Lifestyle Hotel Research Articles

Guests’ Aesthetic experience with lifestyle hotels: An application of LDA topic modelling analysis

The purpose of this study is to systematically explore lifestyle hotel guests' aesthetic experiences. This study adopts word frequency analysis, latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) topic modelling analysis and manual coding to systematically analyse 11,239 online reviews posted by guests from 131 lifestyle hotels in eight cities in China. A framework is developed to organize the identified themes and illustrate lifestyle hotel guests' aesthetic experiences. The framework revealed that lifestyle hotels embrace the concept of “bleisure” travel—blending business and leisure by offering high-end lodging, flexible tourism destination elements, and event services that cater to the needs of today's independent guests. The findings suggest that lifestyle hotel guests stress multiple functions of a hotel, especially the spiritual. Guided by the aesthetic experience at lifestyle hotels, hotel managers can cater to the full spectrum of hotel guests' aesthetic experience when implementing marketing strategies.

Pentingnya Customer Service Terhadap Permintaan dan persepsi Pelanggan Cafe Life Style Hotel Surabaya

In every consumer decision-making process to purchase a product, the underlying intention of the consumer is to fulfil their needs and desires. Additionally, each consumer has their own unique perception of their choices when selecting a product. Consumer perception is not solely dependent on physical stimuli but also on stimuli related to the surrounding environment and individual circumstances. This engagement activity was conducted at Cafe the Lifestyle Hotel Surabaya. The purpose of this engagement was to analyse consumer activities in the demand and supply conveyed by Cafe the Lifestyle Hotel Surabaya. The engagement employed active participation, observation, interviews, and related documentation methods to obtain valid data and information regarding consumer behaviour. The results of this engagement indicated that the perception of service quality was highly favourable among the visitors of Cafe the Lifestyle. As a result, the visitors felt satisfied and remained loyal. Furthermore, the perception of pricing was positive as the prices offered by the Cafe were deemed appropriate, and the services provided were in line with visitors' expectations.

라이프스타일 호텔의 디자인 특성에 관한 연구 - 어퍼 업스케일, 업스케일, 그리고 어퍼 미드스케일 라이프스타일 호텔을 중심으로 -

With the change in modern consumption culture, the market share of boutique hotels that provide differentiated designs and services has increased, unlike global chain hotels, which have also provided standardized facilities and services in the hotel industry. Recognized by this change, the global hotel chain will create a lifestyle hotel brand that combines the characteristics of boutique hotels with a standardized operating system. This research aims to examine how the design characteristics of existing boutique hotels are strategically applied to lifestyle hotels by limiting the scope of research to upscale and midscale lifestyle hotels that occupy highly competitive mid-market. First of all, we will look at the background and definition of the emergence of lifestyle hotels, the current status and trend of lifestyle hotels, and target customers. In addition, how the design characteristics of boutique hotels derived from previous studies, such as playfulness, narrative, diversity, locality, and fluidity, were applied in each lifestyle brand, was investigated. As a result, hotel brands that consider the younger generation as their target customers show high play and diversity, and locality is high in hotel brands that value experience. Epicuality is linked to the designer

Consumer perspectives of boutique and lifestyle hotels: Is there a difference?

Boutique and lifestyle hotels constitute a growing segment of the U.S. lodging industry. Despite this growth, there is a consensus among scholars that the terms “boutique hotel” and “lifestyle hotel” are poorly defined; moreover, current research on the sector focuses on lodging industry practitioners’ perceptions of the two types of accommodation, overlooking lodging consumers’ understanding. To elucidate how lodging consumers distinguish between these two types of accommodation, this study examines the drivers of demand for these products within the context of their associated push and pull factors. A survey was administered to a group of hotel users, generating 252 valid responses. It was found, the majority of respondents had little or no knowledge of the terms. However, those respondents who were frequent travelers were aware of both categories and were likely to indicate an intention to use them for future travel. The findings suggest that boutique and lifestyle hotels are not synonymous in consumers’ minds. In fact, consumers have differing expectations for the two styles of accommodation, and these differences are evolving as more consumers experience these products. These findings have implications for hotel developers and marketers.

Towards a lifestyle experience: A phenomenological conceptualization and scale development in the hotel context

The topic of lifestyle has attracted interest both in service providers and marketing researchers. To better understand lifestyle experience, study 1 adopts a phenomenological approach to conceptualize lifestyle experience that is generated within consumers in a hotel setting. It is discovered that sense of community and culture is the spirit of a lifestyle experience that lives up to its name. In addition, it is uncovered that lifestyle experiences essentially meets consumer's higher-ordered psychological social needs. Studies 2, 3, and 4 demonstrate the development of a scale, LHEI—Lifestyle Hotel Experience Index, that captures consumer's lifestyle hotel experience. Such scale can be easily adapted to measure lifestyle experiences in other contexts. This paper contributes to current research by conceptualizing and quantifying the novel lifestyle experience. It contributes to the industry as a wakeup call for more sustainable and consumer-centric strategies in value co-creation. • Conceptualizing lifestyle experience. • Adaptation of phenomenology approach. • Development of the lifestyle hotel experience index (LHEI).

소셜 미디어 데이터를 활용한 라이프스타일 호텔 인식에 영향을 미치는 요인분석 - Vision AI 기반 국내 라이프스타일 호텔의 인스타그램 데이터 분석을 중심으로 -

In an era of uncertainty in the tourism and hospitality industry, hotels should inevitably provide their unique value attached to their space. In this circumstance, global hospitality groups have been creating lifestyle brands in line with the latest trend. Even with the rapid growth of lifestyle brands, the concept of lifestyle hotels is still vague. Besides, lifestyle hotels, especially in South Korea, tend to be developed as multi-purpose complexes combined with retail. Therefore, lifestyle hotel experiences should be studied with broader perspectives, not solely focusing on its primary function of staying. This study aims to identify factors of lifestyle hotels by analyzing user-created content on Social Media. This research examined images and hashtags on an image-based social media: Instagram. Departing from investigating lifestyle hotel brands in South Korea based on 12,913 hashtags and 565 location analysis of 4,242 lifestyle hotel posts, the contents related to three lifestyle hotels(Hotel Cappuccino, L7, and GLAD) were analyzed. For this, a web crawler was developed with Python. A total of 84,585 hashtags and 52,707 images were analyzed using Vision AI to explore the crucial factors. The results demonstrated that design, facilities, setting, and service factors are the most influential in lifestyle hotels. Also, the lifestyle segment reflects the latest lifestyle and hospitality trends. Based on these results, this study suggests the five main categories of factors for future research: design, facilities, setting, service, and trend. Moreover, this research suggests broader uses of big data and deep learning for deriving the factors that influence the perception and evaluation of hotel spaces.

라이프스타일 호텔의 공간구성에 따른 브랜드 경험 특성

As society continues to develop in the modern world, consumers tend to gain unique experiences and intangible values. Due to social changes, brands uses brand experience as a marketing tool to differentiate themselves from other companies. When consumers are exposed to a brand stimuli, they combine this with their internal responses, which influence their overall experience. Hence, creating the brand experience. Therefore, in this research, we would like to analyze the brand experience characteristics of lifestyle hotel spaces, according to the hotel’s composition. The hotel’s space is divided into various rooms, for example, food and beverage, common areas etc. The brand experience characteristics consist of; sensory, emotional, cognitive, and behavioral relationships. Six lifestyle hotels were analyzed based on these characteristics, resulting in the following conclusions. First, to differentiate a lifestyle hotel from another brand, sensory and emotional experiences must be accompanied. Second, room space and food and beverage space shall be produced with a unified theme with differentiation of the concept of the brand. Third, the public space should be directed as a space that can stimulate empathy and interest according to the brand"s own concept. Fourth, other spaces are found to lack the brand"s cognitive experience, so space plans should be made to supplement them in the future.

Lifestyle Experiences: Exploring Key Attributes of Lifestyle Hotels Using Instagram User-Created Contents in South Korea

This study aims to investigate the key attributes of a steadily growing hotel sector (lifestyle hotels), which has shown great success in the global competitive market, by analyzing user-created content on Instagram. The dataset used in this study were prepared from a total of 20,999 lifestyle hotel posts and 24,262 boutique hotel posts created from 2013 to 2020 and retrieved using a Python web crawler. The locations, hashtags, and image data were analyzed based on frequency analysis using social network analysis methods and computer vision technology, after which they were visualized with a geographical information system and Gephi. The results demonstrated that lifestyle hotels share key attributes that differentiate them from others in terms of physical, geospatial, and experiential contexts. Design, location, and management type are the main attributes that comprise the distinct identity of each lifestyle hotel. Moreover, a lifestyle hotel is distinct from a boutique hotel in that staying in the former means consuming experiences with continuous changes. The information and knowledge gained from this research will contribute to bridging the gap between theoretical literature and the practical development of lifestyle hospitality.

Customers Perceptions of Staying at a Lifestyle hotel

The purpose of this research was to understand Chinese customers’ views on the lifestyle hotel industry. The study objectives were to a) investigate reasons people stay in lifestyle hotels, b) what customers expect from lifestyle hotels, and c) inspire managers to improve their business model to give customers a better experience. 115 respondents participated in the survey who had stayed at lifestyle hotels. The study found that people stay at lifestyle hotels because they provide a welcoming environment and offer plenty of entertainment. Customers indicated that they would like the hotels to provide more family activities to enhance the quality of their stay. It was also found that managers need to provide highly personalized services to enhance the brand image, which in turn increases the uniqueness of the hotel and attracts customers.

A New Hospitality Marketing Perspective on the Emergence of “Lifestyle Hotels”

Hotels in Japan have long been grouped under two categories: city hotels and business hotels. While the former are relatively expensive, have a large number of guest rooms, and include a variety of French and Chinese and Japanese restaurants and bars as well as meeting rooms and huge banquet halls, the latter are relatively low-priced facilities that only have guest rooms or basic rooms destined to meals. However, the category of lifestyle hotels, which is different from both, has been growing rapidly in Japan in the last few years. Instead of the above two categories, price categories such as luxury, upscale, mid-price, economy, budget are being adopted, but the emergence of lifestyle hotels has also caused the deepening of market segmentation. In this paper, I examine the current situation in this field and consider it from the viewpoint of marketing.

Customer Perceptions of the Design of Lifestyle Hotels

Hotel design is one of the few tangible elements, that clients could see and assess before making an (online) purchase, therefore it is important to study its impact on the target clients. The current study aims to explore how customers perceive the design of lifestyle hotels, whether it creates additional value for the customer and which of its elements are most noticed and appreciated. The findings showed customers tend to appreciate most the comfort and the room interior design, with greater dominance of younger and female respondents to reflect that trend. Although not classified as a prime factor, hotel exterior and interior appearance proved its importance for the target clients of the lifestyle hotel segment

Strategies and business models for the development and promotion of hotel brands in the modern space of hospitality

In the modern world with its ever-accelerating pace of life, the preferences of consumers in the hospitality industry have significantly changed and continue to change. A modern person no longer needs just a safe roof over his head and elementary comfort; he wants some new emotions, new experiences, as a result of which his feelings of beauty, historical memory, awareness of himself as a member of a certain community, etc. are aggravated. Therefore, in the modern hospitality space, new strategies and business models for the development and promotion of hotel brands that meet the desires and interests of loyal consumers and contribute to attracting unreached segments of the hotel services market appear. The article clarifies the concepts of "boutique hotel", "lifestyle hotel", "trophy hotel", "soft brand", provides a comparative analysis of the development of hotel brands within the framework of these strategies. According to the authors, the soft brand strategy is the most interesting and promising model for the development of the hotel business in the context of globalization and the active expansion of international and national hotel chains. According to the authors, in Russia soft brands can also have a good future. The authors conclude that in conditions where guests become less loyal and more demanding, online travel agents (OTA) and aggregators are active, Airbnb and other manifestations of the sharing economy are growing in popularity, when technology giants such as Google also enter the market hospitality, hoteliers are forced to think in a new way, even if it means challenging the usual business model. The article claims that in the modern hotel services market there is an interpenetration of components of various business models. Each of the participants in this market today does not limit itself to the boundaries of the previously selected (traditional) format of the hotel business, using a mix of their own well-established strategies and successful strategies of competitors, flexibly reacting even to the unconscious expectations of consumers, living in an era of economics of impressions that exist in many life spaces and speakers of many communities.

Determinants of hotel guests’ service experiences: an examination of differences between lifestyle and traditional hotels

ABSTRACTThis study explores hotel guest service experiences by analyzing online reviews using big data analytics. We first summarize frequently mentioned words in online reviews, identify the commonalities on the basis of frequency of word use, and use these factors to compare the contributions to the overall guest experience for lifestyle and traditional hotels. Overall, guestrooms, interaction between employees and guests, and hotel services show different magnitudes of coefficients in lifestyle hotels compared with traditional hotels. Applying sentiment analysis, results indicated that attributes representing negative sentiment affected overall review ratings more than those representing positive sentiment. However, positive and negative employee interactions in the lifestyle hotel segment were more important in the overall reviews than in the traditional hotel segment. This study offers beneficial insights into the uniqueness of lifestyle hotels and future research directions.

A study on the characteristics of Space Marketing in Lifestyle Hotel.

A study on the characteristics of Space Marketing in Lifestyle Hotel.

Generation Y’s revisit intention and price premium for lifestyle hotels: brand love as the mediator

ABSTRACT Although hotel firms have been creating lifestyle brands with generation Y as the intended target market, existing literature rarely discusses how generation Y establish relationships with these brands. Therefore, this study examined the mediating role of brand love in sustaining effects of novelty and brand identification to revisit intention and price premium. This study collected 315 responses from lifestyle hotel guests. The results proved the effects of novelty and brand identification on improving brand love, and the influences of brand love in enhancing revisit intention and willingness to pay a price premium. Brand love fully mediated the effects of novelty on revisit intention and on price premium but only partially mediated the effects of brand identification on revisit intention and price premium.

A Study on the Analysis of the Finishing Material in Lifestyle Hotel

A Study on the Analysis of the Finishing Material in Lifestyle Hotel

Antecedents and Outcomes of Lifestyle Hotel Brand Attachment and Love: The case of Gen Y

ABSTRACTGeneration Y has shown a strong preference for and emotional connection to lifestyle brands. The increasing population and purchasing power of generation Y have increased the importance of lifestyle hotel branding. However, studies of this influential consumer group in the hospitality literature are limited. Therefore, this study of the characteristics of generation Y under the theoretical foundation of social identity theory proposed and examined antecedents and outcomes of brand love. The study sample included 310 guests at the JJ-W Hotel, a famous lifestyle hotel in Tainan City, Taiwan. The analytical results showed that brand love for lifestyle hotels among generation Y could be improved through novelty perception, hedonism, and brand reputation. Meanwhile, the strong brand love among generation Y guests results in a high revisit intention and positive word-of-mouth for the loved lifestyle hotel brand.

The power of design: How does design affect consumers’ online hotel booking?

Emphasizing experiential appeals to consumers through design is most notable in the emerging lifestyle hotel segment of the lodging industry. This study identifies which lodging design mechanisms evoke consumer responses and provides a novel understanding of the relationships among consumer perception of hotel product/service design and booking intention by incorporating consumer emotional arousal and quality expectations in a theoretical model. The findings of this study suggest that aesthetics and symbolism in hotel design shape booking intention through emotional arousal and quality expectation. The functional dimension of design affects booking intention only through quality expectation. The findings will be particularly meaningful to the lodging industry because online booking requires both emotional and cognitive responses on the part of consumers.

Increasing values of hotel business using boutique and lifestyle hotel concept

This research focused on describing the investment potentials for boutique and lifestyle hotels in order to increase the values of hotel businesses in Hat Yai, Thailand. Surveys were conducted using 30 randomly selected awarding-winning boutique hotels in Thailand and 400 travellers in the city of Hat Yai. Results of multiple regression analysis revealed that the attributes which showed significant effect (p < 0.05) on the traveller's willingness-to-pay were star rating, brand and green responsibility. Moreover, the study indicated that the highest percentage of tourists spends on the average between 10,000-50,000 Baht (300-1,500 USD) per trip, and prefers rooms with modern designs and decorations. Most of the sample population also indicated that they are interested in staying at a boutique hotel in the Hat Yai area at a willingness-to-pay amount of around 2,500 Baht (75 USD) per night which is twice the average cost of hotel rooms in the area.

Designing lifestyle hotels

Art creates irreplaceable added value and serves as a source for satisfying the spiritual needs of hotel customers. To provide customers with memorable services, hotels not only need to continue improving their services (exploit), but also have to design artistic new services (explore). Thus, customer willingness to return to the hotel could be increased, enhancing customer loyalty. However, few hotels simultaneously implement these two types of trade-off activities (i.e., exploitation and exploration). According to the ambidexterity perspective, this study applied a case study approach to investigate the process through which hotel operators design lifestyle hotels. Moreover, this study involved constructing an operational framework that adopted art as the basis for differentiation. The research results revealed that in introducing art concepts into a hotel service system, hotels operators must attach a high level of importance to several key activities, including hiring a full-time executive artistic manager in the top management team to engage in innovation, integrating local culture and the natural environment into the design of an artistic servicescape, catering to customers’ needs, and adopting high-performance human resource practices. These activities enable hotels to enhance their service capability in simultaneously implementing the two mutual trade-off activities, specifically designing new artistic services (explorative innovation) and continually improving their services (exploitative innovation).