Forming Service Relationships with Hotel Business Travelers: The Critical Attributes to Improve Retention

Abstract

Customer defections have been linked to service encounter failure in service organizations. This study embraces the idea of improving customer retention through proactively promoting the important role of the interpersonal service encounter to build long-term service relationships between customers and service organizations. More specifically, this study determined the critical relational attributes in the face-to-face service encounter that were most influential in the formation of a service relationship from the business traveler’s perspective. Five critical relational attributes were selected and tested in a high interpersonal service context; namely, a hotel reception encounter. Through factor analysis, the number of factors (critical relational attributes) was reduced from five to four. The results from multiple regression analysis revealed that hotel guests perceived personalization, social bonding, reliability, and familiarization to be most influential in the relationship formation process in that order of significance. Based on the findings, management could develop proactive relationship-building strategies to build customer loyalty and thus reduce the need to use recovery strategies by focusing on the psychological needs emulated in the critical relational attributes.

Service Encounters and Service Bias: A Preliminary Investigation

“…This finding was consistent with the results of research by Mittal and Lassar (1996) who found personalization (interpersonal interaction) to be the most important variable in determining customer satisfaction and repatronage. The findings of Davidow (2000) also reflect the conclusions made by Scanlan and McPhail (2000) in their study of hotel guests from the business traveler segment and their service expectations of front desk receptionists. They found that these guests desired more emotional involvement from the receptionists for a more genuine and caring relational exchange rather than just empathy expressed in building a service relationship.…”

Predictors of relationship quality for luxury restaurants

“…Research has shown that within the hospitality industry business travelers enjoy interaction and conversation with familiar receptionists (Scanlan and McPhail, 2000). This interaction, in turn, has a positive effect on relationship building and customer loyalty.…”

Understanding the Customer Experiences from the Perspective of Guests and Hotel Managers: Empirical Findings from Luxury Hotels in Istanbul, Turkey

“…For It is also possible that customers and managers may perceive customer experiences in a different way. According to Scanlan and McPhail (2000), exploratory studies concerning the discrepancies between customer and service supplier perceptions may provide insight into creating positive customer behaviors. Identifying the gaps between customers' and managers' perceptions relative to customer experiences will help organizations narrow these gaps and create better experiences.…”