Hotel Selection: The Evaluation of Competitive Alternatives and Their Impact on Guests’ Service Expectations

The analysis of the factors that affect the hotel selection by guests is an interesting area of research with important managerial implications. Customers rarely focus their evaluations and build their expectations on a single hotel property. Consequently, a key factor is to understand how customers perceive the quality of services’ attributes and which is their importance and performance when compared with other competitors. The main purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of a few competitive issues considered during the hotel’s selection and affecting the expected service. The results of the paper show that Psychological factors, Marketing communications and word of mouth, Hotel product and services and Price have positive and statistically significant influence on expectations. Competitors’ offers and actions have no significant impact on expectations in this first step. Further research is needed to better explore this last factor.