Identification of common sustainable hotel attributes and corresponding guest perceived personal benefits. Qualitative research results for the project "Intention to book sustainable hotels: application and extension of the Theory of planned behaviour".

Abstract

Although more and more Hotels adopt sustainable management practices worldwide, understanding how to increase consumer booking intentions in such establishments remains a challenge. This project aims to apply and extend the Theory of planned behaviour and design communication messages to persuade hotel guests' booking intentions. The current report details a qualitative analysis of sustainable hotel management attributes, as well as guest perceived personal benefits resulting from staying in a sustainably managed establishment. The study used 12 common sustainable hotel management attributes to ascertain how experts and hotel guests perceive personal benefits linked to a stay in a sustainable hotel. The main research findings show that perceived personal benefits of staying in a sustainably managed hotel relate mostly to guests and experts linking sustainability to improved hotel quality. This experience can be described by specific words such as better quality service, more authentic experiences, more exposure to information, environmental and social awareness and actions and healthier living. The next project phase will apply the results from this research to empirically test how Swiss, German and US travel markets react to differently formulated marketing and communication messages and how these relate to their sustainable hotel booking intentions.