Customer delight: perception of hotel spa consumers

Delighted customers are those whose expectations have been exceeded by the service provider. Competitors in the hotel business need to go beyond what is expected in order to satisfy the guest with an unpredictable positive experience. This study was aimed to clarify the significance of customer delight as an antecedent to customer loyalty, in five-star hotel spas in Portugal. To better understand spa consumers’ perception of delight, the development and testing of an integrated model was undertaken by examining the relationship between perceived service quality, customer satisfaction, loyalty and customer delight. The model was tested using surveyed data from 427 spa consumers and validated using partial least squares (PLS) technique. The results indicated that satisfaction had a direct positive effect on customer delight and, consequently, influences the effect of customer delight on customer loyalty.