The effect of hotel’s dual-branding on willingness-to-pay and booking intention: a luxury/upper-upscale combination

Dual-branding is drawing interest in the industry because it offers cost and operational efficiencies. However, when two branded hotels are located on the same property, consumer evaluation toward one brand might be affected by the other brand. This study examines the brand anchoring effect on customers’ willingness-to-pay and booking intention and whether the disclosure of such information affects consumer evaluations. By analyzing responses from 309 US consumers collected from a web-based survey service, we find no anchoring effect at the booking stage regardless of the level of disclosure but information disclosure significantly affects consumers’ perceived fairness when consumers learn the dual-branding status. The results suggest that while dual-branding and disclosure of such information do not affect consumer evaluation at the booking stage, insufficient disclosure of the dual-branding status would negatively affect perceived fairness, which could negatively affect the company in the long term.