Customer Perception in Hotel Selection and Feedback Mechanism Aayushi Kalra a a Research Associate, Indian Institute of Management , Bangalore Abstract The hotel industry is witnessing a boom due to increase in number of tourists visiting our country. Thus, in order to woo more customers, there is a need to understand how customers make choices for hotel selection. The amount of differentiation among the hotels is so narrow that it becomes very difficult for tourists to select the most appropriate hotel. It is of great significance for tourists to select residence location in different countries. A complex decision making process is involved in selection of hotel. The current study is aimed to study the different factors that influence the customers to select a hotel. Also, feedback mechanism is developed to identify the factors for the success of a leading corporate hotel in our country. Keywords: Hotel selection, Factor analysis, ANOVA 1. Introduction A hotel is an institution or a building in which lodging, meals and other services are provided for the travelling public. It is a business enterprise having a building for public accommodation, that furnishes lodging and usually provides meals, beverages and personal services’ It often offers, depending on its category, entertainment, and rooms for meetings, banquets and shops of various kinds, lounges, lobbies, cafes, bars and restaurants. However the primary function of a hotel is to accommodate those away from home and to supply them with their basic needs. Competition is continuously getting stronger in the domain of marketing and this serve as a drive for managers to pay more attention to what they offer to the end users. Consumers are unceasingly growing in their consumption knowledge and have developed so much that in addition to demanding quality in the goods produced they equally think about the various stages of production before consumption. Therefore, to be able to capture and maintain customers, it is of great significance for companies to build loyalty and trust, which includes delivering the needs and expectations of customers. In other words, there is a need to build strong grounds for customer satisfaction. For the purpose of this study, we have extracted certain indicators of hotel selection and analyzed responses from over 500 respondents. The sample area was a leading corporate hotel in India and the respondents were customers of the hotel who were checking out. Further while administering questionnaire, it has been ensured that data comes from all category like male, female from all age groups and from different occupations etc. 2. Literature Review Customer satisfaction can be achieved by providing quality service. Quality is important since the consumers can attest satisfaction through an evaluation of the quality of services offered to them compared to what they expected or have as experienced. The same has been affirmed by many scholars. According to Kuo, a primary challenge to hotel management in the modern hospitality industry is providing qualitative services to tourists and keeping them satisfied. As per Lewis(1983), the services and facilities offered by a hotel or hotel attributes are those features of services that lead consumers to choose one service over others. Wuest et al. (1996) defined perceptions of hotel attributes as the degree to which travellers find various services and facilities important to customers’ satisfaction. Few of the scholars examined the hotel selection decisions of customers by way of surveying in different jurisdictions. Ananth et al. (1992) surveyed 510 travellers, asking them to rate the importance of 57 hotel attributes in hotel choice decision. The results illustrated that price and quality was rated as the most important attributes across all age categories, followed by attributes related to security and convenience of location. Chu and Choi (2000) gathered the opinion of 343 Hong Kong tourists about the hotel attributes