Relationship Marketing in Hospitality

Increasingly, relationship marketing (RM) has been viewed to be critical to the success of hotels, with the growing understanding that acquiring new customers is far more expensive than maintaining existing ones. While keeping customers loyal, however, is a key objective of RM, there is little agreement on which antecedents could be used to achieve this aim. In response, this book develops a model of relationship marketing based on a review of the literature to empirically investigate in one single model: (1) the affect of relational bonds (financial, social and structural) on relationship quality and customer emotions; (2) emotions on relationship quality; and (3) the ultimate affect of both relationship quality and emotions on customer loyalty. In particular, this book seeks to investigate the role of the emotions variable as a consequence of relational bonds (financial, social and structural), and antecedent of relationship quality. The analysis should help shed some light on this the practice of relationship marketing by hotels, and should beespecially useful to professionals in the hospitality industry and anyone who has interest in RM research.