Customer-oriented, High-grade Hotel Service Innovation

Being an indispensable managerial function of hotel operations, service innovation has a profound influence on the enhancement of customer experience and satisfaction by enriching hotel service products and improving service quality and efficiency. Because of different environmental conditions among hotels regarding market, facilities, and human resources, it is necessary for hotels of different classes to choose service innovation strategies that are suitable to their operation. This thesis, approaching service innovation from the angle of customer demand, probes into the relationship of hotel service innovation to customer satisfaction, identifies different elements of service innovation for middle and upper class hotels through an empirical study.On the basis of literature review and applying the Pull Theory of service innovation, the thesis brings forward five dimensions of hotel service innovation and points out that customer demand is the most important influencing factor for successful hotel service innovation,. The empirical study consists of two parts. The first part concentrates on the relationship of customer demand to hotel service innovation, while the second part focuses on the relationship of elements of service innovation to customer satisfaction. The thesis uses descriptive statistics and factor analysis in its preliminary analysis, which leads to the research model and hypotheses. One-way ANOVA, regression analysis, and IPA are applied to validate the model and hypotheses. The case study of this research analyses two hotels of different classes in Hangzhou city to demonstrate the success of the hotel service innovation.Research findings indicate that while there are general strategies of service innovation for both middle and upper class hotels, there are distinct strategies of service innovation for hotels of different classes. Distinct strategies include innovation in areas of empathy, tangible, reliable, conceptual, and technological service elements for middle class hotels, and innovation in areas of empathy, variety, and techonological service elements for upper class hotels.General strategies are customer-oriented innovation culture ,effective innovation mechanism, and well-inplementation.