The employee-customer relationship quality Antecedents and consequences in the hotel industry

Purpose In the highly competitive hotel industry, it is essential to encourage patterns of continuous repurchase and to retain customers. This may be achieved through the quality of the relationship established with them. The aim of the paper is to test a model of the antecedents and consequences of the quality of the employee-customer relationship. Design/methodology/approach Partial least squares (PLS) was used to assess the reliability/validity of the measures and make a causal-predictive analysis. Findings The results of the study are useful both for academics and practitioners: they add support for the proposed model and increase its potential for generalisation; results suggest a wide range of measures that hotel managers could undertake to develop and maintain employee-customer relationship quality. Research limitations/implications Future studies should test the model at different times, during other important events in the city and, of course, in other geographical areas. Also new variables should be included in the model. Another research path might be to integrate into a single model all the agents with whom a particular hotel establishment forms relationships. Practical implications From the management perspective, results of this study provide useful variables for hotel managers introducing a relationship marketing strategy in their hotels, regardless of their category. Originality/value The paper uses PLS methodology to test a proposed model, particularly appropriate in this case since it allows a causal-predictive analysis in a situation in which complex problems are analysed and previous theoretical knowledge is limited.