Understanding the opaque priority of safety measures and hotel customer choices after the COVID-19 pandemic: an application of discrete choice analysis

ABSTRACT

Hotels are vulnerable to health-related crises due to their communal nature of living spaces and the unavoidable contact with strangers. Consequently, many hotels have initiated safety measures against COVID-19. However, different influences of such measures on customers’ hotel choice behavior are yet to be understood. Therefore, this research conducted a discrete choice analysis to reveal the relative importance of eleven safety measures including price per night and further estimate customers’ willingness to pay more. This study contributes to the safety literature in the hotel context and to the practical knowledge of hotel resiliency planning after a health crisis.

KEYWORDS:

• Safety measures
• hotels
• health crisis
• discrete choice analysis
• customer choice
• COVID-19 pandemic

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.