What is it about?
Many hotel companies now sell things that have nothing to do with a room for the night, such as bedding, skincare, and branded retail goods. We wanted to know how consumers judge these products, and whether the product then changes how they feel about the hotel itself. We showed 807 Japanese adults a short news-style announcement in which one of four well-known Japanese hotel brands (Imperial Hotel, Hotel Okura, Tokyu REI Hotel, Dai-ichi Inn) launched either a towel or a car. People who already liked the hotel, and people who thought the product suited the hotel, rated the new product more highly. A well-rated product then improved their view of the hotel and made them somewhat more willing to post about it online. One result surprised us. Once we accounted for how much people liked the product, a closer fit between hotel and product was linked to slightly less improvement in how they saw the hotel.
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Photo by qui nguyen on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Most brand extension research studies product brands moving into other product categories. Hotels are different because people know them through stays and service, while they judge a towel or a car on its features and quality. This study is one of the few to look at a service brand moving into products. The practical message for hotel managers is that the “safest” extension is not always the most useful one. A product that simply copies an in-room amenity will probably be accepted, but it tells guests little that is new about the brand. A product that carries a recognisable part of the stay into a new setting, such as bedding from a hotel known for sleep quality, may do more for the hotel’s image. The study also links extensions to online word of mouth, although that effect was small.
Perspectives
The finding I keep coming back to is the negative effect of fit on post-extension brand evaluation. It is small, and I am honest that it could partly be a statistical artifact of controlling for extension evaluation. But it runs against what the classic Aaker and Keller tradition would predict, and Satoko and I spent a long time discussing what it means. We think a close-fitting extension mostly confirms what people already believe about a hotel, so it adds little. Whether that is specific to service brands moving into products, or would also appear for a product brand extending into a similar product, is something this design cannot answer. That comparison is the study I would most like to see next, whether we run it or someone else does.
Marco Nutta
Hitotsubashi University
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Beyond lodging: Evaluating hotel brand extensions into non-hotel product categories and their effects on brand perceptions and eWOM, Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Management, December 2026, Elsevier,
DOI: 10.1016/j.jhtm.2026.101551.
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