Guest Behavioural Intentions in Hotels: The role of Employee Practices and Customer Satisfaction in Hotels in the context of Sustainable Kitchen Practices.

Abstract

Purpose. A growing number of hotels are making their food and beverage operations sustainable – but it is not well understood how the actions a hotel takes in its kitchen and dining room translate to actions that will drive guest loyalty, nor how the sustainability of frontline staff's behavior influences the process. This study is based on the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) model and investigates how guest perceived sustainable kitchen practices (SKP) affect guest behavioural intentions (GBI) through customer satisfaction (CS) and whether perceived employee green practices (EGP) moderate the effect of the intervening variable.
Design/methodology/approach. A survey was conducted of 500 hotel guests who had occupied the hotel during the past six months when they used hotel food and beverage services. Reliability and validity of the model was measured through convergent test, discriminant test and Harman's single factor test for common method bias. Hypotheses were tested using regression-based path analyses, bias-corrected bootstrapping (5,000 resamples) for mediation and moderated-mediation analysis with conditional indirect effects.
Findings. The effect of SKP on CS was positive (β = .58) and the effect of SKP on GBI was positive (β = .61); the effect of CS on GBI was positive (β = .63). The indirect effect of CS (indirect effect = .23, 95% CI [.18, .28]ci) was also found to partially mediate the SKP–GBI relationship, accounting for some 39% of the total effect. Satisfaction return was also positively moderated by EGP (β = .12, p < .01): When employees were perceived to act sustainably, the satisfaction return was seen to be stronger. The index of moderated mediation was significant (.044, 95% CI [.017, .074]) and the conditional indirect effect of SKP on GBI was .14 in the low group (EGP) and .23 in the high group (EGP).
Originality/value. The two constructs, a back-of-house one (sustainable kitchen attitudes) and a front-of-house human one (employee green attitudes) are integrated within one S-O-R model: credible sustainable kitchen systems produce the signal, the employees verify, and if they are satisfied, they act. The findings lead hotel managers to an excellent activation opportunity: display kitchen sustainability investments to guests and in the employee's mind, and boost returns on guest loyalty.
This study assumes that there is not much relationship between Sustainable Kitchen Practices and customer satisfaction with the service as the Sustainable Kitchen Practices of the employees directly affect customer satisfaction.This study suggests a weak relationship between the Sustainable Kitchen Practices of the employees and satisfaction of their customers with the service as it is directly related to the customers.