The impact of guest satisfaction on expenditure : case study of a superior hotel in Malta

Abstract

The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between guest satisfaction and ancillary guest expenditure in a superior hotel in Malta. The research area of guest satisfaction has been sufficiently covered in the literature, but there has been relatively little discussion about the financial implications of guest satisfaction in hotel settings. The research was conducted by connecting the guest satisfaction questionnaire data to the corresponding guest invoices, after which the data was recorded in IBM SPSS for the analysis. In the analysis stage the changes in ancillary expenditure was studied mainly through different levels of overall satisfaction by testing 5 hypotheses. In broad terms, the findings indicate that high satisfaction corresponds to higher ancillary expenditure during the stay in comparison to low satisfaction, referring here to the satisfaction scores of 6 or less and 9 or more in a scale of 1-10 when all the cases were included. However, when the moderating variable of purpose of stay was applied, significant differences started emerging in expenditure within the groups of same satisfaction. In addition, the seasonality factor was identified to have a significant effect on ancillary expenditure that varied noticeably within the same satisfaction groups, especially when the low season and high season guests were compared. Based on the further findings of the study, it could be said that high satisfaction of 10 does not necessarily guarantee higher expenditure than the satisfaction levels of 8 or 7, the high satisfaction of 10 rather implies that the guests were pleased or delighted with the guest experience during the stay, regardless of the amount they ended up spending at the hotel.