Theme Hotel Based On The Customer Experience, Product Research

Themed hotel is a kind of hotel which operates around a certain theme including history, city and story etc from hardware to software in order to create valuable and memorable experience for customer. Themed hotel is the outcome of the upgrading of customer need and the furious competition of hotel market, which has been developing quickly these years in dire need of theory guidance accordingly. Themed hotel product (THP), which is a representative experience product, is the practice of experience theory in the hospitality industry. From the perspective of customer experience, the paper takes the culture themed hotel adhere to special resources as examples to study the THP in order to find some idea and countermeasures for exploiting THP.First of all, the paper reviews the current literature on customer experience, experience product, themed hotel and THP. Then, typical case of overseas and domestic themed hotels are put forward and analyzed, which lay a theoretical foundation of research design. On the basis of literature and case study, the research model, hypothesis and reasonable questionnaire are brought forward. Based on data from the questionnaire survey and data analysis including descriptive statistics, factor analysis, ANOVA, Paired-sample T Test and IPA, the paper tests the research model and research hypothesis and comes to five main conclusions as follows:Firstly, the customers of themed hotel are mainly young and middle-aged guests with high education background and occupation major in businessman and special technology worker. Secondly, the appraising indicator system of themed hotel product which is composed of 4 dimensions namely theme concept, theme environment and atmosphere, theme equipments and goods, and theme service and activities. The dimensions can cut into 10 key factors including theme's unique and coherent, theme's culture and experience quality, theme's consumption appealing, geographical location and theme architecture, interior theme servicescape and atmosphere, basic theme facilities and goods, affiliated theme facilities and goods, theme activities and service, which can deeper cut into 44 indictors. Thirdly, the accommodation experience of customers affects the appraisal of the THP indicators. Fourthly,from the perspective of customers, the ranks of importance of four THP dimensions are theme environment and atmosphere, theme concept, theme activities and service;the ranks of importance of ten factors are geographical location, theme service, theme's consumption appealing, basic theme facilities and goods, theme architecture, theme'sunique and coherent, interior theme servicescape and atmosphere, affiliated theme facilities and goods, theme's culture and experience quality, theme activities. Fifthly,through IPA, it finds the gaps between customer expectation and perception of THP and gains four different aspects of THP which the themed hotel should make endeavor to change including 'concentrate here', 'keep up the good work', 'low priority', 'possible overkill'.Finally, the paper proposes the operation countermeasures of THP including exactly market position, completely holding the factors of themed hotel products from the four dimensions, constructing sustainable competitive advantage and total management of customer experience.