An Empirical Study of the Mediating Role of Relationship Quality of Hotel Industry

[[abstract]]An understanding of how to manage custome relationships effectively and efficiently is of imperative concern for both practitioners and academicians in recent years. Hoteliers are realizing that customers have different economic value to the company, and they are subsequently adapting their operating and marketing strategies accordingly. Nevertheless, some key issues of customer relationship management (CRM) has hardly been examined and studied. Thus, the primary purpose of this study was to explore and examine some of the antecedents and outcomes of quality CRM. A convenient sample of 358 was collected via internet questionnaires. The questionnaire was developed based on extensive literature review. SPSS 12.0 and LISREL 8.5 were employed to analyze the data collected. The results from a quantitative study provide evidence for the influence of types of antecedents of trust, satisfaction, and commitment in hotel-customer relationships. It is shown that salesperson’s attributes plays the important role in these relationships. The results also indicate that trust, satisfaction, and commitment significantly influence customer’s loyalty at different levels. Hence, relationship quality plays an important mediating role between salesperson’s attributes and customer’s loyalty. Findings can be used to develop more appropriate strategies by lodging industry as a whole.