Analysing the Relationship Between Hotels’ Internal Marketing and Employee Engagement Dimensions

Abstract

Purpose – In the hotel industry, as in all services, the goal is to have satisfied employees who are engaged in their job. From a marketing perspective, one of the possible ways companies can achieve that is by adopting internal marketing practices. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to research the relationship between internal marketing and different dimensions of employee engagement (emotional, cognitive and physical) in the hotel industry. Design/Methodology/Approach – The data was collected through a paper-and-pencil questionnaire on a sample of 573 hotel employees in Croatia. Adapted scales from previous research were used for measuring research constructs using the back-translation technique. Conceptual model and hypotheses were tested with covariance based structural equation modelling. Findings and implications – The results show that internal marketing had a positive and statistically significant impact on emotional and cognitive engagement. Cognitive engagement, in turn, had a positive impact on emotional and physical engagement, while emotional engagement had a positive impact on physical engagement. Limitations – The use of self-evaluations could potentially cause social desirability bias. The study is limited only to Croatian hotels, which might vary from hotel industries in other parts of the world. Originality – This paper contributes to the development of internal marketing, as it identifies the relationship between internal marketing and different forms of employee engagement. Employee engagement is approached multidimensionally as consisting of emotional, cognitive and physical engagement. By distinguishing different engagement dimensions, the paper contributes to the theory of personal engagement with testing employee engagement concept in the hotel industry.