A Study on Customer Preservation and Constancy in the Malaysia Mid-Market Hotel Segment

The business environment for the independent, mid-market hotel in Malaysia is becoming progressively more competitive. This is as a result of the expansion of the innovative budget lodge hotel sector and the market pressure of powerful, highly branded corporate hotels operating in the upscale (4 start) sector. Mid-market, independent hotels face the danger of customer defection to one or both of these competitor sectors. This study attempts to establish what factors current customers of mid-market, independent hotels take into account when considering hotel selection and consequently what marketing factors involve to be taken into account when attempting to secure their future constancy. The process of enquiry was a customer survey of current and past customers of the mid-market, independent hotels. Both comprehensively, face-to-face interviews and postal survey were used. Quantitative data was analyzed using SPSS Version 8.0. The research exposed that there were specific technical and functional product attributes, pricing attributes, location and booking attributes, promotion attributes and service quality attributes which were very vital or significantly influence a customer' choice of hotel. There were also highly significant variances in the importance of these factors depending on the demographic profile of customers. From these findings, it was accomplished that there were minimum product attributes required to be competitive and that mid-market, independent hotels required a customer-focused approach to the provision of these attributes. A similar customer-focused approach should be adopted for pricing, location and booking as well as promotion issues. Yet to gain a competitive advantage and to acquire a customer focused approach to developing sustainable constancy, mid-market, independent hotels had to distinguish themselves from competitors by providing superior service from a quality brand