Factors determining hotel selection: Online behaviour by leisure travellers

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DOI: 10.1057/thr.2010.20

2011 11: 83Tourism and Hospitality ResearchPeter Jones and Meng-Mei Chen

Factors Determining Hotel Selection: Online Behaviour by Leisure Travellers

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© 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1467-3584 Tourism and Hospitality Research Vol. 11, 1, 83–95

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INTRODUCTION Despite many years of research, we still seem to know very little about how guests select hotels to stay in. This is because the focus of attention has been on determining ‘ choice attributes ’ , that is, the factors that affect choice, without any research

into the actual selection process itself. Moreover some of the research into these attributes is in itself deeply fl awed, as the literature review will demon-strate. The purpose of this study is to examine key features of the hotel selection process not previously identifi ed. It reveals the decision-making process and factors affecting choice for a specifi c market segment, namely leisure travellers.

This paper is divided into fi ve sections. Following a brief introduction the literature is

Best Paper Award

Factors determining hotel selection: Online behaviour by leisure travellers Received (in revised form): 19 th July 2010

Peter Jones is the ITCA Professor of Production and Operations Management, and Director of the Travel Catering Research Centre at the University of Surrey. He is the author or editor of 12 textbooks and over 100 articles and book chapters, and has presented at conferences in 13 countries on fi ve continents. He is founding president of EuroCHRIE and recently served as I-CHRIE ’ s President. He is currently serving on the National Executive Committee of the British Hospitality Association.

Meng-Mei Chen is a Finance & Accounting professor at Ecole Hoteliere de Lausanne. She acquired her PhD degree at the University of Surrey. She is a global professional with working experiences in the hospitality industry in Taiwan and the United States and in higher education in Puerto Rico, Switzerland and France. Her research interests are hospitality consumer behaviour, with a special focus on customer interactions with websites; consumer choice behavior; and operational fi nancial analysis for the hospitality and tourism industry.

ABSTRACT This paper reviews the considerable literature on hotel selection. It demonstrates that this body of literature has been developed, for the most part, outside of the context of a widely endorsed consumer decision-making model based on set formulation. It then reports on a study that uses an experimental design aimed at understanding hotel consumer consideration set formation and modifi cation, rather than the previous traditional emphasis on choice sets and attributes. For a specifi c market segment selecting a hotel for a leisure stay the paper reports on the size of the consideration and choice set, and identifi es the different factors that infl uence choice at these two stages in the process. Tourism and Hospitality Research (2011) 11, 83 – 95. doi: 10.1057/thr.2010.20 ; published online 20 September 2010

Keywords: Hotel selection ; consideration set ; choice set ; leisure travel

Correspondence: Peter JonesSchool of Management, University of Surrey, Guildford GU2 5XH, UK

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Jones and Chen

critically reviewed and the fi ndings of previous studies presented. The research design for the study is then explained. Finally the results and fi ndings of the study are presented, before these are discussed in the context of the literature.

LITERATURE REVIEW AND THEORETICAL FRAMEWORK There have been many studies of choice deci-sions by consumers of lodging property services (for example, Lewis, 1985 ; Renaghan and Kay, 1987 ; Cadotte and Turgeon, 1988 ; Knutson, 1988 ; Riley and Perogiannis, 1990 ; McCleary et al , 1993, 1998 ; Weaver and Oh, 1993 ; Callan, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998a, b, c ; Clow et al , 1994, 1995 ; Greathouse et al , 1996 ; Griffi n et al , 1996 ; Wuest et al , 1996 ). The main purposes of all these studies have been to attempt to establish the attributes sought after by hotel consumers, and to provide some measurement of their importance. These are summarised in the Appendix.

However there are a number of methodo-logical limitations in much of this literature. Research in this area has worked on the misguided assumption that consumer choice, and an understanding of it, is the same as ‘ consumer decision-making ’ . Choice is in fact an outcome of decision-making. Few hospi-tality studies make this distinction, and there-fore do not treat choice as part of a more extended framework. There has therefore been no distinction made between evaluative criteria and choice criteria. This is an important distinc-tion, which is worthy of emphasis, as most research treats the two terms as synonymous when they are not. This is particularly important when we review the theoretical framework of set formation in consumer decision-making.

In addition to this, most studies ignore the difference between pre-purchase and post-purchase decision-making. Prior to purchase there are many attributes that the customer could not know about, such as comfort of bed. Including such attributes is there-fore only evaluating post-purchase ‘ choice decisions ’ .

Therefore it could be said that these studies, most of which are presented as additions to the hospitality decision-making literature are not concerned with actual decision-making in any realistic sense. This shortcoming also existed in generic consumer behaviour research into consumer choice processes until the 1990s. And this, according to Roberts and Nedungadi (1995) , did not provide any evidence to explain what drives brand consideration. But this focus on choice has persisted in the fi eld of hotel marketing, despite generic theory developing the new framework based on set formulation.

There have been a number of specifi c theo-retical and methodological problems with research to date. These are as follows.

Confusion of choice attributes and information sources : According to widely accepted consumer decision-making process ( Engel et al , 1995 ), information sources such as those classifi ed by researchers ( Cox, 1967 ; Andreason, 1968 ) are the basis by which consumers establish information about a product ’ s or service ’ s attributes. However, at least one study ( Clow et al , 1994, 1995 ) consistently appears to confuse product or service attributes with consumer use of information sources. Their suggestion that information sources such as word of mouth and advertising are used by consumers to make choice decisions is useful, but the inclusion of these factors among pref-erence-related attributes is not, and may have confused respondents. Confusion between choice and repeat purchase : The common use of a retrospective research approach has led to consumers being asked to report on the last purchase made. This will inevitably lead to confusion between pre-purchase and post-purchase evaluative criteria. Many of the attributes which were listed as important such as ‘ comfort of beds ’ , ‘ standard of bedroom maintenance ’ , and ‘ standard of housekeeping cleanliness ’ , are often not discernable by a consumer before a hotel was selected. Moreover studies, such as Callan (1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998a, b, c) confuse

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© 2011 Macmillan Publishers Ltd. 1467-3584 Tourism and Hospitality Research Vol. 11, 1, 83–95 85

Factors determining hotel selection

initial purchase with repeat purchase and therefore analysed the probability of returning more than initial information search and alter-native evaluation leading to choice. Rating of choice attributes : It has been found by researchers (for example, Wright and Weitz, 1977 ; Weitz and Wright, 1979 ) that consumers applied ‘ cut-offs ’ to the choice alternatives about which they are aware. Cut-offs are restrictions, or minimum require-ments for acceptable attribute values. Hence it is likely that the some attributes listed for certain studies (for example, Lewis, 1985 ; Weaver and Oh, 1993 ; Callan, 1996 ), such as ‘ standard of housekeeping cleanliness ’ , or ‘ security of hotel and surrounding area ’ , are subject to the application of consumer cut-offs. So while it is true that these basics are likely to be required by most travellers, since they are provided by most hotels anyway they are therefore not a suffi cient basis for selecting a hotel. Predetermination : In order to guide respond-ents into providing importance measures of specifi c property attributes, the data collection tools used in studies (for example, McCleary et al , 1993 ; Callan, 1994, 1996, 1997, 1998a, b, c ; Clow et al , 1994, 1995 ; Greathouse et al , 1996 ) have commonly included attribute lists which have been predetermined by researchers. But Callan (1996) demonstrated the danger of predetermining factors before-hand, as his respondents were able to generate eight new factors in their responses. Number of attributes : Many of these studies identifi ed a large number of attributes. Callan (1994) had a list of 166. Research in other fi elds has demonstrated that consumer choice is typically based on a relatively small number of factors, simply because the human brain simplifi es decision-making through the adoption of heuristics ( Myers and Alpert, 1968 ; Belonax and Mittelstaedt, 1978 ). Importance ratings : The practice of certain researchers (for example, Renaghan and Kay, 1987 ; Cadotte and Turgeon, 1988 ; Riley and Perogiannis, 1990 ; McCleary et al , 1993,

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1998 ; Weaver and Oh, 1993 ; Callan, 1994, 1995, 1996, 1997, 1998a, b, c ; Wuest et al , 1996 ) who asked respondents to rate the importance of certain attributes to the consumer choice process, in most cases fails to fi rstly establish the importance of the criteria to the respondent before ranking takes place. This creates the risk of measure-ment error in that the respondent is being asked to comment on the importance of an attribute that they may not only have not thought of, but had they done say, may not have actually infl uenced the purchase decision whatsoever. Confusion between importance and salience : In a discussion concerning the assessment of choice attributes, Dev et al (1995) pointed out ‘ in assessing those attributes researchers must be careful to distinguish the determinant attributes (those that actually cause a purchase) from salient attributes (those that are top of the mind but may not actually distinguish the hotel) ’ . Lewis (1984a) distinguished between the determinance, importance and salience of a particular attribute and its infl u-ence on choice. Those that do not cause action no matter their importance are not determinants. Hypothetical hotels : Research such as those projects cited here have tended to use hypo-thetical hotels to ascertain the relative attributes of the relative value of the attributes and their potential interaction. This would of course create an unrealistic situation whereby the attributes which were being assessed would be pre-determined and may not in fact occur in any one location among the number of hotels in practice. The prede-termined attributes that were assessed were features such as guarantee last room availa-bility, fl exible cancellation, electronic inter-face, free local calls, free breakfast, convenient distance from the work place, and so on, all of which were predetermined once again.

In summary, a large number of studies have been conducted into hotel attributes and their

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Jones and Chen

Heuristics can be categorised as compensatory, such as linear, weighted linear and multi-attributes, as well as non-compensatory, such as conjunctive, disjunctive and lexicographic ( Pras and Summers, 1975 ; Wright, 1975 ; Parkinson and Reilly, 1979 ). The studies of hotel choice that have simply asked consumers to rate attributes all assume consumers making a hotel selection use the compensatory linear heuristic, that is, the poor evaluation of one attribute can be compensated by the good evalu-ation in another attribute. But for leisure travellers, it is unlikely this will be the heuristic used.

Moreover, models such as that proposed by Engel et al (1995) have generally distinguished between distinct stages of alternative evaluation and choice. Gensch’s (1987) fi nding that consumers used different attributes at different stages of the choice process supported this distinction. This is important since if a hotel is not placed in the consideration set, it will never be part of the choice set. So knowing which attributes infl uence consideration set formula-tion, and which might be used to make the fi nal choice are central to understanding hotel selection. Despite this, hospitality research related to the consideration set and the choice set is rare. Morgan (1991) conducted research into the evoked set. Morgan stated:

Marketing strategy should take the evoked set into consideration, because the actual choices of individual consumers depend crucially on which brands are in the evoked set and which are not. Furthermore, by manipulating the evoked set, marketers should be able to make a substantial differ-ence in the customer choice and thereby infl uence market share and chain-wide profi tability. ( Morgan, 1991, p. 41 )

Morgan (1991) found that the effect of adver-tising alone, without actual stay, on the evoked set of frequent business travellers is nil; and both more-frequent and less-frequent travellers have a strong memory for those lodging chains for which they have seen advertising and at which they have recently stayed. He suggested that membership in travellers ’ evoked set is a function

apparent importance, but very few have explored how these attributes are actually used to make a specifi c hotel selection. Moreover the hotel purchase, especially for leisure travel-lers, is relatively expensive, infrequent and high involvement, so that a sophisticated decision-making model is required. There are a large number of consumer decision-making models, but for high involvement goods Engel et al (1995) propose a model based on the processing of information to construct a consideration set, before the formation of a smaller choice set from which the fi nal selection is made. As Nedungadi (1987) explains, a consideration set is the ‘ set of brands the consumer processes in working memory on a particular purchase occasion ’ . Such research typically tends to focus on the factors that determine inclusion of the alternatives in the consideration set. Because of situation, perceptual and memorial processes, such consideration sets have been found not to be of specifi c size or stability. Research also focuses on the information search stage, by which a series of alternatives is gener-ated for evaluation, and the evaluation process itself. Although appearing to be linear in nature, the model of consideration set formulation is iterative. Each of its steps is facilitated by further information search.

The theory of the consideration set has devel-oped from Howard and Sheth’s (1969) initial proposition of the ‘ evoked set ’ which they described as ‘ … those brands the buyer considers when he (or she) contemplates purchasing a unit of the product class ’ (p. 416). Since the initial discussions of an evoked set ( Howard, 1963 ; Howard and Sheth, 1969 ), authors (for example, Narayana and Markin, 1975 ; Alba and Chattopadhyay, 1985 ; Nedungadi, 1990 ; Hauser and Wernerfelt, 1990 ) have maintained that consumers are either unable or unwilling to incur the costs related to the processing of information, or costs of thinking ( Shugan, 1980 ) relating to all brands available for purchase. This leads to the application of a series of phased decisions which are facilitated by the use of heuristics, in order to simplify a choice decision ( Tversky, 1972 ).





of a combination of prior stay and advertising exposure than to either of those factors alone.

Oorni (2003) compared the consideration set sizes between the electronic (online) markets and conventional markets. He used a student sample to conduct the experiment. The exper-iment consisted of two tasks: (1) to search for fl ights and one-week accommodations in Hawaii, and (2) to search for fl ights and one-week accommodations in Brisbane. He found the consideration set sizes for electronic markets are bigger than the consideration set sizes for the conventional markets. In the electronic market, the consideration sets for fl ights to Hawaii, fl ights to Brisbane, accommodations in Hawaii and accommodations in Brisbane are 7.04, 5.63, 13.51 and 4.71 accordingly.

RESEARCH DESIGN This study sought to identify the decision-making process adopted by a group of consumers selecting a hotel for a leisure break. It aims to

1. identify through observation the stages in the selection process;

2. identify through observation the attributes used at each stage in the selection process;

3. identify through observation the heuristics used at each stage in the selection process.

The basic model that is being explored is shown in Figure 1 .

In order to achieve these objectives an experimental design was adopted, simulating as far as possible the process a consumer would go through when selecting a hotel to stay in online. The subjects were asked to use the website www.sidestep.com to choose a Las Vegas hotel to stay. This means that the subjects were selecting real hotels, using a tool that is common use for making such selections. This website was specifi cally chosen because it was deemed to be the easiest for the researcher to observe in terms of how respondents engaged in information search, and how they might form sets. Las Vegas was chosen as the destina-tion for the online experiment for several reasons. First, Las Vegas has a large property inventory, which consists of 133 186 hotel / motel rooms (Top 25 frequently asked ques-tions, 2006). Second, it is a market not dominated by chain hotels, reducing the like-lihood of selection being based on brand (rather than hotel specifi c) criteria. Third, it was a resort that the respondents were familiar with and might well choose to visit of their own accord.

In addition subjects were given the travel date, the number of travellers (the respondent and their partner) and an accommodation budget of $ 1000 for a four-night stay. The date was selected suffi ciently far in advance, and at a specifi c time, when there was low occupancy in the destination. Immediately

AllAvailable

Hotels

ConsiderationSet Choice Set

Selection

Attributes Applied Attributes Applied

Heuristics Used Heuristics Used

Figure 1 : Conceptual map of key constructs.




Jones and Chen

prior to the experiment, the researcher searched for rooms and found that no hotels were sold out. The average room rate for a Vegas hotel had also been established, so that the allocated budget ensured that respondents were free to choose from almost all the hotel stock ranging from budget up to fi ve star. They were told that any money left over from making the booking was theirs to spend in Vegas on other things.

As well as these instructions, respondents were also introduced to the website they would use and shown two screen shots, as illustrated in Figure 2 . The search feature was deliberately shown as it was part of the experimental design. By observing the selection of attributes from those listed, the researcher could identify those used to form the fi rst set of alternative hotels, and its subsequent use might also inform how other sets were created. It can be argued that this introduces premeasurement bias into the experiment, since it may infl uence the process that respondents follow and introduces attributes to respondents that may or may not be salient or important. In response to these concerns, before the main study, the researcher conducted the experiment without showing respondents the search function in order to fi nd out how

many used this function without prompting. Seventy-fi ve per cent did so. It was therefore decided for the main study to draw this function to respondents ’ attention, but advise subjects that it was not necessary to use it. Two out of the 53 subjects chose not to. With regards to the issue of predetermining the attributes from which to select, since this is a real website with many features common to all such websites, such predetermination exists in the real world.

Fifty-three subjects were selected for the experiment and observed as they went through the process of selecting a hotel. An observa-tional pro forma was developed for use during this activity and the online activity recorded so that it could be reviewed afterwards. This enabled the different screen shots and their dwell time to be established. The fi nal sample was 51 as in two cases there were technical problems in recording the process. Respondents spent between 35 and 55 min in this experi-mental setting.

FINDINGS After the subjects entered the destination, travel date and the number of travellers, the subjects were provided with on average 194.8 hotels,

Figure 2 : Screen shots demonstrated to respondents.





with a range between 125 and 236. Subse-quently, all except two study subjects used at least one decision aid to reduce the number of hotels to a smaller number. Subject # 15 did not use any attributes but scanned through all listed properties. Subject # 8 used ‘ sort by hotel name ’ , which did not reduce the number of hotels. Hence it is proposed that these two subjects did not form a consideration set. For the remaining 49 subjects, after executing the fi rst set of decision aids, the average number of hotels was reduced to 33.9. This is deemed to be the size of the consideration set.

From the consideration set, the subjects only considered in more detail an average of 4.1 hotels, with a range between 1 and 11, before they made their fi nal selection. Therefore, it is proposed that the average choice set size is 4.1 (std. 2.0). All hotels that were included in the choice sets, as well as identifi ed as the fi nal selection, were analysed. This consisted of a total of 61 different hotels in choice sets, while the fi nal selections consisted of 24 different hotels. However two hotels emerged as ‘ winners ’ . The Venetian was selected by 12 subjects, and the Bellagio by 9.

It was also found that the average number of attributes used in forming the consideration sets and the choice sets were 3.3 and 2.6, respec-tively. Twenty four different attributes were used in forming consideration sets, the most popular being ‘ non-smoking ’ (25 respondents), ‘ swimming pool ’ (21), ‘ high-speed internet ’ (19), ‘ hot tub ’ (13), ‘ fi tness centre ’ (13), ‘ room service ’ (12) and ‘ set price range ’ (12). Although the fi rst six of these are genuinely hotel attributes, the latter is actually an attribute of the website being used. It is the website (rather than the hotels themselves) that specifi es what price ranges can be selected from, along with other criteria that were used in selection such as star rating, pictures of the property and so on. This introduces an issue not yet discussed, namely the role that websites themselves may play in the hotel selection process.

This is particularly interesting since of the 19 attributes used to select from the choice set the most popular attributes used were ‘ compar-

ison ’ (37 respondents), ‘ picture ’ (35), ‘ reviews ’ (23), ‘ star-ratings ’ (7) and ‘ sort by price ’ (6). All of these are features of the website being used, rather than specifi c hotel attributes. Hence it was shown that the attributes used in forming the consideration set are different from the attributes used in the choice set, but that both infl uence the fi nal choice made.

DISCUSSION Previous research in hotel choice had asked subjects to rate between 38 to 166 attributes (as summarised in Appendix). In this study, subjects actually used an average of 3.3 attributes in forming the consideration set; while subjects used an average of 2.6 attributes in forming the choice set and making the fi nal selection. Although almost all of the hotel attributes used to form the consideration set or the choice set had been identifi ed in previous research, this study shows that, in reality, subjects consider only a small proportion of those previously identifi ed. Either these attributes may not be important to this group of subjects, or subjects do not consider large numbers of attributes when they make online purchase decisions.

The most popular attributes in forming the consideration set were ‘ non-smoking ’ , ‘ swim-ming pool ’ , ‘ high-speed internet ’ , ‘ hot tub ’ , ‘ fi tness centre ’ , ‘ room service ’ and ‘ set price range ’ . The most popular attributes in forming the choice set were ‘ comparison ’ , ‘ picture ’ , ‘ reviews ’ , ‘ star-ratings ’ and ‘ sort by price ’ . Hence the hotel attributes were more important in forming the consideration set, while the web attributes were more important in forming the choice set. Previous researchers asked subjects to rate importance of attributes, but did not investigate the attribute usage sequences. Alpert (1980) stated that features not determinant in one stage may become so in the other stage. For example, a hotel with excellent pictures but without non-smoking rooms would not have even entered, in this study, 25 subjects ’ consideration sets. But these same subjects may use pictures or reviews to decide which hotel to select from the choice set. This example




Jones and Chen

shows the importance of identifying the attributes used and the sequence of attribute usage ( Alpert, 1980 ). A set of attributes were identifi ed to form the consideration sets, and additional attributes were used to form the choice sets. Therefore, the choice set is conditional to the consideration set. Previous researchers did not identify the determinant attributes for hotel purchases, nor did they differ-entiate attributes used in the consideration set and choice set. This study fi nding provides some insights into these two research questions.

In previous research into set size, Oorni (2003) found that the consideration sets for fl ights to Hawaii, fl ights to Brisbane, accom-modations in Hawaii and accommodations in Brisbane were 7.04, 5.63, 13.51 and 4.71, compared to 33.9 in this study. The variance between this study and Oorni (2003) may result from different operational defi nitions, since Oorni (2003) did not mention the choice set in the research. It may also be a function of the number of ‘ products ’ available to select from. There will be a much smaller total number of Hawaii-Brisbane fl ights than hotels in Las Vegas. Potentially therefore consideration set size may be a function of the number of options available. Furthermore, in using the internet to make a selection, users are unaware of all the potential options, and unless they are very experienced users, may also be unaware of the impact of using the various sort functions. So considera-tion set size may be larger if the internet is being used to select from alternatives.

In this study, a subject spent an average of 378.4 (std. 242.9) seconds in considering hotels in the choice set and considers an average of 4.1 (std. 2.0) hotels. Therefore, a subject spends about 92 seconds to investigate each alternative. This is consistent with Haubl and Dellaert (2004) , who constructed a list of 500 vacation homes, and provided the experiment group with a recommendation list . Haubl and Dellaert (2004) found that subjects with access to a recommendation list spent total 363.66 seconds (std. 357.83) to view an average 7.87 (std. 10.80) alternatives,

with an average time per option of 75.74 (std. 65.19) seconds. They further found subjects with access to a recommendation list viewed less travel options, but spent more time viewing per option.

CONCLUSION This paper makes a number of conclusions which are new to the hospitality fi eld of enquiry into hotel selection. First, it provides evidence that the typical hotel selection process is a two-stage process, which is made up of forming a consideration set, followed by a smaller choice set, from which selection is made. Second, the size of these sets may be infl uenced by the size of the hotel market from which the selection is being made. The average consideration set size found in this study was large compared with many other studies outwith the hotel sector. However this is partly driven by searching for hotels on a website and the way in which consumers use the website ’ s search facility. Third, the criteria used for formulating these two sets include many of the attributes that previous research has identifi ed. However, the actual number of attributes used to determine sets is much smaller than hotel choice prior studies would suggest. Fourth, even within a relatively homogenous group of respondents there is quite a wide range of attributes used to create the two sets; this suggests market segmentation needs to be quite sophisticated in order to understand selection criteria. This was reinforced by the relatively large number of hotels that were fi nally selected. On the other hand, the wide range of hotels selected may refl ect the fact that it is diffi cult for consumers in this market to differentiate between them. Fifth, some of the criteria used to make selection were attributes of the website and its search engine, rather than attributes of hotels. This was particularly the case with regards to the formulation of choice sets.

Clearly this research has limitations, largely centred around the experimental design. The results almost certainly are not generalisable to





all hotels or all hotel markets, nor to market segments other than that represented in this study. The research is also specifi c to the hotel selection process online, and may even be specifi c to the actual website used for the research. Despite this, we believe this study makes a valuable contribution towards under-standing how people choose a hotel to stay in.

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Jones and Chen

AP

PE

ND

IX

See

Tab

le A

1 .

Tab

le A

1 : H

otel

att

ribu

tes

and

rese

arch

met

hodo

logy

(A

dopt

ed f

rom

Dol

nica

r, 20

02)

Sa

lient

, det

erm

inan

t, im

porta

nt a

ttrib

utes

#

of

attri

bute

s #

of

Res

pons

es /

sam

ple

size

Dat

a an

alys

is A

ttrib

utes

ide

ntifi

ed

Lew

is (1

984a

) D

eter

min

ant

66

1314

/ 930

0 C

ross

tabs

, chi

-squ

are

Loca

tion,

pri

ce, a

ccom

mod

atio

n an

d se

rvic

e

Le

wis

(198

4b)

Det

erm

inan

t 6

6 13

14 / 9

300

Fact

or a

naly

sis, a

naly

sis

of v

aria

nce

Ana

th, M

. et a

l (1

992 )

Im

port

ant

57

222 /

551

Freq

uenc

ies,

cros

s-ta

bula

tions

, t -t

est,

fact

or a

naly

sis a

nd

anal

ysis

of v

aria

nce.

Goo

d va

lue

for

mon

ey, i

n-ro

om t

empe

ratu

re c

ontr

ol

mec

hani

sm, c

onve

nien

t lo

catio

n of

hot

el, p

rice

of

acco

mm

odat

ion,

sou

ndpr

oof r

oom

s, sp

ecia

l disc

ount

s av

aila

ble,

loud

fi re

ala

rms,

free

par

king

ser

vice

s, fi r

mne

ss

of m

attr

ess.

Fact

or a

naly

sis: s

ervi

ces

and

conv

enie

nces

, se

curi

ty a

nd p

rice

, gen

eral

am

eniti

es, m

atur

e-sp

ecifi

c at

trib

utes

, and

roo

m a

men

ities

H

art

(199

3)

Impo

rtan

t N

A

NA

N

A

Secu

rity

, a c

onve

nien

t lo

catio

n, c

lean

roo

ms,

reas

onab

le

cost

, a w

orko

ut f

acili

ty

Wea

ver

and

Oh

(199

3)

Impo

rtan

t 5

6 43

3 / 13

81

Mea

n co

mpa

riso

ns,

MA

NO

VA

C

lean

lines

s, co

mfo

rtab

le m

attr

esse

s an

d pi

llow

s, go

od

qual

ity t

owel

s, co

nven

ient

to

your

bus

ines

s, no

su

rcha

rge

for

long

-dist

ance

cal

ls, o

n-pr

emise

par

king

M

cCle

ary,

Wea

ver,

Lan

(199

4)

Impo

rtan

t 5

3 25

0 / N

/ A

Fact

or a

naly

sis,

MA

NO

VA

B

usin

ess

serv

ices

and

fac

ilitie

s, se

curi

ty f

acili

ties,

basic

fa

cilit

ies,

pers

onal

ser

vice

s, fr

ee e

xtra

s, co

nven

ient

eat

ing

faci

litie

s, ai

rlin

e or

hot

el r

ewar

d pr

ogra

mm

e, s

peci

al

room

feat

ures

, air

port

or

mee

ting

hote

l, lo

w p

rice

, ad

vert

ising

and

par

king

, and

fi tn

ess

faci

litie

s





Cal

len

(199

7)

Impo

rtan

t 16

6 31

2 / 50

0 ho

tel

man

ager

s M

ean,

sta

ndar

d de

viat

ion

Cal

len

(199

8)

Impo

rtan

t 16

6 17

8 / 50

0 cu

stom

ers

Mea

n, s

tand

ard

devi

atio

n

Cal

len

and

Bow

man

(200

0)

Impo

rtan

t 3

8 10

4 / 12

5 M

ean,

sta

ndar

d de

viat

ion,

AN

OV

A

Valu

e fo

r m

oney

, saf

ety

and

secu

rity

, loc

atio

n, a

vaila

bilit

y of

non

-sm

okin

g be

droo

ms,

repu

tatio

n of

hot

el,

actu

al p

rice

, d é c

or o

f pub

lic a

reas

, d é c

or o

f bed

room

, av

aila

bilit

y of

par

king

, ava

ilabi

lity

of r

elax

ing

loun

ge

or b

ar, a

vaila

bilit

y of

disc

ount

s, ea

se o

f man

euve

rabi

lity

arou

nd h

otel

, and

ava

ilabi

lity

of a

ran

ge o

f foo

d se

rvic

e ou

tlets

W

ong

and

Lam

(2

001)

Im

port

ant

5

296 /

300

Con

join

t an

alys

is vs

se

lf-ex

plic

atio

n Lo

catio

n, b

rand

, pri

ce, s

tar

ratin

g an

d ro

om t

ype

Lock

yer

(200

2)

Impo

rtan

t 4

8 27

4 / 36

8 M

eans

and

sta

ndar

d de

viat

ions

C

lean

lines

s of

hot

el, b

athr

oom

and

sho

wer

qua

lity,

stan

dard

of b

edro

om m

aint

enan

ce, c

omfo

rt o

f mat

tres

s an

d pi

llow

, cou

rteo

us, p

olite

, wel

l-m

anne

red

staf

f, en

thus

iasm

, and

com

mitm

ent

of s

taff

, ava

ilabi

lity

of

park

ing,

effe

ctiv

e ro

om lo

ckin

g sy

stem

s, so

undp

roofi

ng

betw

een

bedr

oom

s, an

d fo

od s

ervi

ce e

ffi ci

ency

Shan

ahan

(20

03)

Impo

rtan

t 3

4 21

2 Fr

eque

ncy

Cle

anlin

ess,

low

pri

ce, n

on-s

mok

ing,

insid

e en

try,

24-h

our

secu

rity

, fre

e br

eakf

ast,

easy

on /

off a

cces

s



Documents

Factors determining hotel selection: Online behaviour by leisure travellers