Hotel Guests’ Experience, Satisfaction and Revisit Intentions: An Emerging Market Perspective

Abstract

This study aimed at investigating the guests’ experience dimensions and their effects on destination marketing bottom lines of satisfaction and revisit intention. This is borne of the overarching importance of customer experience (CX) which has been acknowledged by scholars and practitioners and understanding of the concept been sought from various sectoral perspectives. Admittedly, experience-based investigations in the hotel service sector have been scarce, particularly from a non-western context. The study utilised an intercept approach to collect data from 400 hotel guests in a city in Southern Nigeria. The research model and the formulated hypotheses were tested using partial least square structural equation model (PLS-SEM) with the aid of SmartPLS software. The study findings reveal that guest experience dimensions (utilitarian, hedonic and relational) have a positive and significant influence on guests’ revisit intention and satisfaction with the exception of hedonic experience whose relationship with satisfaction was statistically insignificant. Overall, the research model explained 56.5 per cent of the variance in guest satisfaction and 68.7 per cent on guest revisit intention. This study adds an empirically supported strategic direction for proper guest experience management in hotels from a non-western context.