Management of Guest Delight in Hotels: An Exploratory Study

Abstract

Guest delight involves providing unexpected benefits along with the basic services to the guests in hotels. However, as the hotels continue to delight guests by providing delighter features along with the basic service, their expectations continue to increase. In every successive stay, they become inclined to expect the earlier delighter features. These may affect hotels’ profitability. Literature review has pointed out that reenacted and transitory delight may play an important role in the management of guest delight in hotels. The present study has attempted to explore these roles played by these two forms of delight in hotels. A survey was conducted by interviewing 500 repeat guests of 65 hotels in the 5 star deluxe, 4 star, 3 star, Heritage Grand and unclassified categories in India. This study has established the possible role of reenacted and transitory delight in management (continuation) of guest delight in hotels. Reenacted delight in hotels is connected with guests’ anticipation of similar value addition in their subsequent visits. Transitory delight in hotels is linked with guests’ expectation of changes in value addition in their consequent visits. This study has also determined certain categories of guests who could be targeted for delight through staggered delivery of pleasant surprises in order to create reenacted and transitory delights among them.