CHECKHI: A Checklist for Evaluating the Customer Experience of Tourism in the Hotel Industry

Abstract

Evaluating the customer experience (CX) when guests interact with different products or services helps to understand their perceptions and responses during their journey. Nevertheless, most evaluation methods/instruments used in the hotel sector only focus on individual touchpoints of a customer’s journey, not the whole CX. This article presents CHECKHI: a novel checklist for evaluating the CX of the tourism area, specifically in the hotel industry. CHECKHI is composed of 102 items divided into seven touchpoints that cover the entire guest journey (before, during, and after the stay). We adapted and applied an eight-stage methodology to develop, validate, and refine CHECKHI, within two iterations. We performed several experiments to verify the content validity of CHECKHI using the Delphi method and interviews. The results obtained in the validations of CHECKHI items demonstrate its representativeness, clarity, and usefulness; this makes it possible to evaluate the CX at the touchpoints identified, regardless of the hotel type. CHECKHI could be useful for companies and/or organizations that offer hotel services and require evaluations of the CX; academics who need to create new evaluation instruments and can use CHECKHI as a reference; and professionals who need to learn about CX evaluation in the hotel sector.