Signals of hotel effort on enhancing IAQ and booking intention : effect of customer’s body mass index associated with sustainable marketing in tourism

Abstract

Since outdoor air pollutants may penetrate into hotels, indoor air quality (IAQ) has recently developed as an important criterion for tourists’ decision to choose traveling destinations and for business travelers to select accommodation. Thus, some hoteliers have raised concerns about the negative effects of emerging air quality issues on guests’ experience and are willing to invest in improving the IAQ. Unlike the hotel’s currently offered services and products which are observable, the improved IAQ is almost invisible and the mitigation technology of air pollutants is new to hoteliers, consumers and researchers in tourism. Hence, the search and understanding of the relationship of signals communicating hotel’s effort on air quality enhancement and booking intention plus the mediating and moderating factors become the main objective of the research and can fill the knowledge gap plus meet the practical need. The study found that the more reinforced IAQ effort included in the website presentation, the higher the travelers’ booking intention. The travelers’ trust in the hotel partially mediated the relationship between travelers’ perception of reinforced IAQ effort input by hoteliers and their booking intention. Further, the study finds that the enhancement of online booking intention does exist in a segment of travelers who are high health-conscious. Additionally, the influence of health-conscious traveler’s perception of hotel IAQ enhancement effort via the portal on the dependent variable-hotel booking intention was statistically significant. The findings enable hotel managers to have a deeper understanding of the relationship between the potential customers’ booking intention on hotel rooms and the online marketing communication signals mediated by their trust in the hotel’s cleaning air effort. The results can serve as a reference for designing more effective marketing communication programs and channels for hotels’ endeavor to improve indoor air quality, especially sustaining the tourism development in the post-epidemic era. Additionally, the study unveils some applied measures in improving hotel air quality not being documented in hospitality and tourism journals.