Guests’ perceptions of hotels’ (un)fair treatment of staff: their impact on service recovery

Abstract

Limited previous research has examined the impact that third-party guests’ observations of (in)justice for others can have on a hotel. This study deals with this issue by testing whether the way guests who raised a complaint perceive management treatment towards hotel staff influence their satisfaction with service recovery (SSR), when controlling for perceptions of justice for the self: distributive, procedural, and interactional. The paper first verifies the distinctiveness of all the justice variables included in this study. Data were collected from 288 guests who had experienced a service failure in seven sampled hotels in the Canary Islands (Spain). Structural equation modeling (SEM) results indicated that guests who raised a complaint and were unhappy on the management treatment towards hotel staff, showed significantly lower satisfaction with service recovery (SSR). These findings suggest that, like justice for the self, justice toward staff also predicts satisfaction with service recovery (SSR), thus earning a place in the service recovery literature. Suggestions for future research and practical implications are also presented.