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This paper aims to identify the factors that have influenced growth in the UK's boutique hotel sector, through the identification of attributes that attract consumers to these hotels.

The study methods included a review of the literature and a survey of boutique hotel consumers in the UK.

Location, quality, uniqueness, services provided and the personalised levels of service offered are identified as the top five attributes attracting respondents to these hotels. The growth of the boutique hotel sector in the UK may be attributable to consumers seeking alternatives to the standardised provision of more traditional accommodation.

Although this research has its limitations due to the low response rate, many of the findings support those of previous studies and may assist boutique hotel operators in meeting customer needs more effectively. Practical recommendations are made for existing boutique hotel operators and those wishing to enter the market.

This paper is one of the first to investigate the growth of the UK's boutique hotel sector and the factors that influence the consumers' decision to purchase this type of accommodation.

Boutique hotels reflect a nascent phenomenon in the literature and in the accommodation sector. As a result, they are void of governmental classification and regulation. Concurrently, they lack any form of operational definition. The purpose of this paper is to address these limitations by identifying the core attributes found to define boutique hotels.

To fulfil the purpose of this paper, the authors conducted a systematic literature review on Web of Science. This resulted in an analysis of 33 peer-review articles published from 1994 to 2022.

The findings of this review revealed that boutique hotels are defined by eight core attributes; these are (1) multiple ownership structures, (2) situatedness in a historic premises, (3) strategic locations, (4) thematized internal décor, (5) experience design, (6) high levels of personalization, (7) novelty in service provisions and (8) niche marketing strategies.

For policymakers, this paper may be used as a reference point to establish designated classification systems for boutique hotels. For practitioners, this paper may be used as a source of inspiration and benchmark to establish boutique hotels which align to the criteria highlighted in this paper. For scholars, this paper proposes an operational description of boutique hotels and novel areas for future research.

This paper represents one of the initial efforts undertaken by researchers to unify the literature on boutique hotels.

In the early 2000s, a wave of new practices concerning the adaptive reuse (AR) of historic buildings into boutique hotels began in Yazd, Iran. This study presents the findings of a postoccupancy evaluation (POE) of adaptively reused historic buildings into boutique hotels. It aims to explore and prioritize the main factors of architecture's physical aspects in the adapted buildings.

In order to carry out a POE, hotel guests' written reviews from online international and national travel platforms were analyzed. According to this preliminary analysis, a questionnaire was designed and randomly distributed among 300 hotel guests. The data obtained from the questionnaire were analyzed using SPSS software. Principal component analysis (PCA) was used to reduce a set of indicators into the main components.

The findings revealed that “preliminary physical feasibility study and evaluation of building's functional potential” is the most important component with a weight of 0.709. Then, “adaptive reuse design” and “quality of building conservation” are placed with a weight of 0.232 and 0.058, respectively. The results show the mere attention of practitioners to architectural restoration rather than adapting historic buildings into boutique hotels in Yazd. Also, the lack of a specific framework for this purpose is felt in Iran.

Future research could evaluate the architectural aspects of historic buildings that have been converted into various functions from the main users' views.

This research's main contribution is to recommend guidelines for more user-friendly boutique hotels. This includes principal components and their sub-indicators that should be considered in the AR process of historic buildings by conservators, investors and hoteliers. Also, the extracted factors can be implemented for boutique hotels' improvements in operation because they determine the order of priority from the users' viewpoint.

This study introduces a new application of POE in the field of conservation of heritage assets and the hospitality industry; it focuses on the evaluation of the users' feedback regarding the architectural aspects of adaptively reused historic buildings into boutique hotels based on original empirical data.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate consumer motivations to boutique hotels in Xiamen, China with the push-pull theory.

The survey for this study was conducted in boutique hotels in Xiamen, China.

The results indicated identified “uniqueness-seeking,” “interpersonal experience,” and “social networking” as the primary push motivations and “decoration & theme” and “site value” as the primary pull motivations.

The study is anticipated to provide the industry practitioners in boutique hotels marketing strategies such as positioning, packaging, and advertising.

The purpose of this paper is to deconstruct the multi-faceted dimensions of Chinese travellers’ image of boutique hotels with a large amount of online textual data from social media (53,427 reviews written from 2014 to 2018), reinforcing the value creation of user-generated content via social media.

With the aid of Python, a computer language, online textual reviews (53,427 reviews) of 86 high-end boutique hotels in seven cities (Beijing, Shanghai, Hangzhou, Nanjing, Chengdu, Qingdao and Sanya) were collected from the top-ranked online travel agency in China, Ctrip.com. Then, the overall perceived image of boutique hotels was revealed with the aid of Python.

The results showed multiple dimensions of the image of boutique hotels. The overall image can be grouped into eight dimensions (room, service, food, environment, entertainment, location, price and value, and uniqueness). An affective image based on eight dimensions was further developed in the Chinese boutique hotel context. It appears that online data from social media are beneficial for hotel managers to learn travellers’ overall perceptions of boutique hotels and help put more effective management strategies in place in the hospitality industry.

The relationship between cognitive image and affective image should be further investigated in future research. Theoretical implications are discussed from both cognitive image and affective image perspectives in the boutique hotel context. Managerial implications are highlighted to help industry managers understand the travellers’ perceptions of the hotels, via online data from social media, and put more effective hotel strategies in hospitality industry.

By using textual online data from social media, this paper deconstructs both the cognitive image and the affective image of boutique hotels. The dimensions of the most frequently mentioned concepts related to the Chinese boutique hotel industry are profoundly deconstructed, as is the uniqueness of the image of boutique hotels. The work is valuable for promoting effective marketing strategies in the hotel industry.

This study aims to take boutique luxury hotels as its research subject to enrich the view on the self-positioned image of luxury hotels and simultaneously compare this image with the one perceived by customers. It also investigates whether a gap exists between the two images.

The best-rated boutique luxury hotel in Hong Kong is selected as the case hotel. Through the interpretation and discussion of high-frequency wordlists and semantic co-occurrence network charts, major topics in the hotel’s self-presented image and customers’ perceived image are identified accordingly.

Five dimensions (event making, exquisite food, excellent amenities and services, special function venue and promotion) used by hotels to form their boutique luxury image are recognised. Between hotels’ self-positioned image and customers’ perceived images, minor similarities such as the recognition of excellent amenities and services were confirmed but considerable differences were identified, indicating the ineffective marketing by the boutique luxury hotel despite its success in terms of ranking. Managerial suggestions on how to address the image discrepancy were proposed.

This study contributes insights into hotel image discrepancy among social media platforms in luxury hotel segments by adding the category of boutique luxury hotels. It also identifies the implications for enhancing the development of a hotel image to meet customers’ needs and expectations.

酒店的自我定位形象与顾客感知形象——以香港某精品豪华酒店为例

本研究试图以精品豪华酒店为研究对象, 丰富豪华酒店自我定位形象的视角, 同时将其与顾客感知的形象进行比较, 考察二者之间是否存在差距。

本文选取香港评分最佳的精品豪华酒店为案例酒店。通过对高频词表和语义共现网络图的解读和讨论, 识别出酒店自我呈现形象和顾客感知形象中的主要话题。

酒店利用五个维度（活动打造、精致的食物、优质的设施和服务、特殊的功能场所和促销）来塑造其精品豪华形象。在酒店的自我定位形象和顾客的感知形象之间, 发现了一些细微的相似之处, 如对优质设施和服务的认可, 但差异之处相当大, 表明尽管精品豪华酒店取得了优秀的排名, 但其营销效果不佳。本文提出了解决形象差异的管理建议。

本研究通过增加精品豪华酒店类别的案例, 有助于深入了解豪华酒店细分市场中社交媒体平台之间的酒店形象差异。本文还确定了促进酒店形象发展的影响, 以满足客户需求和期望。

Imagen auto-posicionada del hotel versus imagen percibida por los clientes: un estudio de caso de un hotel boutique de lujo en Hong Kong.

Este estudio se esfuerza por tomar a los hoteles boutique de lujo como tema de investigación para profundizar en el conocimiento sobre la imagen de los hoteles de lujo y compar el posicionamiento presentado por el hotel con el que perciben los clientes. También investiga si existe una brecha entre las dos imágenes.

Para el caso se selecciona el mejor hotel de lujo calificado en Hong Kong. A través de la interpretación y discusión de listas de palabras de alta frecuencia y gráficos de redes de coincidencia semántica se identifican los principales temas en la imagen presentada por el hotel y la imagen percibida de los clientes.

Se reconocen cinco dimensiones (creación de eventos, comida exquisita, excelentes comodidades y servicios, lugar de funciones especiales y promoción) utilizadas por los hoteles para formar su imagen de lujo boutique. Entre la imagen auto-posicionada de los hoteles y las imágenes percibidas por los clientes, se confirmaron pequeñas similitudes, como el reconocimiento de excelentes comodidades y servicios, pero se identificaron diferencias considerables, lo que indica la comercialización ineficaz del hotel boutique de lujo a pesar de su éxito en términos de clasificación. Se propusieron sugerencias gerenciales sobre cómo abordar la discrepancia de imagen.

Este estudio aporta información sobre la discrepancia de imagen del hotel entre las plataformas de redes sociales en los segmentos de hoteles de lujo al agregar la categoría de hoteles boutique de lujo. También identifica las implicaciones para mejorar el desarrollo de una imagen de hotel que satisfaga las necesidades y expectativas del cliente.

The purpose of this study is to contribute with new insights into the nature, dimensionality and measurement of the core essence of the small city boutique hotel (SCBH), something which has been limited in the literature to date. It further explores the conceptual relationships of SCBH with other constructs, providing greater understanding of the nature of these specific conceptual associations and showing that the SCBH scale exhibits construct validity.

This study followed the Churchill’s paradigm to methodologically design the study and develop the scale. Based on an exploratory qualitative inquiry (one focus group and ten interviews) and quantitative assessment (two surveys), support was found for a three-dimensional scale.

Results support the proposed measures of the scale (dream, hospitality and style) in terms of construct, convergent, discriminate, nomological and predictive validity. The findings also suggest that while authenticity acts as a SCBH antecedent, pleasant arousal and preference represent SCBH consequences.

By developing and validating a SCBH scale for city destination, this study addresses an identified literature gap. Specifically, it conceptualizes SCBH as guests’ perception about core characteristics of SCBHs located in the city.

The purpose of this paper is to link consumer use of technology to two very popular themes in the hospitality industry: boutique hotels and environmental responsibility.

The case study focuses on how boutique hotels legitimize their green practices through the use of technology – web sites, social media – to communicate their environmental recognitions to discerning eco‐conscious consumers seeking small lodgings. The authors analyze the type of environmental legitimacy practices used by the boutique hotel segment of the tourism industry, using a variety of international, regional, or trade recognized environmental evaluation assessments to legitimize their boutique hotel green practices. A diverse sample of boutique hotel accommodations in two attractive, but similar international destinations – Istanbul, Turkey and San Francisco, California – are used, through content analysis of hotel web sites.

San Francisco Bay Area hoteliers, in the majority of instances, used their web sites to illustrate one international standard, LEED certification, for building structure. However, these hoteliers generally reported use of varying regional standards for legitimizing their green practices. Istanbul hoteliers reported on maintaining international standards for legitimizing their green practices, but did not seek specific standards for building structures.

Future research surveys of specific consumer perceptions of their search and experience would prove valuable in terms of destination selection and experience of environmentally‐conscious boutique hotels. Social media and related web sites utilize consumer self‐reporting, which would add additional insight for future research in this area.

The authors' analysis studies the web promotion of two similar geographic tourism destination boutique hotels' use of international versus regional legitimacy of their environmental practices.

Place identity refers to the combination of physical setting, social interactions, emotions and associated meanings. This research paper aims to broaden knowledge about boutique concepts and to examine the role of advertisement types suited to generate a heightened sense of place for customers. The design and delivery of tangible and intangible components of the boutique service experience are investigated to better understand business-relevant customer outcomes.

An introductory qualitative study explores the key features and managerial relevance of the boutique appeal as a means to communicate personalization and a sense of place. Interviews with managers of a boutique catering service are conducted and thematically analyzed. A quantitative follow-up study examines the effect of the boutique appeal on hotel image, purchase intention and willingness to pay.

A boutique hotel appeal is more attractive to customers (compared to traditional luxury appeals) when it is advertised using visually engaging virtual tours because it augments customers’ sensation of place identity. The mediating psychological mechanism, place identity, represents the essential emotional component evoked by boutique concepts and its positive effect on managerially relevant customer outcomes.

This paper provides insight for the design and management of boutique concepts to better shape and predict consumer responses in various luxury hospitality industries. The process by which customers identify with the location where the service is provided, socialize with staff and attach meaning to these settings evokes a sense of place identity, a critical resource in the process of value co-creation.

The purpose of this paper was to examine how small- and medium-sized hospitality organisations engage with social media and how social media data are used by their managers to inform business decisions.

A qualitative approach was used in this research in which interviews were conducted with top management, comprising the owners/directors and other key managers from small- and medium-sized organisations based in Penang, Malaysia. Fan and Gordon's (2014) categorisation of the social media data analysis process and Simon's (1995) concept of the interactive and diagnostic usage of data were used in the analysis of data.

The managers of small- and medium-sized hospitality organisations engage with social media for customer relationship management and the understanding of key main competitors. Social media is used to understand, build and manage relationships with current and potential customers; these activities are also linked to actions taken to protect a company's reputation. Even though, for the companies concerned, data gathering is still at the capture stage with no formal procedures and processes in place, the data are utilised in an interactive way to inform two areas’ major business decisions-making, i.e. those related to pricing and promotion and the strategic formulation and reorientation of the business.

The respondents of this study were mainly from smaller hospitality organisations. Hence, the insights gained are limited to the context of smaller hotels.

A significant number of social media studies within the hospitality sector have focussed on marketing aspects. This study explored the wider use of social media in the case of smaller hospitality organisations and how they compete and position themselves in the competitive hospitality industry.