The Evolution of Creating the Hospitality Guest Experience
This piece is the third of a three-part series of articles exploring how firms can create memorable guest experiences using a model known as The Loyalty Circle©. The model contains three components – Process, Value, and Communication.
Part One of the series, which appeared in the Fall 2022 edition of Gaming & Leisure Magazine, focused on the Process component of The Loyalty Circle©. To recap, the process, or how the service works, involves all activities from the time the guests begin buying the service (e.g., calling to make a reservation) to the time that they leave the property (e.g., picking up the car from a valet).
Part Two of the series, which appeared in the G&L Winter 2022 edition, focused on the Value component of The Loyalty Circle©. To recap, The value component in The Loyalty Circle© is divided into two parts: value added and value recovery. Valued-added strategies increase the overall guest experience by providing guests with things they consider important or desirable above and beyond the core product they are purchasing. Value recovery strategies, on the other hand, are designed to rectify a lapse in the service delivery, which may cause dissatisfaction. The goal of value recovery strategies is to ensure any service failures are addressed to the guests’ satisfaction and their needs are taken care of without further inconveniences. Like Process and Value, the Communication component is critical to driving memorable guest experiences. This article – part three in the series – provides insight on developing and measuring one essential part of communication – word-of-mouth (WOM). The characteristics of services (e.g., intangibility, simultaneous production and consumption, and heterogeneity) make WOM critical because one cannot “test drive” the product prior to purchase.
READ THE FULL ARTICLE BY STOWE SHOEMAKER IN THE 2023 SPRING EDITION OF GAMING & LEISURE MAGAZINE.