The goal for the coming years is to get insight in the guest experience in hotels. What is guest experience? How to measure guest experience? What is the relation between guest experience and guest loyalty? And finally, what tangible elements in the physical environment of hotels and the contact with hotel employees may improve the experience of hotel guests? And in what way should these elements be changed? This paper describes the first and second step towards this goal: a theoretical background of guest experience and the development of the Guest Experience Scan for NH Hoteles. This Guest Experience Scan is a quantitative instrument trying to measure guests’ affective evaluation of the physical environment of the hotel and the contact with the hotel employees.
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Given that it is essential for hotels to understand how guests experience hospitality, hotel managers need more concrete and tangible insights into this issue to improve their service. Quantitative research on experience of the physical environment and employee contact has shown that the comfort of hotel rooms and an inviting ambience are the factors that most influence guest loyalty. This exploratory paper employs verbal and visual association methods to translate comfortable and inviting into tangible sensory characteristics. Results show association of comfortable with lingering, sitting, resting, natural colours, rounded-off rectangles, and multiple layers. By contrast, inviting is associated with common (meeting) areas such as corridors, white, grey, transparency, and colourful accessories. Visual dataproved suitable for identifying tangible (sensory) characteristics, and delivering concrete recommendations for improving invitingness and comfort.
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In the era of social media, online reviews have become a crucial factor influencing the exposure of tourist destinations and the decision-making of potential tourists, exerting a profound impact on the sustainable development of these destinations. However, the influence of review valence on visit intention, especially the role of affective commitment and reputation (ability vs. responsibility), remains unclear. Drawing on emotion as a social information theory, this paper aims to elucidate the direct impact of different review valences on tourists’ visit intentions, as well as mediating mechanisms and boundary conditions. Three experiments indicate that positive (vs. negative) reviews can activate stronger affective commitment and visit intention, with affective commitment also playing a mediating role. Additionally, destination reputation significantly moderates the after-effects of review valences. More specifically, a responsibility reputation (compared with an ability reputation) weakens the effect of negative valence on affective commitment and visit intention. This study provides valuable theoretical insights into how emotional elements in online reviews influence the emotions and attitudes of potential tourists. Particularly for tourism managers, review valence and responsibility reputation hold practical significance in destination marketing.
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