Abstract
The growth in the number and variety of boutique hotels in tourist destinations has stimulated a wide range of research studies. Nevertheless, within Malaysia, the area remains under studied. In 2008, George Town, a popular heritage destination in Malaysia, was listed as a UNESCO world heritage site, and since then the number of boutique hotels and tourist arrivals have steadily grown. But, to date, there has been no investigation of the determinants of tourists’ revisit intention to boutique hotels. Such a study is timely and needed. Based on the theory of planned behaviour (TPB) as its theoretical foundation, this study investigates the determinants of customers’ revisit intention for boutique hotels. The findings from 78 completed questionnaires indicate that attitude, subjective norm and customer satisfaction influence customers’ revisit intention. Surprisingly, the effect of perceived behavioural control and overall image upon customer revisit intention was not significant.
Highlights
Ever since the city of George Town in Penang was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status in 2008, tourist arrivals have risen sharply
Attitude has the greatest influence on the proposed relationship (β = 0.362, p < 0.01), which shows that study respondents believe that having a favourable attitude toward a boutique hotel plays a role in their decision making and revisit intention
Subjective norm positively and significantly influenced customer revisit intention for boutique hotels in George Town. This result is in line with outcomes from extant empirical studies in the hospitality sector, Han and Kim (2010) and Han et al (2010), and confirms that visitors to boutique hotels are significantly influenced by the opinions of people important to them, which affects their intention to revisit
Summary
Ever since the city of George Town in Penang was awarded UNESCO World Heritage status in 2008, tourist arrivals have risen sharply. This study examines the determinants of customers’ revisit intentions for boutique hotels located in George Town, a UNESCO World Heritage site. The author believed that by gaining the understanding on the relative important of each determinant which influences customers’ revisit intentions will provide valuable insights and suggestion to owner, managers, and hotel operators to further strengthen and improve services offered in achieving customer satisfaction. It helps to guide the marketers on managing their resources and operation in a timely and efficient way. This study sheds light on how hotel operators can direct their resources to influence customers’ future revisit intention
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