The Impacts of Hotel Promotional Tools on Customer Purchase Intentions

As the hospitality industry has evolved, hoteliers have been developing and implementing innovative practices to attract customers. As a key component of marketing strategies, promotions drive sales by reinforcing customers’ sense of gratification. In addition to conventional promotions such as complimentary giveaways and price discounts, hotels are developing promotions around emerging applications such as ridesharing services (Uber/Lyft) and virtual reality (VR) experience. Both of these are the new phenomenon in today’s markets, and are examined in this study to compare their impacts on customer attitudes and purchase intentions. This research employs an experimental design method, and results based on an analysis of 127 valid survey responses collected from Amazon Mechanical Turk show that ridesharing services (Uber/Lyft) credits type of promotion earned more favorable attitudes and higher purchase intentions than Virtual Reality (VR) experience type of promotion.