When interpersonal relationships backfire: understanding the drivers of booking cancellations in hospitality

Abstract

While prior research suggests that interpersonal relationships with hotel employees are beneficial in the hospitality context, this paper suggests otherwise. Drawing on the relationship norms theory, we propose under which conditions interpersonal relationships can increase or lessen guests’ booking cancellation intentions and behavior. This research reports the findings of two studies. Study 1 includes a pretest based on hospitality professionals’ interviews (Study 1 - Pretest, N = 20), and a survey for hospitality customers (Study 1 - Survey, N = 305); Study 2 uses a real dataset of a large European hotel chain (Field Study 2, N = 300,000). We reveal that employee-guest communal relationships, triggered either by interpersonal communication (Study 1) or by a satisfactory interpersonal interaction during the stay (Study 2), can affect guests’ future booking cancellation behavior and intentions. Conversely to managerial practice and theoretical guidance, we found that communal employee-guest relationships driven by interpersonal interaction might indeed increase booking cancellation. We propose that since consumers feel closer to the service provider in a communal relationship, they feel no moral obligation or regret in canceling the booking. The findings provide support for our theoretical account, showing that perceived moral obligation and tendency-to-regret moderate the negative effect of interpersonal interaction on booking cancellations. While moral obligation reduces the negative effect of interpersonal interaction on cancellations, tendency-to-regret increases this effect. Theory and practical implications are discussed for hotel managers and marketers. By doing so, we extend previous findings on interpersonal relationships in hospitality research, showing under which conditions, interpersonal relationships between hotel employees and guests can affect booking cancellations.