Sensory marketing influence on customer lifetime value of the hotel industry

The hospitality sector is a principal participant to the development of the tourism industry and the hotel industry is one of the most prominent contributors to this sector. Nowadays, there is more emphasis for the hotel industry to provide diverse services for specific target customers. The hotels are competing to offer slightly dissimilar services to attain customers' satisfaction. Because of this competitive situation, the hoteliers strived to excel. The notion of Customer Lifetime Value (CLV) has been introduced to emphasize the importance of sustaining customers. CLV has become a preference for many marketers competing in this hypercompetitive business environment (Hosseini & Albadvi, 2009). In the hospitality industry, hotels perceive CLV as a way to balance the challenge of managing additional earnings within specific periods with more long term and strategic value improvisations (McGuire, 2012). The idea of Sensory Marketing (SM) is linked to the creation of CLV in the hotel industry because it could assist in attracting tourists continuously. The sensory marketing postulates that attraction can be developed through the sensory elements experienced by the tourists when they visit specific locations. The question of whether SM incites hotels' occupancy rates and the connection of SM with CLV as a strategic move by the hotels is the direction that this study is proposing. This is a conceptual paper that looks at the relevant literature leading to the linkage between SM and CLV.