Factors influencing hotel experiences for millennial tourists: a South African study.

Abstract

Over the past two decades, hotels have given significant attention to the Baby Boomer generation. However, lately the millennial generation has become a niche market in the hotel market, and brought unique perspectives and values, thus posing atypical service quality challenges to hotels. The purpose of this study is to identify factors influencing hotel experiences for millennial tourists. The study was mainly quantitative with some qualitative elements. A meeting was held with seven hoteliers (qualitative), and 424 domestic millennial tourists of hotels in Gauteng, South Africa successfully completed questionnaires (quantitative). The study revealed that three factors namely, ‘tangibles’, ‘reliability’ and ‘responsiveness’ significantly impacted (p<0.05) on hotel experiences. However, among these factors, ‘tangibles’ emerged as the best predictor of tourist experiences whilst reliability was rated by respondents as the attribute highly impacting on hotel experiences. To improve the tangible experience, hotels can increase technology features in rooms such as extra electrical outlets, strong WiFi connectivity, mobile device charging ports and self-service tablets. To improve ‘reliability’ hotels can implement digital booking, check-in and check-out via smartphones. This can be done through dial-inns inside rooms. To the best of the author’s knowledge, this paper is the first that attempts to identify factors influencing hotel experiences for millennial tourists in South Africa. The findings could help hotels understand the nuances of this niche market and be prepared to offer a hotel experience that meets their expectations.