It’s a pleasure to stay sustainably: Leveraging hedonic appeals in tourism and hospitality

The tourism sector is actively exploring methods to reduce its adverse environmental impact. Our study introduces hedonic appeals as a novel approach to encourage guests to reduce their room cleaning requests. We contend that combining this approach with sustainable appeals is at least as effective as the previously identified most effective strategy, namely providing guests with financial incentives. The effectiveness of hedonic appeals is channeled through guest value creation. Our empirical evidence – involving a field experiment at a European hotel and a lab experiment – supports the proposed effects and explanation mechanisms. We also demonstrate that our new strategy is the most profitable by introducing a profitability index that considers room cleaning requests, monetary investments, and side effects. We therefore recommend hotels to adopt this cost-effective strategy to reduce room cleaning requests without affecting overall guest satisfaction.