Going Global or Going Local? Why Travelers Choose Franchise and Independent Accommodations

Abstract

While there is agreement over the pivotal role accommodations have in the tourist experience, little is known about why tourists gravitate toward franchise or independent accommodations. This article compares US tourists’ perceptions of the performance of franchise and independent accommodations on a range of functional, experiential, and symbolic attributes, and subsequently tests to see if there are separate reasons for why tourists choose the two lodging options and share word of mouth (WOM) and electronic WOM (e-WOM). Results reveal that franchise accommodations consistently outperform independent accommodations on “Service Quality” and “Utilitarian Quality.” However, independent accommodations were found to outperform franchise accommodations in “Experiential Quality” and “Symbolic Quality.” Modeling results reveal tourists choose the two accommodation options for separate reasons with Service Quality being important to both, but with Symbolic Quality also being important to choosing independent accommodations. Likelihood to share WOM and e-WOM were more a function of Experiential Quality and Symbolic Quality than Service Quality for both lodging types.