Sustainable Marketing Strategies for Reviving Customer-Based Hotel Performance after Rebranding Decline
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Rebranding under a global hotel brand is expected to enhance marketing performance; however, brand affiliation does not necessarily lead to improved customer outcomes when service delivery and product quality fail to meet heightened expectations. This study examined a five-star hotel in Central Jakarta that experienced declining occupancy following its rebranding in 2019. The study aimed to investigate the effects of Brand Promise Fulfillment, Service Delivery Excellence, Digital Customer Experience, and Perceived Value on Customer-Based Hotel Performance, assessed through customer satisfaction, loyalty intentions, revisit intentions, hotel preference, and word-of-mouth recommendations, and to formulate strategic managerial recommendations. A quantitative, descriptive-explanatory, cross-sectional research design was employed, drawing on the Customer-Based View and Expectation–Disconfirmation Theory. Data were collected through structured questionnaires administered to guests who had stayed at the hotel following its rebranding. Respondents were selected using criterion-based purposive sampling, yielding 122 valid responses. The data were analyzed using multiple linear regression in IBM SPSS Statistics. The results indicated that the regression model explained 73.5% of the variance in customer-based hotel performance. Perceived Value emerged as the strongest statistically significant predictor, followed by Service Delivery Excellence, whereas Brand Promise Fulfillment and Digital Customer Experience exhibited positive but statistically nonsignificant associations with hotel performance. These findings suggested that guests placed greater emphasis on the value and quality of their actual experiences than on brand affiliation alone. Accordingly, hotel management should prioritize enhancing overall guest value and ensuring consistent service delivery, supported by alignment between brand promises and guest experiences and reliable digital service touchpoints. The study concluded that sustainable customer-based performance following rebranding required operational improvements rather than relying exclusively on brand communication strategies. However, the findings represented statistical associations within a single-hotel context and should not be interpreted as evidence of causal relationships.
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