Go away! Don’t bother me! I don’t want your money!

Abstract

In 1988, 998 letters of reservation inquiries were sent to hotels with 250 rooms or more requesting information about hosting a business reception for 20 couples. The study was designed to test the responsiveness of hotels to reservation inquiries made by letter and whether the hotels would miss the opportunity to maximize their revenues by failing to respond effectively to these reservation inquiries. Recently, 100 letters of similar content were again sent to a random sample of hotels with 250 rooms or more located in the USA, Canada, Mexico, and the Caribbean. The letters of reservation inquiries were sent to test the responsiveness of hotels again and to assess whether the quality of the responses made by the hotels has changed since 1988. The current study found that the responsiveness of hotels to reservation inquiries made by letter has changed little since 1988. Like 1988, many hotels missed the opportunity to maximize their revenues by failing to respond to reservation inquiries made by letter.

Citation

Ho, K., Jacobs, L. and Cox, J. (2003), "Go away! Don’t bother me! I don’t want your money!", Journal of Services Marketing, Vol. 17 No. 4, pp. 379-392. https://doi.org/10.1108/08876040310482784