How giving guests ‘a sense of ownership’ can benefit hotel industry

A new study published in the peer-reviewed journal Cornell Hospitality Quarterly finds that guests who gain some sense of ownership for their hotel room show a greater attachment to the brand after they check out.  

Encouraging ‘psychological ownership’ of hotel rooms offers a new, cost-effective strategy to enhance customer loyalty, says study co-author Suzanne Shu, Dean of Faculty and Research at Cornell University in the US. For the study, she collaborated with Rin Yoon, a Ph.D. candidate in marketing at the university, and Joann Peck, a Professor of Marketing at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. 

“These very small interventions, including allowing people to choose their room at the time of check-in or encouraging them to move the furniture around, can have a big impact on the sense of ownership that people feel and the loyalty they have towards the hotel,” Shu explains. 

The paper, titled ‘Increasing Hotel Loyalty through Psychological Ownership’, relies on four separate studies that show the tangible benefits of increasing guests’ psychological ownership of their rooms. The study defines psychological ownership as a perceptual state that is “best described as the territorial feeling that something is ‘mine’.” 

After previously exploring the concept of psychological ownership to study employee behaviour in organisational settings, as well as the concept’s effect on public spaces like parks, Shu the wanted to explore whether psychological ownership would apply to spaces that consumers don’t own – such as a hotel room. 

Four experiments to test psychological ownership in hotels 

She and her co-authors created four experiments that tested whether three strategies that promote psychological ownership would have an impact on the hotel guest experience: controlling the space, investing oneself in it, and having intimate knowledge of it. 

Two of the experiments created hypothetical check-ins online that included assessing whether a customer personalising a room or using the hotel’s data based on previous preferences was more effective in promoting brand loyalty.  

The study found that guests who customised their room on their own showed greater loyalty to their hotel. 

Hotel chains have already begun using some of the strategies identified in the study, including allowing guests to personalise their rooms at check-in. That process forces guests to “exert their time and effort and invest themselves in their room”, which can promote loyalty, Yoon emphasises. 

Another strategy hotels could adopt to promote psychological ownership is allowing guests to rearrange some of the furniture in their rooms. That is exactly what Shu did during a recent hotel stay during a business trip. 

“If you allow a guest to customise their environment a little bit more, they’ll end up feeling more ownership over it because it’s like at home,” she says. 

You can find out more about the study here.