The impact of hotel pricing policies on perceived fairness and satisfaction with the reservation process

This study examines the impact of offering differential pricing policy information on customer perceptions of fairness and their satisfaction with the reservation process. More specifically, we want to investigate whether offering information on the hotel's pricing policies would influence guest perceptions. In addition, we sought to understand how comparison outcome (better/worse/same) and comparison standard (internal/social comparison) mitigate the positive effects of information availability. Two hundred and forty travelers waiting for their planes at an airport in the Washington DC area served as subjects. Our results indicate that both information availability and comparison outcome influenced perceived fairness ratings. Moreover, the three factors (comparison outcome, comparison standard and information availability) jointly determined overall satisfaction with the reservation process.