et al, 2016;Torres & Kline, 2006) and the very close relationship (Choi et al, 2019;Kao et al, 2016;Wattanakamolchai et al, 2016) with customer delight which has been proved in some research literature (Ahrholdt et al, 2016;Joudeh & Dandis, 2018;Wang, 2011).…”

Enhancing Customer Delight in Luxury Hotel/Resort Spa through Positive Emotions and Service Quality

“…Likewise, customer perceptions of different service dimensions affect overall delight (Oliver et al, 1997;Ahrhodt et al, 2017). This relationship was also supported by Elias-Almeida et al, (2016), which found that service quality in five-star hotel spas in Portugal had a positive impact on customer delight. Consequently: H3: The service quality dimensions will positively impact spa-goers' delight…”

“…The findings were congruent with Snoj and Mumel's (2002) and Lo et al, (2105) which found also that responsiveness and reliability were the most important two quality attributes for spa-goers. However, these four service quality predictors of delight were, noticeably, related to staff performance, which highlights the impact of the "people" aspect in the creation of customer delight in a spa settings, as in Elias-Almeida et al, (2016). This can be explained by the fact that spa is a very personal service where visitors' experience is typically influenced by the quality of interaction between the visitor and the staff.…”

“…Spa managers must aspire excellence in service quality to cater for delightful customers. Previous research has shown that customers who are delighted with the services tend to be loyal; and a key to maintain loyal customers is to deliver quality services (Kim et al, 2015;Elias-Almeida, 2016;Ahrholdt, et al, 2017). Spa managers and operators should design loyalty programs for their customers, which is likely to make loyal spa-goers feel delighted.…”

“…Oliver et al, 1997;Finn, 2005; Barnes et al, 2010). Besides, another research stream ensures that customer delight is an outcome of service quality; based on the reasoning that service quality is a key to building strong relationships with customers and ensuring their loyalty (Elias-Almeida et al, 2016;Ahrholdt et al, 2017). Nonetheless, the association between service quality and delight has received little attention in tourism and hospitality research.…”