The appeal of sustainability in luxury hospitality: An investigation on the role of perceived integrity

This research investigates the effect of a luxury hotel’s marketing communication strategy on consumers’ willingness to book a room. In particular, the article compares two types of communication message: one that mainly highlights the hotel’s attention to environmental sustainability and the other that focuses on customer service. The paper tests the hypothesis that a sustainability-focused communication leads to a higher willingness to book a room (compared to the customer service-focused strategy) because it increases consumers’ perceptions about the hotel’s integrity. Moreover, the study proposes that consumers’ dispositional environmental concern magnifies this effect. One online and one realistic field experiment provide empirical evidence for the research hypotheses. This article contributes to the literature on sustainable luxury tourism and hospitality by proposing a novel theoretical framework, grounded in perceived hotel integrity, to explain why consumers might react positively when learning that a luxury hotel is committed to sustainability.