The impact of hotel design uniqueness on booking intention and willingness to pay

Abstract

Hotel customers are increasingly demanding more unique, modern designs and personalized services, but the literature has rarely explored how customers’ perceptions of hotel uniqueness relate to their purchasing decisions. To address this gap in the literature, this study tries to understand how hotel customers interpret hotel designs and translate them into their expectations and behaviors. Hotel customers book a room before reaching their destination; therefore, making visually-appealing hotel images available online is the most reliable way to begin creating a unique booking experience. The results of this study indicate that customers’ perceived uniqueness of hotel property design contributes to developing design-related value perceptions (i.e., aesthetic, social, and functional) and that those value perceptions, in turn, eventually increase both booking intention and willingness to pay. Those relationships differ by the purpose of travel (business vs. leisure). As such, the findings clearly suggest that each design-related value perception needs to be separately understood to increase customer willingness to pay and booking intention.