Effects of Luxury Hotel Guests’ Feedback on Average Daily Rate (ADR), Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR), and Goodwill – An Empirical Study in Pensacola

Abstract

Although hotel guests have controlled quick accessibility to force hoteliers instantly update their hotel room rates, little has focused on guest comments and average daily rate. The purpose of the paper is to examine the relationship between hotel average daily rate (ADR), revenue per available room (RevPAR), and goodwill and guests’ motivation for location, rooms, value, cleanliness, service, and sleep quality. The study has designed to use consumer motivation at the unconscious level to examine the relationship between hoteliers’ price and guests’ preference at the conscious level. Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count was used to retrieve the consumer motivation at the unconscious level. Structural Equation Modeling was conducted to examine the relationships among the exogenous variables including ADR, RevPAR, and goodwill and the endogenous variables including location, rooms, value, cleanliness, service, and sleep quality that were mediated by the unconscious motivation of hotel guests. The results from the study revealed pertinent information about customer preferences. ADR would be associated with location, value and rooms. RevPAR would be associated with cleanliness and service. Finally, hotel goodwill would be associated with sleep quality. Although the small sample size of 163 guest comments is the limitation of the study for generalization, the sample randomly selected for 13 years (2009–2022) has identified the different effects of ADR, RevPAR, and Goodwill on each of the 6 hotel criteria to contribute to hotel marketing strategies.