Journal of Economics and Behavioral Studies (ISSN: 2220-6140) Vol. 10, No. 6A, pp. 16-29, 2018 16 The Relationship amongst Customer Satisfaction, Loyalty, Demographic and Tripographic 1 Attributes: A Case of Star Rated Hotel Guests in Ethiopia Orthodox Tefera, Stephen Migiro Graduate School of Business and Leadership, University of KwaZulu-Natal, South Africa orthodox.tefera@gmail.com, migiro@ukzn.ac.za, stephen410@gmail.com Abstract: The hospitality industry in general and hotels in particular attend to diverse guests and their expectations. The satisfaction of all hotels guests and retaining them as a loyal customer, given their different profiles, is imperative but challenging to the sector. This study aims to address this very issue by trying to establish the relationship amongst, customer satisfaction, loyalty, demographic and tripographic attributes by focusing on the hotel guests who stayed in star rated hotels in Ethiopia. Satisfaction was measured as satisfaction with the product, satisfaction with the employees and overall satisfaction. Likewise, customer loyalty was measured with the likelihood of customers to return to the same hotel in the future. “A total of 1200 questionnaires distributed to 40 hotels out of which 415 hotel guests responded, by completing the questionnaires”. “The result of inferential statistical techniques reveals that there were significant positive relationships between the customer satisfaction variables” (products .488; p<0.001; staff .460; p<0.001), and the customer’s willingness to stay in the same hotel again. ” Though all variables of “customer satisfaction affected customer loyalty, the overall satisfaction variable had the highest standardized coefficient (0.328) with a statistical significance (p < 0.01), followed by satisfaction with the product (.227, p<.01), and satisfaction with employees (.190, p<.01). There was also no statistically significant difference (p>.05) in the mean scores of the customer satisfaction and loyalty across the gender, age, marital status and employment type groups of respondents. With regards to the tripographic variables, there was a statistically significant difference (P<.05) in the mean scores of both the customer satisfaction and loyalty across the staying preference of rated hotel types of customers. Additionally, there was a statistically significant difference (p>.05) in the mean scores of customer loyalty across a source of information on the hotel group of respondents. Hotel managers in Ethiopia need to look at the importance of segmentation of guest based on their demographics and tripographic factors so that they provide personalized service to enhance their customers’ satisfaction that could lead to their loyalty. Keywords: Demographic, tripographic, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty, hotel 1. Introduction The hotel industry, as a “sub-sector of the tourism industry”, is among the fastest growing businesses in the service sector. It is a large industry which contributes considerably to the world economy, creating jobs for many people worldwide. In Ethiopia, the hotel industry is showing exponential growth in the past two decades. According to Hailesilasse (2013), on average, elven hotels were opening every year in the past decade in the country and this is expected to increase to an average of eighteen hotels per year at least for the next two decades enhancing the provision of greater variety of choices for hotel customers while creating stiff competition among the hotels in the marketplace. However, this growth is not matched with the delivery of quality service in the majority of hotels which may negatively affect the guests’ satisfaction and loyalty (Kifle, 2012). Addressing the customer's satisfaction and loyalty challenges require addressing the varying needs of customers from one segment of the population to another (Ganesan‐Lim, Russell‐Bennett, and Dagger, 2008). In order to sustain customers’ satisfaction and their loyalty, marketing strategies need to look into the factors that influence customer (Grazhdani and Merollari, 2015). 1 Travel-related behavioural characteristics, such as Length of stay this visit, source of hotel rating information, staying preference (hotels' ratings), staying preference (chain or independent), source of hotel information this visit,, purpose of stay and hotel bill payment.