Specificities, Obstacles and Limits to Building Customer Loyalty in Mountain Resort Luxury Hotels

Abstract

Customer loyalty in mountain resort luxury hotels is truly challenging; it presents specificities, obstacles and limits. We shall base our findings on the example of Courchevel, located in the Savoie region, in France, a resort renowned worldwide for its concentration of luxury and 5-star hotels with their star-winning chefs that testify to this. One rarely mentions customer loyalty there and the concept remains intuitive and empirical; it would require finer analyses, genuine competences and a better adapted communication. We shall in turn study the limits brought to the following aspects: profitability, staff loyalty, new technologies, promotion and communication, the evolution of the expectations of rich customers, of the gilded youth, gastronomy, innovation in services, the successive waves of foreigners . . . in a post-recession context in which the codes of luxury have evolved. Fifty or so qualitative interviews on the topic of customer loyalty were carried out in twenty or so hotels for this study between 2008 and 2010.