Escape, entitlement, and experience: liminoid motivators within commercial hospitality

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the relationships between consumer motivations, their interactions with hospitality spaces and experiential outcomes. Enhancing consumer experience is of clear interest to industry professionals. This quantitative study explores the impact of escapism and entitlement to leisure upon involvement in liminoid consumptions spaces, thereby contributing a theory of liminoid motivators within commercial hospitality.

This study adopts a quantitative methodology, using a survey of a sample of student nightclubbers in the UK. Data are analysed through Partial Least Squares.

Hospitality consumers are positively affected by the feelings of increased involvement experienced in consumption spaces that exhibit liminoid characteristics.

Surveys involve potential for error regarding respondents’ ability to agree with questionnaire statements. Data collection was conducted in Scotland, and so, results may not be generalised to other commercial hospitality spaces outside of Scotland.

Hospitality consumers become more involved, and thereby more satisfied, in liminoid consumption spaces when motivated by escapism and entitlement to leisure. Attending to the liminoid motivators that drive consumers away from work and domesticity, and towards commercial hospitality spaces, will go some way towards creating the desired consumer experience.

This is the first quantitative study to investigate consumer motivations to escape and entitlement to leisure as antecedents of involvement in a commercial hospitality context. It develops a theory of hospitality consumption using the liminoid anthropological concept.