Sensory Marketing and its Effect on Hotel Market-Share: Perception of Hotel Customers

Abstract

Today the competitive environment of the hotel industry drives the search for new strategies and ways to differentiate itself from its competitors. One of the core trends in this sphere is sensory marketing that can reach customers' hearts, minds, and wallets, by using all five human senses (taste, smell, sight, touch and sound). The purpose of this study is to investigate the effect of sensory marketing on Egyptian hotel market share among customers" perception and actual behaviour based on implementing seven elements of sensory marketing within five-star hotels in Cairo. A quantitative approach was use to achieve its aim. Data collection technique used a structured questionnaire to collect data from 400 customers at five-star hotels in Cairo which counted 33 hotels to identify their opinions on sensory marketing adoption, and its effect on Egyptian hotel market share. Statistical analyses were performed using software SPSS version 22 and systematic random sampling was used. The study results have been considered significant at p ≤ 0.05. This study contributed to the effect of sensory marketing on hotel market-share. However, there is a lack of studies that showed the effect of sensory on hotel market-share among customer perception five-star hotels in Cairo.

The travel dream experience in pandemic times

“…The literature has been fruitful regarding sensory experience in tourism, with empirical studies covering a wide range of environments and contexts (e.g., Agapito et al, 2014). Indeed, sensory marketing has been given increased attention in the last few years (e.g., Loureiro et al, 2013;Ali & Ahmed, 2019) since it is seen as marketing engaging consumers' senses and affecting their perception, judgment, and behaviour (Krishna, 2012).…”