Re-interpreting �Luxury Hospitality� Through Experienscape, Customer Satisfaction, and Customer Well-being

Since customers are the ultimate perceivers or definers of their experiences, so they may carry different meanings and interpretations of �luxury�. Some may perceive �luxury� when the state of satisfaction or delight is achieved, whereas for others, �luxury� may be experienced when one feels an enhancement in his/her well-being resulting from a service experience. However, service providers nowadays are also trying to enhance customer well-being which is considered something beyond customer satisfaction as per contemporary service literature. Therefore, this research aims to re-interpret luxury hospitality from the experienscape perspective to predict perceived well-being (a human-centric outcome) through customer satisfaction (a behavioral affective reaction) in the context of Malaysian beach resort hotels. Using a questionnaire as a research instrument, data was collected from beach resort hotel guests who stayed at any one of the fifteen 5-star and 4-star beach resort hotels located in Langkawi, Malaysia. A total of 306 responses were obtained from the beach resort hotel guests, using a convenience and snowball sampling approach. A significant and positive effect of functional, natural, and cultural experienscape on customer satisfaction was found, while sensory and social experienscape had a non-significant impact on customer satisfaction. Also, there was a significant and positive effect of social and natural experienscape on perceived well-being, while sensory, functional, and cultural experienscape had a non-significant effect on perceived well-being. Moreover, there was a significant impact of customer satisfaction on perceived well-being and customer satisfaction also mediates the relationship between experienscape components and perceived well-being. Our findings are theoretically meaningful as it is the first empirical research that translated �luxury� through the interaction between experienscape and perceived well-being through the mediation of customer satisfaction in the context of beach resort hotels. © 2023, The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Nature Switzerland AG.