How committed are guests to your brand?

31 October 2011

By Stuart Greif
HotelNewsNow.com columnist
Stuart.Greif@jdpa.com

Editor’s note: This is the final in a series of columns from J.D. Power’s Stuart Greif that analyzes and provides deeper insights into the company’s 2011 J.D. Power and Associates North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Study.

In the 2011 J.D. Power and Associates North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Study, there are a number of questions asked related to how committed customers are to each ranked hotel brand.

 J.D. Power and Associates’ Customer Commitment Model

J.D. Power and Associates includes a Customer Commitment Model again in this year’s North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Study. The model is comprised of three components: brand image, experience and personal style.

Experience is the cornerstone of the model and is based on the actual hotel guest experience and the corresponding overall satisfaction levels captured in the study.

The brand image component reflects the image guests have of the hotel brand where they stayed and includes questions that gauge how environmentally responsible, prestigious, trend-setting, customer-focused, exciting, modern and impressive a brand is in the estimation of guests. It is a reflection of how the brand markets, promotes and positions itself as well as how guests experience the brand.

The personal style component is defined as guests’ inherent view of their own sensibilities and style (e.g. “Am I more a frugal, hip, environmentally conscious and/or luxury-minded person?”)

All three components together measure customer commitment as a guest’s perception toward a hotel brand. Clearly, there are other elements at play within the guest experience, such as the strength of a rewards program and how that plays out on property with dedicated check-in lines, loyalty/member floors, reception areas and other benefits reflected in expectations and satisfaction levels. The three components we use are the key drivers at a high level.

The Customer Commitment Model provides an additional way to think about and look at hotel performance in addition to measures around loyalty, advocacy and satisfaction that the study also explicitly addresses across brands and across the industry.

Differences in commitment across segment scales

While a guest’s experience always has the largest impact on customer commitment regardless of segment, there are some differences across scales as displayed in the graphic above. As the importance of Experience increases, the importance of personal style decreases, while brand Image remains relatively consistent across all seven segments. Personal style plays a smaller role than brand image in economy/budget and extended stay, but a larger role in upper upscale, upscale and luxury.

If a luxury guest who views himself as a bastion of style were to stay at an economy/budget hotel, for example, his sense of personal style from generally staying at luxury properties (34% on average) and where he values the importance of brand image (21% on average) makes it unlikely he would become highly committed to the economy/budget brand even if he was surprised at the positive experience.

Why commitment matters

Highly committed guests are more satisfied overall; have higher rates of advocacy/loyalty; and are more likely to use a hotel’s restaurant and recreational facilities. Satisfaction is much higher among highly committed guests than among medium- and low-committed guests. Advocacy and loyalty rates are also much higher among highly committed guests, who are more likely to use various hotel services, eat at a hotel restaurant and experience fewer problems during their stay.

Satisfying guests, as well as creating highly committed guests, helps drive the bottom line and generate repeat business and positive word of mouth.

Guest commitment by brand

In the J.D. Power and Associates 2011 North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Study, Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts created the highest percentage of committed guests of all the brands officially ranked in the study, with 42% of respondents reflecting high levels of commitment. Four Seasons was followed by JW Marriott Hotels & Resorts and The Ritz-Carlton, each at 36%. While levels of commitment were higher on average as one goes up segment scales, it is important to note that Hampton Inn & Suites and Drury Inn & Suites in the midscale, limited-service segment had higher scores than many brands at higher chain scales. Likewise, in the airline industry, it is the so called “low-cost” carriers such as JetBlue Airways and Southwest Airlines that scored highest in satisfaction and commitment.

What are you doing to earn commitment?
As you begin to analyze whether your hotel and brand drive guest commitment, consider the following:
• Do guests stay with you out of a sense of inertia, or is it because you have truly earned their business?
• What are you doing to earn guests’ business and love?
• What products and services in your own life have won your commitment versus those which are exchangeable commodities?

Equally important, how are you performing relative to others in the market? Your own guest-tracking data can provide some direction, but without a competitive market context, it’s difficult to determine whether you are gaining ground or falling behind. You might not know, but your guests and those of your competitors certainly do. They don’t care how you are doing year over year relative to your own performance. They care about what you do to win their hearts, minds and wallets versus the competition, which is right across the street, down the road and, in the digitally enabled world of review sites and social media, just a click away.

In short, allow me to end this week’s article with the same question I posed at the beginning: How committed are guests to your brand?

Stuart Greif is VP and general manager of the global travel and hospitality practice for J.D. Power and Associates. Headquartered in Westlake Village, California, J.D. Power and Associates is a global marketing information services company operating in key business sectors including market research, forecasting, performance improvement, training, Web intelligence and customer satisfaction.

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of HotelNewsNow.com or its parent company, Smith Travel Research and its affiliated companies. Columnists published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to comment or contact an editor with any questions or concerns.

No advertising or other promotional use can be made of the information in this release without the express prior written consent of J.D. Power and Associates. .

TAGS: J.D. Power and Associates, Stuart Greif, Associates North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Study, commitment, guests, satisfaction, experience, brand image, personal style