The Effect of Brand Identification on the Assessment of Hotel Brands and Development of Customer Loyalty (Case Study: Hotels of Gilan Province)

Today, increasing competition, especially in services, has led to pay more attention to maintainexisting customers and try to attract new customers which have in turn become more urgent for thesurvival of the organization along with severe market competition, rising customer expectations andthe desire for meeting high levels of their expectations. Any organization in which levels of customersatisfaction and loyalty are low and customer base has been eroded, causing loss of market shareshould look for ways to improve its customer satisfaction and loyaltyIn the highly competitive hotel industry, where products and services have reached Commodity status (Mattila, 2006) hoteliers are required to find ways to set their products and services apart fromothers (Choi and Chu, 2001). This need has given rise to the use of branding strategies as a source ofdifferentiation (Pappu et al., 2005) and competitive advantage (Kim and Kim, 2005) making brandingone of the most dominant trends in the global hotel industry (Kayaman and Arasli, 2007).Building strong hotel brands creates value for both the firm and the customer. From the hotel’sperspective, a strong brand enhances the property’s market value (O'Neill and Xiao, 2006) financialperformance (Kim and Kim, 2005; Kim et al., 2003; Kwun and Oh, 2007) and other key performanceindicators such as average price, occupancy, revenue, and return on investment (Forgacs, 2003).Research also indicates that branded hotels achieve higher net operating income during economicrecession (O'Neill and Carlback, 2011). From the customer’s perspective, strong hotel brands reduceperceived risks and search costs (Kayaman and Arasli, 2007) and provide a signal of quality assurance(Prasad and Dev, 2000) simplifying the consumer’s pre-purchase evaluation of the service.