Disentangling customer delight: a needs-based analysis of senior tourists in hotels

ABSTRACT

In today’s competitive environment, customer delight plays a crucial role in enhancing customer loyalty and positive word-of-mouth. This paper provides a needs-based analysis of customer delight in hotels among senior tourists, who represent an increasingly important target for the hospitality industry. A total of 38 senior tourists were interviewed. Data were collected utilizing the critical incident technique and analysed through text mining analysis. Four main dimensions of customer delight emerged from the study that represent the fulfilment of different needs: learning, authenticity, exclusivity, and sharing. These findings theoretically contribute to the understanding of guest delight from a senior tourist’s perspective and can help hotel managers to design delightful customer experiences.

KEYWORDS:

• Senior tourists
• customer delight
• authenticity
• emotions
• uniqueness

Disclosure statement

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

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Vania Vigolo

Vania Vigolo, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Management at the Department of Business Administration, University of Verona, Italy. Her research interests include tourist behaviour, tourism and hospitality marketing, services marketing, and branding strategies. She has published work in several journals including International Journal of Hospitality Management, International Journal of Tourism Research, Psychology & Marketing, The TQM Journal, Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly and Journal of Environmental Management.

Angelo Bonfanti

Angelo Bonfanti, Ph.D., is Associate Professor of Business Management at the Department of Business Administration, University of Verona, Italy. He is coordinator of the Editorial Review Team of Sinergie Italian Journal of Management. His current research interests include service management and marketing, especially hospitality and retail management, and social entrepreneurship. He has published articles in several journals such as International Journal of Hospitality Management, Psychology & Marketing, The TQM Journal, Corporate Communication: An International Journal, Management Decision, and Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly.

Olga Rivera-Hernaez

Olga Rivera-Hernaez, Ph.D., is Professor of Organization and Business Policy at the Faculty of Economics and Business Administration, Deusto Business School, Spain. She researches in knowledge management, organizational learning and innovation applied to active and healthy ageing, senior tourism, robotics and artificial intelligence, competitiveness and employment. She has published in several journals including Journal of Hospitality Marketing & Management, Journal of Population Ageing, and Journal of Intellectual Capital.