Are hotel guests bothered by unlucky floor or room assignments?

Abstract

Superstitious beliefs can guide individuals’ decision-making and change behavior. Different cultures believe that some numbers are ‘lucky’ and other numbers are ‘unlucky’. This can have significant business implications. There is little academic research into how these numerology superstitions impact the hotel sector. We conduct a quantitative survey among Chinese and Western hotel guests to determine the extent to which these guests are influenced by numerological superstitions in their hotel floor and hotel room numbering. Socio-demographic, psychographic and situational characteristics are used as explanatory variables. The results show that the Chinese were more likely to engage in superstitious behavior when it comes to feeling uncomfortable and seeking a change from an unlucky hotel floor and room number than Western guests. For the Western cohort, internal (demographic and psychographic) determinants of superstitious behavior are more significant, whereas, in the Chinese cohort, both internal and external (situation, or trip-specific) determinants influence superstitious behavior.