engleski

Investing in hotel employees as element of marketing network: relationship marketing perspective

Establishing long-term relationships with business partners helps a company to better understand its partners, consequently contributing to company performance. Moreover, by building relationships with business partners, a company creates its marketing network. Employees are a part of a company’s internal marketing network and are considered to be one of the core competitive strengths of hotel companies, contributing to hotel performance in the long run. Furthermore, investing in relationship quality can help a company to perform better than its competitors. Hence, the purpose of this paper is to analyse how building relationship quality contributes to the enhanced recognition of employees in an internal marketing network, and how this contributes to improving perceived hotel performance. The paper builds upon previous research on relationship marketing and uses scales from the existing literature. Empirical research was conducted using a questionnaire and interviews. Information was collected from 270 hotel managers in Croatia. Findings indicate that there are differences between hotels that have a developed internal marketing network and regard employees as being important in improving hotel performance, and hotels that have not developed this perspective. Research results also indicate that organizations that have loyal and educated employees, and include employees in different hotel planning activities, have employees that are more prone to co-create value with hotel guests

relationship quality, employees, marketing network, hotels, Croatia

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