Brand prestige and affordable luxury: The role of hotel guest experiences

Abstract

The concept of affordable luxury has elicited attention among hoteliers in recent years. This study developed and tested an instrument to measure hotel guest experiences of an affordable luxury hotel and investigated the influence of three dimensions of hotel guest experience on brand prestige (BP) namely physical environment (PE), guest-to-staff encounters (GSEs), and guest-to-guest encounters (GGEs). A total of 423 usable self-administered questionnaires were obtained from the guests of an affordable luxury hotel. Exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis were used to reduce and confirm the measurement model of the proposed constructs, respectively. Structural equation modeling was adopted to test the proposed relationships. All three dimensions are significant antecedents of BP. PE is the most important, followed by GSEs, and then GGEs. A modified importance–performance analysis (IPA) was conducted by comparing the perceived performance and the derived importance of the guest experience attributes. This demonstrates how individual hotel can use the IPA to identify specific areas of improvement on the hotel guest experience attributes.