Making Sense of Fengshui and Customers’ Experiences of Hotel Room Stays: A Vignette-Induced Interview Approach

ABSTRACT

Despite the well-documented cultural importance of fengshui, little research has been carried out to provide a theoretically complex view of its impacts on customers’ experiences of hotel stays. This study explores customers’ perceptions of hotel rooms’ fengshui and seeks to make sense of links between the environment, fengshui beliefs and hotel-staying experiences. Under a qualitative paradigm, a vignette-induced interview approach was employed to deconstruct beliefs in fengshui and their influence on customers’ perceptions of hotel rooms. The findings reveal that customers’ beliefs in fengshui explicitly or implicitly affect their perceptions of environmental stimuli, evaluations of hotel rooms, and behavioral intentions. Moreover, hotel guests focus more on prevention than promotion when staying in hotel rooms, especially those with strong beliefs in fengshui. Based on the findings, a conceptual framework is developed by integrating the perceptional process model and the regulatory focus theory, which may usefully inform future quantitative research.

探索风水信仰对酒店住客体验的影响 : 基于情境诱导访谈法摘要

尽管风水的文化重要性已被广泛记载，但极少有研究从理论视角探索消费者的风水信仰对其入住酒店体验的影响。本文通过图片情境诱导访谈法，解构了多感官环境因素、顾客的风水信仰和对酒店房间风水的感知，以及酒店住宿体验之间的关系。访谈结果表明，酒店住客的风水信仰或隐或显地影响着他们对酒店房间环境刺激的感知，进而影响其对酒店住宿的评价以及换房与否和未来重返意愿等行为意向。本研究还发现，对于有着较强风水信仰的住客，引导其采取避害反应的防御调节焦点比引导其采取趋利反应的促进调节焦点对他们的行为意向起着更为重要的调节作用。这就要求酒店从业者在酒店房间设计上格外关注相关的风水禁忌。本文将感知过程模型与调节焦点理论相结合，提出了风水信仰影响酒店住客体验的概念模型。不仅为未来的定量研究提供了理论指导，也为旅游及酒店管理从业者提供了可参考的决策依据。

KEYWORDS:

• Customer experience
• fengshui
• hotel industry
• hotel design
• traditional Chinese culture
• vignette-induced interview approach

关键词:

• 顾客体验
• 风水
• 酒店业
• 酒店设计
• 中国传统文化
• 情境诱导访谈法

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Jialin (Snow) Wu

Jialin (Snow) Wu is Senior Lecturer in Business School at University of Huddersfield, West Yorkshire, UK. Her research interests cover sustainable tourism, sustainability in business, pro-environmental behavior, and digital marketing in service industry including tourism, hospitality, events and leisure (E-mail: [email protected]).

Nan Chen

Nan Chen is Research Assistant Professor in School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China. Her research interests include tourist-host interaction, consumer behavior, and event destination marketing (E-mail: [email protected]).

Christine Y. H. Zeng

Christine Y.H. Zeng is Postdoctoral Fellow in School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong SAR, China. Her research interests include tourist decision-making and cross-cultural studies (E-mail: [email protected]).

Markus Schuckert

Markus Schuckert is Professor and Department Chair of Hospitality Management (HMGT), Peter T. Paul College of Business and Economics at the University of New Hampshire (UNH), Durham, U.S.A. His research interests are digital marketing, travel technology and strategic management in hospitality and tourism (E-mail: [email protected]).