The global wellness market is the fastest growing market and is comprised of $4.5 trillion
in 2021. The wellness industry consists of but is not limited to wellness tourism, physical
activity, fitness, workplace wellness, spa industry, healthy eating, nutrition, and weight
loss. As wellness awareness is getting attention, the hotels that provide wellness services
have attracted attention within the hospitality industry. The hotel industry is looking to
grow its business and the hotel professionals need to adopt wellness services to be more
profitable. The wellness need of the hotel customers is an important factor for the hotels
to be successful. To maintain sustained effort of wellbeing throughout the daily lifestyle,
individuals are motivated to use wellness services. Consequently, it is important to
identify the individual’s motivation to use wellness services.
While several previous studies found that perseverance and passion for long-term
goals to stay physically fit is the antecedent for maintaining wellness, it was also found
that perseverance and passion can predict wellness behavior. Grit is the psychological
factor that is defined as perseverance and passion for completing long-term goals. This
study proposes that grit is one of the psychological traits of the individuals that plays part
in engaging in wellness activities during a hotel stay. Grit is the perseverance people
show in achieving certain goals such as engaging in physical activity and sustaining it.
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This study explores how grit in customers drives them to seek wellness activities during
travel. Studying grit may help predict future wellness behavioral outcomes of the
customers in the hospitality industry.
While grit is a new construct, it has been proven to be a distinguishing factor in
the transtheoretical model (TTM) stages of physical activity behavior. The purpose of
this study was to assess different wellness services and amenities in the hospitality
industry and examine how grit with respect to the TTM stages can lead to customers’
using of wellness services and how hotels providing these wellness services can lead to
customer engagement for the hotel industry. The nature of this study is three-fold: first, to
develop attributes of wellness services in hospitality context as the hotel industry
transitions to “new-normal” after the Coronavirus Pandemic outbreak; second, to explore
the effects of different psychological traits on wellness services; third, to estimate the
effects of wellness services on customer engagement.
The current research explores the concept of grit as an important customer
psychological trait when consuming wellness amenities during a hotel stay. An online
survey was utilized for this study. The grit was measured by employing Duckworth and
Quinn's (2009) short grit scale. Participants' involvement in the various stages of TTM
was measured by Prochaska and Velicer's (1997) study. The wellness service attributes
(“Hospital”ity attributes, physical fitness, and new normal necessities) were adopted from
Chi et al. (2019), Comptton (2020), Calvey (2020), Hilton (2019), Mueller and
Kaufmann (2001), and Suess and Mody (2017). Customer engagement behavior items
(i.e., visit intention, electronic word of mouth, and willingness to pay a premium) were
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adopted from Chi et al., (2019), Choi and Kandampully (2019), and Risitano et al.,
(2017).
An IRB approval was received for this study. The survey was sent to 491
prescreened respondents and 347 people took the survey, with a 71% response rate. Out
of 347 recorded responses through the Qualtrics survey platform, a total of 337
completed responses were used to analyze the data. This study was funded by the Patton
College of Education Graduate Study and Educational Research Fund. The data was
analyzed by SPSS and Amos analytical software. Exploratory factor analysis (EFA) was
conducted to determine the adequacy, convergent, and discriminant validity of the data.
Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) was conducted to check the model and data fit. A
structural equation model (SEM) was employed to test the relationship among the
variables.
Grit was found to be a significant antecedent of using all the wellness services
except the new normal necessities. The intention of using wellness services was found
significant to the intention to visit a hotel that provides wellness services, willingness to
pay a premium, and electronic word of mouth (eWOM), except the physical fitness
wellness services were not significant to predict the eWOM behavior. Grit was also
significantly and positively related to the stages of TTM. Grit was found to have a
positive effect on customers’ visit intention to the hotels that offer wellness services,
customers’ willingness to pay a premium for the hotels that offer wellness services, and
eWOM.
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To the best of our knowledge, this study was the first study to assess the
relationship between grit and customer engagement in hotel wellness services. Therefore,
the study findings enrich the wellness hospitality literature. This study contributes to the
field of wellness hospitality and psychological trait grit. The study results help the
professionals and researchers to discover new wellness factors within the hospitality
industry.