Effect of guest demographics on perception of hotel room price

Purpose - A review of past scholarly work on pricing issues in hospitality has revealed a lack of focus on customers' demographic profiles. However, research in other disciplines reveals that understanding price perception differences among groups of customers with different demographics, including culture, is an important consideration when offering pricing strategies. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the body of pricing research by exploring the effect of hotel guests' demographics on their perception of hotel room prices. Design/methodology/approach - Through Qualtrics, data were collected from 414 respondents who stayed at a mid-scale hotel within the past 24 months. The respondents' perceived value (PV), perceived fairness (PF) and willingness to pay (WTP) for hotel rooms were examined with MANOVA and ANOVA tests to determine the effects of customer demographics on these variables. Findings - Age, gender and marital status showed a significant effect on PV while age, gender and culture significantly affected PF. However, none of these variables significantly affected WTP. The culture of origin and the culture raised-in influenced PV, PF and WTP similarly. Originality/value - This study reconciles several divergent results from previous studies and extends the scope of others by introducing different scenarios to each of the three dependent variables. To the best of the authors' knowledge, it is also the first research study on this subject to evaluate more than two cultures and their effects on the independent variables.