Management of Guest Delight in Hotels: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

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.

A Study of the Commercial Application of Big Data of the International Hotel Group in China: Based on the Case Study of Marriott International

“…At the same time, the big data also provides unprecedented space and potential for people to acquire the insight that is more profound and meanwhile they are what the scholars concern about. At present, the location-based service provided by smart phones has been applied to our daily life [4,5]. Based on the photo-sharing and the locating function of Flickr, [6] collected the massive photo information of tourists to analyze the distribution of time, space and location of the inbound travelers to Hong Kong in order to obtain their behavior difference and space flow, which will provide better management and marketing strategy for tourist companies.…”

Modelling Customer Delight in Hotel Industry

“…This may help in maintaining the constancy of delighter features in the hotels. This fact has been illustrated in an earlier article by Goswami and Sarma (2014).…”

“…These statements are tested with a battery of variables collected from extant literature. Some of these variables include food and beverage quality, availability of food and beverage variety, hygiene of food and beverage, quality of the restaurant, welcoming atmosphere in the hotel, cleanliness and tidiness of the hotel, room furnishings and appearance, cleanliness of the room and room service (Choi & Chu, 2000;Goswami & Sarma, 2010, 2011Heung, 2000;Lynch, 1993;Mohsin & Lockyer, 2010;Poon & Low, 2005;Tsang & Qu, 2000). Groenenboom and Jones (2003) have highlighted the importance of security for guests in hotels.…”

“…As such, this will result in long-term financial and perceptual benefits, which every firm aspires to have. However, as any such firms including hotels continue to delight guests by providing additional delighter features along with the basic service, guests' expectations are liable to have a continuous surge (Goswami & Sarma, 2011). Consequently, in every successive visit, guests tend to expect the added delighter features.…”

Entrepreneurial marketing: an analytical viewpoint on perceived quality and customer delight

“…The magnitude of quality predictor variables is measured by using the statements, developed on the basis of literature review. These statements are rated on five points interval scale (Oliver et al , 1997; Goswami and Sarma, 2014; Dubey et al , 2016). These ten dimensions of quality predictor variables are utilized classify customer delight on gender basis (Juwaheer, 2011).…”