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Hotels frequently receive customer feedback. One type of feedback concentrates on the negative aspects of a service experience. A stream of literature about service recovery exists to instruct industry managers about what to do when a service experience does not go according to plan. However, a relatively smaller proportion of research exists about what happens when service is exceptional. The present research attempts to gain a better understanding of the common themes involved with positive guest experiences and how managers can learn from such analysis to improve their customer relations. The research presented in this article concerns the latter group of guests: those whose positive service experience have lead them to express their strong positive feelings and furnish hotels with valuable information about how to continue the positive aspects of their service experience. When customers experience something truly extraordinary, they will express their delight. But what constitutes something extraordinary and how is that different from customer satisfaction? This research first explores the various conceptualizations of customer delight, as presented in the literature, and then provides a framework for explaining the common themes to a customer delight experience based on the data analysis.
Customer satisfaction is a topic of frequent study in the hospitality literature. However, the link between satisfaction and loyalty has been called into question ([32] Skogland and Siguaw, 2004). In light of this, researchers have begun exploring the topic of customer delight. There are various perspectives to customer delight. Some of them are based on a disconfirmation paradigm ([18] Keinningham et al. , 1999). Others stress the importance of fulfilling human needs ([31] Schneider and Bowen, 1999). Yet others have explored customer delight from the perspective of human emotions ([20] Kumar et al. , 2001). In the hospitality industry interest in the subject of customer delight has recently emerged ([34] Torres and Kline, 2006; [10] Crotts and Magnini, 2010; [22] Magnini et al. , 2011). The present study seeks to explore the factors that lead to the customer delight experience in the hotel setting. Through the use of a qualitative methodology, the researchers established a typology for customer delight. The [34] Torres and Kline (2006) model was reviewed and modified given the results of the study. The article concludes by providing directions...