Understanding Guests’ Generation: A Strategy for Hoteliers (Published)
The study assess trends in service delivery in independent hotels in Ogun State. It classified hotel guests based on the generation they belong to using their period of birth as adopted from Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research (GSGIR). This include, the Baby Boomers, Baby Busters (Generation X) and the Millennials (Generation Y). The investigation focused on the challenges facing hotels and the attributes of various category of people that patronizes independent hotels, their expectation and how hotelier can surpass it. Multistage sampling techniques were used for sample selection. Twenty-four (24) independent hotels were selected from the four major towns in each of the four geopolitical zones that makes up Ogun State using purposive and systemic sampling methods. Simple random sampling method was further used to select four hundred and twenty (420) respondents among guests patronizing the selected hotels. Questionnaires and keys informant interview methods were used for data gathering. Findings of the study revealed that, independent hotels are mostly facing the challenge of poor patronage, unfavourable government policy, high running cost to mention a few. It was also revealed that, independent hotels are mostly patronized by the Millennials (51%) which are mostly male (77%) and are single (67%). Interview with managers of hotel revealed that recent trends in the industry was largely brought by innovations in technology, marketing strategies, human relation and social values which has given birth to several products and services offered by various hotels. The study concludes that, hotels that intend to boost sales to overcome many of their challenges especially in highly competitive regions should intensify efforts to better understand expectations of various generation of customers and which of these generations is most dominant in their region. The study recommends that, hotels that are yet to upgrade their products and services should carve a niche market for themselves that will focus on the dominant group, marketing this group and satisfactorily meeting the expectations of this category of guest without compromising the needs of other category of guests.
Keywords: : Generation, Guest, Hoteliers