Dining Duration and Customer Satisfaction

Restaurateurs may be tempted to speed up the pace of their customers\u27 meals during busy periods in a bid to increase table turns. While selling more covers should boost revenues, a study of restaurant patrons finds that strategies aimed at reducing dining time should be applied carefully. By dividing a dining experience into three segments, one can assess the effects of duration-reduction efforts at each point in the process. On balance, restaurant patrons do not want to feel that they are being rushed nor do they want to be unduly delayed. Indeed, it is the perception of the speed (or lack thereof), rather than the actual time spent dining, that carries the most weight with restaurant patrons. If a perceived wait is longer than what guests expected, their satisfaction is likely to diminish, along with their assessment of the server\u27s abilities and their likelihood to return. By the same token if a meal proceeds at a tempo much faster than expected, diners will feel rushed and will conclude that their server is not willing or able to attend to their needs. In particular, restaurants should approach the actual meal, that is, the in-process stage of the dining experience, with care. On the other hand, the pre-process stage, when guests are ordering drinks and reading the menu, and the post-process stage, when guests are receiving and settling the check, can be hastened in certain situations. The study found that patrons in casual and upscale casual restaurants are more willing to accept duration-reduction strategies than are patrons of fine-dining restaurants, where an appropriate pace is essential to satisfaction

Show Me What You See, Tell Me What You Think: Using Eye Tracking for Hospitality Research

Identifying precisely what consumers are looking at (and by implication what they are thinking) when they consider a web page, an image, or a hospitality environment could provide tremendous insights to the hospitality industry. By using eye tracking technology, one can almost literally see through the eyes of the customer to find out what information is examined at various points during the hotel search process or to assess which property design features attract guests’ attention. When eye tracking is immediately followed by interviews that review a graphical representation of the consumer’s eye movements, the thought processes behind consumers’ visual activity can be uncovered and explored. In this paper we explain how eye tracking works and how it could apply to hospitality research. Today’s eye tracking systems are easy for researchers to set up and use and are virtually transparent to the participant during use, making eye tracking a valuable method for examining consumer choice or facility design, or to develop employee training procedures. We argue that eye tracking would provide rich results and deserves to be considered for a wide range of hospitality applications

Strategic Revenue Management and the Role of Competitive Price Shifting

This paper examines whether stable competitive pricing positions yield better average annual RevPAR growth than do price shifts either upward or downward, as compared to competitors’ positions. Using property level data on average daily rate (ADR) and average annual RevPAR growth, this study found two contrasting price-shifting strategies. For hotels that were lower priced relative to their competitors in 2007, the most popular strategy was to make price shifts to higher price categories in both 2008 and 2009. In contrast, the most popular strategy for hotels that originally positioned themselves above the competition was to move to lower price categories in both 2008 and 2009. Although RevPAR fell for all hotels during this period, the strategy of shifting to a higher price category was the most successful in terms of average annual RevPAR growth over the three-year period of this study. On the other hand, a shift to lower prices was least successful in delivering RevPAR growth. Overall the results suggest that upward shifts in relative prices are the best way to achieve higher RevPAR growth, and maintaining price stability is the next most viable positioning strategy in terms of RevPAR