Quality aspects vs consumption values: What affects intention to book hotels in the post-Covid era?

Abstract

The Covid-19 pandemic had affected the hospitality sector the most due to lockdowns and other government restrictions. As hotels are trying to recover from the losses suffered during the pandemic, hotels can prepare better strategies if they are able to understand the factors affecting customers’ intention to book hotels in the post-Covid era from the Service Quality (SERVQUAL) and Consumption Value Theory lens. Based on a multi-method study containing 33 qualitative interviews, 18274 online reviews and 311 survey responses, it was found that customers prefer ‘less-crowded clean hotels’ which follow Covid-related guidelines properly. The customer reviews about hotels revealed consumption values like, epistemic (“view”, “spacious”), functional (“food”, “location”), conditional (offers/discounts), and service qualities like, customer service (food quality, staff behavior, room cleanliness), and empathy (comfort, peacefulness). The quantitative analysis found that reliability, brand credibility, and brand loyalty affect customer’s hotel booking intentions. This multi-method study contributes to the existing literature on the values and quality aspects that affect customer behavior in the hospitality and tourism segment. Findings of this study will thus help managers to make better strategies by providing a better view of the consumption values and service quality aspects that affect customer’s hotel booking intention in post-pandemic era.

Keywords:

• Brand credibility
• brand loyalty
• consumption values
• for indexing
• hotel booking
• service quality

Acknowledgement

The infrastructural support provided by IMI Kolkata, FORE School of Management New Delhi and Qatar University in completing this paper is gratefully acknowledged.

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Arghya Ray

Dr. Arghya Ray has been working as an Assistant Professor in the area of Management Information Systems and Analytics at International Management Institute Kolkata. Prior to joining IMI Kolkata, he has been an Assistant Professor at FORE School of Management (FSM), Adamas University, and a Visiting Faculty at Birla Global University, IIM Ranchi and IIM Jammu. He also has an industrial experience of two years at TCS Limited. With B.Tech. (Silver Medalist) from SRM University, and a Ph.D. from IIM Ranchi, he has to his credit many publications in top level ABDC and ABS listed journals. He has also attended around ten national and international conferences. His research mainly focusses on understanding customer perspectives from social-media feeds in different domains like food delivery, e-learning and travel agency services.

Siddharth Gupta

Siddharth Gupta is a MBA student at FORE School of Management New Delhi. His has a passion for big data analytics in domains like marketing and tourism.

Nripendra P. Rana

Dr. Nripendra P. Rana is a Professor in Marketing at the College of Business and Economics at Qatar University, Doha, Qatar. His current research interests focus primarily on adoption and diffusion of emerging ICTs, e-commerce, m-commerce, e-government and digital and social media marketing. He has published more than 250 papers in a range of leading academic journals, conference proceedings, books etc. He has co-edited five books on digital and social media marketing, emerging markets and supply and operations management. He has also co-edited special issues, organized tracks, mini-tracks and panels in leading conferences. He is a Chief Editor of International Journal of Electronic Government Research and Associate Editor of International Journal of Information Management. He is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy (SFHEA) in the UK.