Available via license: CC BY-NC-ND 4.0
Content may be subject to copyright.
Since January 2020 Elsevier has created a COVID-19 resource centre with
free information in English and Mandarin on the novel coronavirus COVID-
19. The COVID-19 resource centre is hosted on Elsevier Connect, the
company's public news and information website.
Elsevier hereby grants permission to make all its COVID-19-related
research that is available on the COVID-19 resource centre - including this
research content - immediately available in PubMed Central and other
publicly funded repositories, such as the WHO COVID database with rights
for unrestricted research re-use and analyses in any form or by any means
with acknowledgement of the original source. These permissions are
granted for free by Elsevier for as long as the COVID-19 resource centre
remains active.
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
Available online 2 February 2021
0278-4319/© 2021 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
Research Paper
Use numbers not words! Communicating hotels’ cleaning programs for
COVID-19 from the brand perspective
Jano Jim´
enez-Barreto
a
,
*, Sandra Loureiro
b
, Erik Braun
c
, Erose Sthapit
d
, Sebastian Zenker
c
a
Department of Finance and Marketing Research, Business Studies, College of Economics and Business Administration, Universidad Aut´
onoma de Madrid, Madrid, Spain
b
Instituto Universit´
ario de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL) and Business Research Unit (BRUIUL), Portugal
c
Copenhagen Business School, Department of Marketing, Solbjerg Plads 3C, DK-2000, Frederiksberg, Denmark
d
Haaga-Helia Ammattikorkeakoulu - Haaga-Helia University of Applied Sciences, Pasila Campus, Ratapihantie 13, FI-00520, Helsinki, Finland
ARTICLE INFO
Keywords:
COVID-19
Hotel brand personality
Cleaning program
Numerical quantiers
Verbal quantiers
Dual-process theory
ABSTRACT
After hotels in many countries were forced to close in government-imposed lockdowns during the COVID-19
pandemic, there is an inherent need to communicate how they deal with the coronavirus to motivate guests
to visit. However, lack of knowledge about how to persuasively communicate about hotels’ cleaning programs
for COVID-19 can challenge the industry’s survival. We investigated how hotels that position their brand as a
particular personality (sincere vs. exciting) could benet from different communication styles (inclusion of
numerical vs. verbal quantiers) when presenting their COVID-19 cleaning procedures. Study 1 explored tour-
ists’ central attitudinal responses toward hotels’ cleaning programs. Study 2 demonstrated that sincere hotel
brands would benet from using numerical and verbal quantiers to communicate their cleaning policies,
whereas exciting hotel brands would benet only from numerical quantiers. Our results invite hotel managers
to use their brand personality positioning to inuence tourists’ attitudes and intentions in a pandemic context.
1. Introduction
The coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic is one of the most impactful
events of the 21 st century and its effect on the hospitality and tourism
industry is tremendous (Zenker and Kock, 2020). On the supply side, the
hospitality and tourism operations of many countries have mostly been
shut down (Baum and Hai, 2020), with an estimated 75 million jobs at
immediate risk (World Travel and Tourism Council, 2020). On the de-
mand side, this pandemic will affect tourists’ behavior while traveling,
booking accommodation (Zenker and Kock, 2020), and consuming
physical spaces (Wang and Ackerman, 2018). As the world adjusts to
COVID-19, policymakers worldwide are progressively restoring in-
dividuals’ mobility and re-opening hospitality and tourism facilities. In
this new reality, hospitality and tourism managers need to
re-comprehend tourists’ beliefs and the main factors that drive hospi-
tality consumption. Service quality attributes such as cleanliness and
safety are becoming vital to understanding tourists’ considerations
when planning their next travel and accommodation bookings (Shin and
Kang, 2020).
Marketing communications on how hospitality and tourism service
providers deal with COVID-19 are an important aspect of achieving the
new normal. Effectively communicating to tourists how hotels deal with
COVID-19 is an essential marketing strategy for managers in the current
coronavirus era. Some hotel chains are starting to communicate about
their special cleaning programs to reassure customers that their hotels
are effectively dealing with the coronavirus (see Table 1). However,
determining the most effective communication style to shape guests’
responses to hotels’ cleaning policies remains unclear. Knowledge of
how best to convey hotels’ COVID-19 procedures could inuence the
success of the business. Our contention is that hotels could successfully
manage their COVID-19 communications through understanding tour-
ists’ perceptions of the hotel brand personality and type of communi-
cation used about its cleaning programs.
Building on the literature on brand personality traits, persuasion
theories, and dual-process theory, we investigated how hotels that po-
sition their brands as a particular personality (exciting vs. sincere) could
benet from certain communication styles when communicating their
COVID-19 cleaning policies, depending on whether they use an
* Corresponding author at: Department of Finance and Marketing Research, Business Studies, College of Economics and Business Administration, Universidad
Aut´
onoma de Madrid, Ctra Colmenar, C/ Francisco Tom´
as y Valiente, Nº 5, ES 28049, Madrid, Spain.
E-mail addresses: jano.jimenez@uam.es (J. Jim´
enez-Barreto), sandramloureiro@netcabo.pt (S. Loureiro), ebr.marktg@cbs.dk (E. Braun), erose.sthapit@haaga-
helia. (E. Sthapit), sze.marktg@cbs.dk (S. Zenker).
Contents lists available at ScienceDirect
International Journal of Hospitality Management
journal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/ijhm
https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2021.102872
Received 29 June 2020; Received in revised form 24 November 2020; Accepted 19 January 2021
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
2
analytical (communication with numerical quantiers) or holistic
(communication with verbal quantiers) approach. This research en-
riches understanding of how tourists respond to (in)congruence between
a hotel’s brand personality and its marketing communication tactics in a
pandemic context.
2. Theoretical framework
2.1. Communication styles: the use of numerical versus verbal quantiers
in the COVID-19 era
During the spread of COVID-19, global mass media are employing
numbers and indicators to communicate to people whether the situation
is catastrophic or whether a city or country has been affected more or
less severely compared to others. The values they use are obtained
through the quantication of the numbers of people who have been
infected, died, or recovered from COVID-19 (e.g., Los Angeles Times
(2020); The New York Times (2020), and The Washington Post (2020)).
Prior investigations on communication have reected on the use of
numbers to emphasize the factuality of the news as a signal of precision
and truthfulness (Merriam, 1990; Roeh and Feldman, 1984). Thus, we
understand that individuals’ processing of how the global COVID-19
situation is going will be fundamentally (though not exclusively)
conditioned on processing numbers rather than other types of infor-
mation provided by the mass media.
A plethora of comparative research in cognitive psychology has been
conducted to observe individuals’ cognitive evaluations and behaviors
while they are in contact with information that differs in its narrative
structure and pictorial design or contains numbers vs. verbal cues
(Childers and Viswanathan, 2000; Evans and Stanovich, 2013; Kahne-
man, 2011; Viswanathan and Childers, 1997; Windschitl and Wells,
1996). Most of these studies contemplate the concepts and postulates of
what have been described as dual-process theories. Dual process implies
that, depending on contextual and individual factors, cognitive pro-
cessing of information, stimuli, or experiences can be holistic or analytic
(De Neys, 2017; Evans, 2008; Jun and Vogt, 2013). Differences that
derive from holistic vs. analytic processing of information have been
categorized as individuals’ efforts, implementation of automatic or
conscious evaluation, time spent analyzing the presented stimuli,
appearance of affective biases, or in terms of the presence of numerical
or verbal quantiers (Liu et al., 2020a, 2020b). From prior work on
cognition, we can deduce that the holistic processing of information is
characterized by a top-down style of information integration in which
judgments are assimilated within the context. By contrast, analytical
processing is characterized by an accommodative bottom-up style in
which people focus on the object or information or stimuli and their
attributes detached from the context (Nisbett et al., 2001).
Through the lens of dual-process theory, we applied the idea that
when individuals make decisions involving verbal and numerical
quantiers, they process the meaning of these quantiers differently.
For example, past research argues that people require more cognitive
effort to process numbers than verbal quantiers (Childers and Viswa-
nathan, 2000; Liu et al., 2020a). Explanations for this nding have been
discussed in cognitive psychology through the consideration that people
require more intuitive processing of information when verbal quantiers
are presented, whereas, with numerical quantiers, people exert more
analytical processing (Windschitl and Wells, 1996).
In the existing hospitality and tourism literature, persuasive hotel
communication and its effect on tourist behavior have been analyzed
from multiple perspectives. These include communications linked to
sustainable behaviors (e.g., Hardeman et al., 2017), social responsibility
programs (e.g., Ettinger et al., 2018), and communication styles in
customer relationships (e.g., Berezan et al., 2016; Gretry et al., 2017).
Prior studies also compare the effectiveness of different marketing
communication formats (pictorial vs. textual) in attracting tourists to
hotels (e.g., Bartosiak, 2020; Bufquin et al., 2020). However, the inu-
ence of numerical or verbal quantiers in hotel communications on
tourists’ attitudes and intentions is still an unexplored aspect of hospi-
tality and tourism research, although recent investigations in consumer
behavior highlight the importance of discriminating between how in-
dividuals interpret numerical and verbal quantiers in persuasive
communications related to the consumption of products and services (e.
g., Liu et al., 2019; Santana et al., 2020).
In light of this, we examined marketing communications used by
hotels regarding their COVID-19 cleaning policy by comparing the use of
numbers (e.g., “We disinfect rooms with a product that eliminates 99%
of pathogens”; “We clean common areas 5 times a day”) and the use of
verbal quantiers (e.g., “We disinfect rooms, eliminating any pathogens,
after each guest’s visit”; “We clean common areas several times a day.”).
We propose that verbal quantiers in a hotel’s communication facilitate
overall and contextual evaluations of how the hotel deals with COVID-
19 and that the use of numerical information about the hotel’s clean-
ing policy demands from individuals precise cognitive effort and
conscious understanding. Along these lines, studies on dual process have
found that individual decisions that use numerical information tend to
be more accurate than those that rely on verbal processing (Peters et al.,
2007). Thus, we propose that communications that contain verbal
quantiers should prime individuals for more holistic processing of
hotel information regarding its COVID-19 cleaning program. In contrast,
hotel communications that provide numerical quantiers induce in-
dividuals to process the information analytically.
2.2. Hotel brand personality
Brand personality has been considered the conceptual basis through
which academics and managers are encouraged to comprehend the
transference of human characteristics to brands when building a closer
relationship with consumers (Aaker, 1997). Brand personality is
conceptualized as “a set of human characteristics associated with a
brand” (Aaker, 1997, p. 347). Hence, consumers can evaluate brands in
terms of personality traits. For instance, consumers might claim that X
brand is exciting, Y brand is sincere, or Z brand is sophisticated. In
essence, the psychological mechanism behind the paroxysm of the
anthropomorphism of brands is the implication of self-congruity in the
consumption sphere. It is important to note that self-congruity reects a
parallel between consumer self-concept and the brand personality that
consumers experience in building consumer–brand relationships (Kim
et al., 2005). Consumers tend to choose, like, and consequently maintain
long-term relationships with brands that have images congruent with
their views of themselves (Kim et al., 2005).
Aaker’s seminal study (1997) established a generally applicable
Table 1
Real examples of hotels’ claim regarding their COVID-19 cleaning programs.
Hotel brand Examples of Hotels’ cleanliness statements (source)
Marriot
International
“Marriott International Launches Global Cleanliness Council to
Promote Even Higher Standards of Cleanliness in the Age of
COVID-19”
(https://news.marriott.com/news/2020/04/21/marriott-intern
ational-launches-global-cleanliness-council-to-promote-even-hi
gher-standards-of-cleanliness-in-the-age-of-covid-19).
Hilton “Hilton Dening a New Standard of Hotel Cleanliness, working
with RB/Lysol and Mayo Clinic to Elevate Hygiene Practices from
Check-In to Check-Out.”
(https://newsroom.hilton.com/corporate/news/h
ilton-dening-new-standard-of-cleanliness#)
Hyatt “Hyatt has proudly announced the Global Care & Cleanliness
Commitment, which focuses on the safety and wellbeing of
colleagues and guests in a COVID-19 world and beyond.”
(https://www.hyatt.com/en-US/info/coronavirus-statement?ica
mp=hy_cvstatement_jan2020_alertbanner_en)
Disney World
group
“We have taken enhanced health and safety measures—for you,
our other Guests, and Cast Members.”
(https://www.disneyworld.eu/experience-updates/)
J. Jim´
enez-Barreto et al.
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
3
framework of brand personality dimensions through the creation of a
measurement scale. Reecting upon the Big Five human personality
model, Aaker (1997) proposed a brand personality scale with ve di-
mensions: ruggedness, excitement, sophistication, competence, and
sincerity. Following Aaker’s postulates, further research on consumer
behavior has argued that brand personality can be observed as a way to
predict actions and behaviors inferred from advertising, product pre-
sentation or esthetics, and consumers’ reviews or past experiences
(Aaker et al., 2004; Sundar and Noseworthy, 2016). Current studies on
consumer research observe brand personality as a potential moderator
in the relationship between consumers’ perceptions of products and
their attitudinal and behavioral intentions (Sundar and Noseworthy,
2016). This approach implicates the use of brand personality as a
contextual variable that can be manipulated rather than only measured.
Even though brand personality emerges from a good-consumption
perspective, several authors have applied this construct to consumer
services or experiences, including hospitality service-provider brands
(Foroudi, 2020; Su and Reynolds, 2017) and tourist destinations (Kim
and Stepchenkova, 2017). In hospitality and tourism research, brand
personality has also been applied in studies that observed hotel brands
(see Jani and Han, 2014; Lee and Back, 2010; Tran et al., 2013; Su and
Reynolds, 2017). Following Aaker’s (1997) model, studies on hotel
brand personality have found antecedents and consequences of this
construct. In particular, Tran et al. (2013) observed that tourists’ im-
agery and perceived price were antecedents of hotel brand personality.
In addition, hotel brand personality has been shown to affect percep-
tions of brand value, loyalty (Tran et al., 2013), satisfaction (Jani and
Han, 2014), brand choice (Su and Reynolds, 2017), and tourists’ trust in
the hotel brand (Lee and Back, 2010). Overall, the limited research on
brand personality when analyzing hotel brands demonstrates that the
multiple roles this construct can have in relation to tourists remain
unknown.
For our study, brand personality acquires an important role in
connection with the hotel brands’ marketing communication style.
Hotels that position their brand as a certain personality trait can eval-
uate which communication style (holistic with verbal quantiers vs.
analytic with numerical quantiers) improves or limits their capability
to inuence tourists’ positive responses toward the hotel brand. We
followed the arguments of prior literature that suggests that two (sincere
and exciting) of the ve dimensions of Aaker’s brand personality model
capture the majority of variance in personality ratings across individual
and cultural contexts (Aaker et al., 2004; Sundar and Noseworthy,
2016). Applied to our research context, sincere hotel brands can be
considered warmer, more realistic, and honest in what they communi-
cate as values for tourists, for example when Kimpton hotels created a
sincere brand through their “new in town” campaign (Tran et al., 2013,
p. 331). In contrast, exciting hotel brands are associated with a younger
spirit and viewed as possessing cultural vitality and capable of gener-
ating interest (Altschiller, 2000); an example is Hard Rock Hotels claim
that customers will “feel like a star” (on Hard Rock Hotels, 2020 website
below the booking section).
2.3. Hotel brand personality and the use of quantiers when
communicating the hotel’s COVID-19 cleaning program
Past research suggests that a brand can benet from a high degree of
congruence between its personality and the type of marketing tactic
used (Maille and Fleck, 2011). This also includes when a brand is sup-
porting its marketing tactics in incongruencies, insofar as its personality
trait permits unexpected and surprising marketing tactics (Sundar and
Noseworthy, 2016; Luffarelli et al., 2019). However, these studies did
not contemplate a context in which consumers are considering whether
to use a brand’s services after a pandemic.
In a normal consumption context, the expected theoretical proposi-
tion is based on the argument that a sincere hotel brand will benet from
using numerical quantiers in its marketing communications. This is
because the use of numbers in messaging (by a sincere source) is a
congruent way to demonstrate that what is communicated by the brand
can be measured and quickly conrmed by consumers (Aaker et al.,
2004; Sundar and Noseworthy, 2016). In contrast, an exciting hotel
brand may benet equally from both communication styles—numerical
and verbal—because such a personality supports more exibility in
terms of surprising others with incongruent and asymmetrical pre-
sentations, communications or performances (Aaker et al., 2004; Luf-
farelli et al., 2019; Sundar and Noseworthy, 2016). However, the main
criticism we can assert about these theoretical considerations is that we
can only predict these congruent relationships between brand person-
ality and type of communication (using numerical or verbal quantiers)
in a normal (i.e., non-pandemic) consumption context.
Consequently, to understand the effect of brand personality and the
use of quantiers on tourists’ attitudes and intentions when hotels are
communicating their cleaning programs to combat a pandemic, we base
our argument on persuasion theories and an understanding of how
people process informational cues in contexts with high uncertainty and
personal risk. Literature that analyzes consumption in normal contexts
points out that if the communication uses quantitative appeals, such as
numerical quantiers, these will enhance persuasion and may cause
message recipients to focus more on peripheral information cues, such as
the source’s credibility or the degree of aesthetic detail included in the
information (Witt, 1976; Yalch and Elmore-Yalch, 1984). The peripheral
route requires less cognitive work because it is focused on the infor-
mational cues that individuals use to assess information rapidly and
acquire particular attitudes and performance behaviors (Petty et al.,
1981). This mechanism means that in the presence of numerical quan-
tiers, individuals may rst process the personality of a hotel brand
rather than the details of a particular brand message.
However, following the elaboration likelihood model (ELM) (Petty
et al., 1981), our argument is reversed here, as we are analyzing an
extreme consumption context in which tourists’ health is at risk. We
suggest that when the information presented is personally relevant, such
as how hotels are dealing with COVID-19 risks, the processing of such
communications is thought to occur via a central route (Yalch and
Elmore-Yalch, 1984). This central route requires diligent consideration
of informational factors, such as the relevance and strength of the ar-
guments communicated (Petty et al., 1981). With this in mind, we
propose that tourists will carefully and analytically process hotels’ in-
formation regarding their COVID-19 cleaning programs. However, some
factors that involve the source and its signaling power—in our case,
hotel brand personality—may produce different inuences in tourists’
processing of numerical or verbal quantiers in communications
regarding virus-related issues (Yalch and Elmore-Yalch, 1984). In
particular, we contemplate that sincere hotel brands can balance the
effects of using numerical or verbal quantiers on tourists’ attitudes and
intentions to visit the hotel via the signaling value of being a trustfully
and reliable rm, even in a risky consumption context.
Following this stream of research, we propose that a sincere hotel
brand personality can drive tourists’ elaboration of a more peripheral
route than can an exciting brand personality when processing a COVID-
19 cleaning communication. As the sincere brand personality is groun-
ded in an honest and predictable relationship with consumers (Aaker
et al., 2004; Sundar and Noseworthy, 2016), tourists can use this source
cue to simplify the numerical and verbal processing of communication
presented to them. On the contrary, when positioning a hotel with an
exciting brand personality founded on being surprising and unpredict-
able within a consumer–brand relationship (Aaker et al., 2004; Sundar
and Noseworthy, 2016), tourists will be forced to activate central-route
processing, as their decisions about whether to visit the hotel directly
endangers their life, requiring a higher level of involvement to analyze
the information presented. Thus, numerical quantiers would be ex-
pected to be more persuasive than verbal quantiers for hotels with an
exciting personality, as the numbers would be processed not only as
more factual, measurable, and concrete informational cues (Liu et al.,
J. Jim´
enez-Barreto et al.
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
4
2020a, 2020b), but also as a signal of precision and truthfulness (Mer-
riam, 1990).
In summary and following prior literature that links the ELM and the
use of numerical and verbal cues to communication persuasiveness (Liu
et al., 2020a, 2020b; Yalch and Elmore-Yalch, 1984), we propose that, in
this situation of global tension surrounding the COVID-19 pandemic,
exciting hotel brands will need to supplement their perception as un-
predictable with concrete information about how they are dealing with
this global health challenge to inuence tourists attitudinal and inten-
tional responses toward hotels. In contrast, we propose that sincere hotel
brands will benet equally from numerical and verbal quantiers when
communicating their cleaning programs, as their sincere personality
perceptions will balance the effect of the type of communication used.
Hence, sincere personalities are expected to not be penalized by being
less concrete (using verbal quantiers) in their communications. More
formally, we present the following hypotheses:
H1a. There will be a signicant interaction between the brand per-
sonality and communication style of the COVID-19 cleaning program for
tourists’ attitudes toward the hotel brand, such that an exciting brand
will benet more from the use of numerical quantiers, whereas a
sincere brand will benet equally from the use of numerical and verbal
quantiers.
H1b. There will be a signicant interaction between brand personality
and communication style of the COVID-19 cleaning program for tour-
ists’ intention to visit and recommend the hotel, such that an exciting
brand will benet more from the use of numerical quantiers, whereas a
sincere brand will benet equally from the use of numerical and verbal
quantiers.
3. Methods
Our research program is based on a multimethod structure that in-
cludes two studies in a qualitative–quantitative sequence. In Study 1,
through visual elicitation, the grounded theory approach, and a
computerized psycholinguistic technique, we sought to explore tourists’
cognitive processing and attitudes about hotels’ communications about
their COVID-19 cleaning program. In Study 2, we developed an exper-
iment to determine whether the manipulation of hotel brand personality
(sincere vs. exciting) and the use of numerical vs. verbal quantiers
affected tourists’ attitudinal and intentional responses toward the hotel.
The triangulation derived through the multimethod approach, as well as
the use of two different online panels of participants (Amazon Me-
chanical Turk and Prolic), allowed us to present a broader analysis of
tourists’ perceptions and processing of hotels’ communications about
COVID-19 precautions.
3.1. Study 1. Online elicitation techniques to examine tourists’
evaluations of hotels’ COVID-19 cleaning programs
The main goal of Study 1 was to understand how tourists respond and
cognitively process hotels’ information regarding their COVID-19
cleaning programs. We observed tourists’ attitudes toward the hotel
and their cognitive processing of the cleaning programs in multiple
scenarios, which compared (a) hotel brand personality (exciting vs.
sincere) and (b) either numerical or verbal quantiers used by hotels to
communicate their cleaning procedures. Hence, we proposed a 2 (hotel
brand personality: sincere vs. exciting) ×2 (cleaning program narrative:
numerical vs. verbal quantiers) experimental between-subjects design.
For each scenario, we created visual stimuli through texts that simulated
participants’ encounters with a ctional hotel and its COVID-19 clean-
ing protocols. Visual elicitation techniques through a set of displayed
texts, images, or videos permit researchers to observe participants’
motivations, opinions, beliefs, and emotions concerning the topic under
study (Coulter and Zaltman, 2000).
3.1.1. Design and procedure
For Study 1, we recruited 80 participants located in the U.S. and
enrolled in Amazon Mechanical Turk (the fee paid per participant was
$1.05; the age range was between 19 and 60 years, Mage =37 and
SDage =9.99; 38% were female; 44% had studied at university; mean
income per year after taxes was $30,001–$35,000). To ensure the high
quality of participants’ narratives, we conducted a data screening
analysis of each response before payment.
Within each scenario, we randomly presented participants with a
brand description of a hotel (called the Holton Hotel; Appendix A). The
brand descriptions referred to the hotel as exciting or sincere. The par-
ticipants then read the hotel’s statement about its COVID-19 cleaning
program; the statements varied based on whether they used numerical
or verbal quantiers. After each elicitation scenario, we presented an
open-ended question in which participants described their impressions
of and opinions about the hotel and its cleaning program: “Please
explain in detail what your opinion is about the Holton Hotel and its
procedures against coronavirus.” In addition, to test hotel brand per-
sonality manipulation, we adapted the measurement of sincere and
exciting brand personality from prior research (Sundar and Noseworthy,
2016). Hence, we included a question in which participants evaluated
the degree to which the hotel represented sincere (sincere, wholesome,
and sentimental;
α
=.76) or exciting (exciting, unique, and young;
α
=
.83) personality traits using a 7-point Likert scale (1 =Not at all; 7 =To
a great extent). Our perspective on the measurement of brand person-
ality using the sincere and exciting dimensions is grounded in the idea
that these two traits capture the majority of variance in brand person-
ality ratings (Aaker et al., 2004; Sundar and Noseworthy, 2016).
The results indicate that participants presented with a sincere hotel
brand personality rated the Holton Hotel as more sincere (M =5.48, SD
=.72) than did those with the exciting hotel brand condition (M =4.00,
SD =1.13; t(80) =6.90, p <.001). Conversely, participants presented
with the exciting hotel brand condition rated the Holton Hotel as more
exciting (M =5.99, SD =.60) than did those presented with the sincere
brand condition (M =4.45, SD =1.34; t(80) =6.82, p <.001). Overall,
we obtained preliminary evidence of the manipulation effectiveness of
hotels’ brand personalities.
3.1.2. Data analysis
Data analysis was structured in two phases. First, using the grounded
theory approach, we coded each participant’s testimony, which allowed
us to theoretically identify central elements of tourists’ attitudes toward
the hotel and its COVID-19 cleaning program. A grounded theory
approach is a qualitative method that uses a systematic set of processes
to inductively develop a theory about a phenomenon (Strauss and Cor-
bin, 1990). Building on Strauss and Corbin (1990), we performed three
steps for our grounded theory approach. First, we examined the
collected data to develop a broad understanding of it. Second, we
reviewed participants’ responses and listed the central attitudinal ele-
ments interacting with the hotel’s communication. Third, we manually
conducted open, axial, and selective coding (Table 2; Strauss and Cor-
bin, 1990). Following Salda˜
na (2013), the coding outputs of each step (i.
e., open, axial, and selective coding) were discussed among the research
team through a dialogical intersubjectivity method until consensus was
achieved.
In the second phase, we analyzed tourists’ cognitive processing for
each scenario using computerized text analysis based on a psycholin-
guistic approach to provide evidence of cognitive components contained
in language on a word-by-word basis (Pennebaker et al., 2015). We
conducted computerized text analysis using the Linguistic Inquiry and
Word Count (LIWC) software. Analyzing each participant group’s
narrative through LIWC allowed detection of a category of psychological
meaning regarding individuals’ thinking styles (Tausczik and Penne-
baker, 2010). According to LIWC’s developments, the analytical
thinking variable permits the researcher to distinguish between words in
the individuals’ narratives that are categorically linked to objective
J. Jim´
enez-Barreto et al.
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
5
information processing or, by contrast, to interpersonal or subjective
information processing (Pennebaker et al., 2014). Thus, for each
experimental scenario, we could examine whether hotel brand person-
ality and the use of numerical or verbal quantiers in hotels’ cleaning
programs drove tourists’ cognitive processing to be analytic or holistic.
As a result of these two phases of analysis (the grounded theory
approach and the computerized psycholinguistic technique), we discuss
for each scenario a proposed cohesive view of tourists’ attitudinal re-
sponses and information processing styles concerning hotels’ COVID-19
cleaning protocols.
Table 2
Examples of codes indicating the main tourists’ attitudes toward hotels’ COVID-
19 cleaning programs, Study 1.
Example
participants’ quotes
about hotels’
COVID-19 cleaning
programs
Open coding
(Line–by–Line
Coding)
Subthemes
(Axial Coding)
Main Themes
(Selective Themes)
Sincere hotel brand with numerical quantiers on its
COVID-19 cleaning program
Perceived lack of
procedures against
COVID-19;
perceived
professionalism;
and skepticism are
the main
attitudinal tourists’
responses toward
the hotel and its
COVID-19 cleaning
program.
“While the hotel has
however put
these measures in
place, it can also
do some more.”;
“There’s no
mention about
wearing masks as
a protection from
potential spread
by interaction/
brief
encounters.”;
“The pure space
procedure isn’t
clear.”
“It can also do
more”; “no
mention about
wearing mask”;
“procedure isn’t
clear”
Lack of
procedures
against COVID-
19
“They have
implemented a
rigid cleaning
schedule as well
as air
purication.”; “I
think that they
are doing their
best to keep the
hotel clean.”
“Rigid cleaning
schedule”;
“doing their
best”; “keep the
hotel clean”
Perceived
professionalism
Sincere hotel brand with verbal quantiers on its COVID-
19 cleaning program
“The management
should make sure
there is social
distancing.”; “For
instance, do they
use HEPA lters
to clean the
circulating air?
Or ultraviolet?”;
“This description
doesn’t really say
what they
actually do to
clean and
eliminate
pathogens.”
“Make sure there
is social
distancing”; “do
they use HEPA
lters?”;
“doesn’t really
say”
Lack of
procedures
against COVID-
19
“This hotel is going
above and
beyond for the
safety of their
clientele”; “I like
that the hotel is
so dedicated to
maintaining a
clean
environment.”
“Hotel is going
above and
beyond”; “I like
the hotel”; “is so
dedicated”
Perceived
professionalism
Exciting hotel brand with numerical quantiers on its
COVID-19 cleaning program
“In my opinion,
social distancing
of 6 feet
(preferably more)
is most
necessary.”;
“There is no
mention of use of
masks or gloves.”
“Social
distancing of 6
feet”; “is most
necessary”; “no
mention of use of
gloves”
Lack of
procedures
against COVID-
19
“I think Holton
hotel takes their
“Hotel takes their
guests’ health
Perceived
professionalism
Table 2 (continued )
Example
participants’ quotes
about hotels’
COVID-19 cleaning
programs
Open coding
(Line–by–Line
Coding)
Subthemes
(Axial Coding)
Main Themes
(Selective Themes)
guests’ health
seriously and uses
new and
innovative
techniques.”; “I
applaud the
Holton Hotel’s
effort at taking an
active stance
toward ghting
COVID-19.”
seriously”; “uses
new and
innovative
techniques”; “I
applaud the
Holton Hotel’s
efforts”
“If hospitals can’t
even do that, I’m
not sure that I
trust that a hotel
has the ability to
do that.”; “It all
sounds well and
good, but I’m not
naive enough to
believe any of it.”
“I’m not sure I
trust that hotel”;
“I’m not naive
enough to
believe any of it”
Skepticism
Exciting hotel brand with verbal quantiers on its COVID-
19 cleaning program
“These procedures
do not seem very
effective.”; “Does
not address any
surfaces that may
have been
touched or
contaminated.”
“Procedures do
not seem very
effective”; “does
not address”
Lack of
procedures
against COVID-
19
“I would stay
because they
seem trustworthy
and they can do
everything
right.”; “It cares
for its clients by
proving a safe
space especially
in this pandemic
period.”
“They seem
trustworthy”; “it
cares [about] its
clients”
Perceived
professionalism
“I don’t think there
is any way to
ensure all
pathogens are
removed from the
air.”; “The White
House can’t even
keep people safe,
so I doubt any
hotel can.”; “I feel
the mention of
pure space leads
me to be skeptical
about just how
pure this could
be.”
“I don’t think
there is any
way”; “I doubt
any hotel can”;
“pure space leads
me to be
skeptical”
Skepticism
J. Jim´
enez-Barreto et al.
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
6
3.1.3. Results
The coding of participants’ narratives concerning hotel brand per-
sonality and communication style revealed three main attitudinal re-
sponses by our study participants: (1) the need for stricter cleaning
policies; (2) perceived professionalism; and an attitudinal response that
only emerged in the visual scenarios concerning an exciting hotel brand
with numerical and verbal quantiers: (3) skepticism about the hotel
(see Table 2).
Regarding the tourists’ attitudes in favor of stricter cleaning policies,
participants’ argumentation focused on the idea that the Holton Hotel
was missing several essential procedures when ghting COVID-19:
“There’s no mention about protection from the potential spread by in-
teractions/brief encounters with other guests and hotel employees in the
common space” (participant 4; sincere and numerical quantiers
group); “The management should make sure there is social distancing”;
“For instance, do they use HEPA lters to clean the circulating air? Or
ultraviolet?” (participants 14 and 15; sincere and verbal quantiers
group); “In my opinion, social distancing of 6 feet (preferably more) is
most necessary” (participant 19; exciting and numerical quantiers
group); “Their focus on mainly the ‘air pathogens’ when cleaning the
rooms does not address any surfaces that may have been touched or
contaminated” (participant 36; exciting and verbal quantiers group).
Hence, for some participants, the use of numerical or verbal quan-
tiers did not provide a complete and detailed explanation of all possible
precautions and procedures available to ensure that the hotel would be
free of pathogens. Even though some participants critiqued what they
believed to be insufcient cleaning procedures, another group expres-
sed—in all conditions tested—total condence and a positive attitude
toward the Holton Hotel’s steps for dealing with COVID-19. This is
described as the category of perceived professionalism: “I believe the
Holton Hotel is taking COVID very seriously” (participant 8; sincere and
numerical quantiers group); “I would stay because they seem trust-
worthy and they can do everything right” (participant 70; exciting and
numerical quantiers group).
Additionally, we observed the emergence of another attitudinal
response that appeared only for the exciting brand personality in both
the numerical and the verbal quantier conditions. This response is
dened as skepticism about the hotel: “It sounds highly unbelievable.
How can they claim that 99% of air pathogens are eliminated in their
rooms?” (participant 49; exciting and numerical quantiers group); “I
feel the mention of pure space leads me to be skeptical about just how
pure this could be” (participant 60; exciting and verbal quantiers
group).
Complementary to our coding analysis, we conducted a computer-
ized text analysis using the LIWC 2015 software. LIWC sequentially
counts words in the text le and compares them with built-in dictio-
naries or a custom dictionary. Using its built-in dictionaries, LIWC
allowed us to detect for each experimental scenario whether brand
personality and the use of numerical or verbal quantiers in the hotel’s
COVID-19 cleaning program drove tourists’ cognitive processing to be
analytic or holistic. The software generated a quantitative output score
range for each language dimension (0 =minimum; 100 =maximum),
allowing comparison of the means of the scores obtained from each
scenario.
As expected, an ANOVA test revealed a main effect of the type of
quantier on analytical thinking (F(1, 76) =5.19; p <.05, partial ŋ2 =
.02), indicating that the participants processed more analytically stimuli
with numerical quantiers (Mnumerical =58.86; SD =20.46) than
stimuli with verbal quantiers (Mverbal =46.19; SD =24.68; p <.05).
Hence, in line with prior dual-process research (Liu et al., 2020a), while
processing numerical quantiers, participants were forced to engage in
more analytic efforts to evaluate the hotel’s cleaning program compared
to those who viewed verbal quantiers. In relation to priming analytic or
holistic thinking, we did not observe a main effect for hotel brand per-
sonality (Msincere =54.14; SD =23.93; Mexciting =48.61; SD =23.75;
F(1, 78) =1.06; p >. 05) or an interaction effect.
3.1.4. Findings of study 1
Study 1 indicated that tourists’ attitudinal responses toward the
hotel’s COVID-19 cleaning program could vary from perceiving that the
hotel is acting professionally and carefully to considering that the hotel
is not utilizing some procedures available to achieve the cleanest envi-
ronment possible for visitors. Although this polarity regarding how
tourists formed their attitudes toward the hotel’s cleaning programs can
be understood as logical, the results indicate that when a hotel is posi-
tioning its offer as exciting tourists’ opinions and beliefs about its
COVID-19 preparations may convey skepticism. This attitude was not
observed when tourists were presented with a sincere hotel brand. Thus,
these ndings reinforce our prior argument that an exciting brand per-
sonality could be penalized in a risky consumption situation, as its traits
are congruently related as unpredictable and surprising. On the con-
trary, a sincere hotel brand personality could benet from customers’
perceptions that it is predictable and in line with a pre-communicated
behavior, such that tourists nd the hotel more trustworthy and reli-
able in terms of what it is doing to secure a clean environment for
visitors.
Concerning our prior discussion about the ELM from persuasion
theory, in study 1, it is not clear whether a sincere or exciting hotel
brand personality motivates tourists to involve a central or peripheral
route when processing information about the hotel’s COVID-19 cleaning
program. Instead, we conrmed that an exciting brand generated more
skepticism than did a sincere brand among tourists. This could mean
that a sincere personality acts as an informational cue that drives tour-
ists’ information processing through a peripheral route (Yalch and
Elmore-Yalch, 1984), in which the hotel is perceived as more trust-
worthy and reliable. By contrast, an exciting hotel brand personality
forces tourist to process carefully the information presented, particularly
when they are considering high-risk consumption. Thus, a central route
is required to form a certain attitudinal or intentional response toward
the hotel and its cleaning program.
Interestingly, regardless of whether the cleaning protocols came
from a sincere or an exciting hotel brand personality, in study 1 we did
not observe any benets from using either numerical or verbal quanti-
ers in their communications. However, the computerized psycholin-
guistic analysis revealed that tourists presented with numerical
quantiers processed the information more analytically than did tourists
provided with verbal quantiers. These results support the prior litera-
ture on dual-process theory that argues that numerical quantiers
require from individuals a higher focus on each element or attribute that
conrms the informational piece communicated (Liu et al., 2020a;
Nisbett et al., 2001); this is especially relevant when the information is
linked to a personally relevant situation (Petty et al., 1981), such as
securing your health and avoiding risk of infection.
3.2. Study 2. Communication styles about the COVID-19 cleaning
program and hotels’ brand personalities
We hypothesized that in an extreme consumption context in which
tourists’ health is at risk, numerical quantiers would be perceived by
individuals as a signal of precision, predictability, and truthfulness and
tourists would process the information carefully by considering sepa-
rately every informational cue presented to them. Consequently, nu-
merical quantiers might help an exciting hotel brand personality—that
is, based more on generating unpredictable and surprising value for
consumers—compensate for any perceived loss of trustworthiness.
Conversely, we also contemplated that sincere hotel brands would
equally benet from the use of both numerical and verbal communica-
tion, as having a sincere brand personality would encourage tourists to
focus their perception on the source of information (the hotel brand)
rather than on each informational unit presented, insofar as a sincere
brand is capable of presenting itself in a trustworthy way to consumers
(Sundar and Noseworthy, 2016), facilitating processing of the provided
information.
J. Jim´
enez-Barreto et al.
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
7
3.2.1. Design and procedure
To test our hypotheses, for Study 2 we recruited 186 U.S. participants
who are part of the panel for the crowdsourcing platform Prolic (the fee
per participant was $0.95; 50.6% were female; the age range was be-
tween 19 and 57 years, Mage =34.28 and SDage =11.59; 48.7% had
studied at a university; mean income per year after taxes was $25,001–
$30,000). Participants were randomly assigned to a 3 (hotel brand
personality: sincere vs. exciting vs. control) ×2 (cleaning program
narrative: numerical quantiers vs. verbal quantiers) between-subjects
experimental design. The stimuli presented mimicked the conditions of
Study 1 (see Appendix A); however, the control condition in Study 2
presented the Holton Hotel in a neutral way: “The Holton Hotel is now
approaching big cities in the U.S. to establish a competitive accommo-
dation offer to middle- and upper-class consumers.”
In addition, in Study 2, we substituted the open-ended question of
Study 1 with a survey to measure tourists’ attitudes and intentions to
visit and recommend the hotel; the dependent variables were measured
using a 7-point Likert scale (1 =strongly disagree; 7 =strongly agree).
The measurements of attitudes toward the hotel (“I believe the hotel has
good serviceability”; “I would enjoy staying at this hotel”; “I think this
hotel would look attractive to me”;
α
=.91) and the intentions to visit
and recommend the hotel (“I would consider this hotel in future trips”; “I
have strong intentions to visit this hotel in the near future”; “I would say
positive things about this hotel to other people”; and “I would recom-
mend this hotel if someone asks me”;
α
=.88), were adapted from
Foroudi (2019).
3.2.2. Results
We tested the hotel brand personality manipulation by following the
Study 1 procedures, including the control condition, to measure the
degree to which each brand had sincere (sincere, wholesome, and
sentimental;
α
=.84) and exciting traits (exciting, unique, and young;
α
=.82) on a 7-point Likert scale (1 =Not at all; 7 =To a great extent).
Exciting and sincere brand personality measures were adapted from the
work of Sundar and Noseworthy (2016).
The results indicate that participants presented with a sincere hotel
brand personality rated the Holton Hotel as more sincere (M =5.02; SD
=1.08) than those who were presented with an exciting hotel brand (M
=4.54; SD =1.38, F(1, 126) =4.61; p <.05) and those presented with
the control condition (M =3.97; SD =.96); F(1, 114) =29.93; p <.001).
On the contrary, participants presented with the exciting hotel brand
condition rated the Holton Hotel as more exciting (M =5.26; SD =1.26)
than those presented with the sincere brand condition (M =4.68; SD =
1.14, F(1, 126) =7.18; p <.05) and the control condition (M =4.13; SD
=.90; F(1, 126) =32.61; p <.001).
To test the predicted interaction between hotel brand personality
and the use of numerical vs. verbal quantiers while communicating the
COVID-19 cleaning program (see Fig. 1), we ran a MANOVA on tourists’
attitudes and their intention to visit and recommend the hotel (Box’ test
of equally of covariance matrices p >.05; Levene’s test of equality of
error variances for attitudes toward the hotel brand =F(5, 180) =1.40,
p >.05; and intention to visit and recommend F(5, 180) =1.44, p >.05).
There was a main effect of hotel brand personality (Wilks’s Lambda =
.94, F(4, 358) =2.57, p =.039, partial ŋ2 =.03) and type of quantier
used (Wilks’s Lambda =.96, F(2, 179) =4.10, p =.018, partial ŋ2 =
.04). For brand personality, the effect was signicant on intention to
visit and recommend (F(2, 180) =4.38, p <.05, partial ŋ2 =.04) but not
for attitude toward the hotel brand, F(2, 180) =1.17, p >.05). For type
of quantier, the effect was signicant for each dependent variable
(attitude toward the hotel brand, F(1, 180) =7.82, p <.05, partial ŋ2 =
.04; intention to visit and recommend the hotel, F(1, 180) =6.77, p <
.05, partial ŋ2 =.04).
As predicted, there was a signicant interaction between hotel brand
personality and type of quantier used for communicating the cleaning
program (Wilks’s Lambda =.94, F(4, 358) =2.73, p =.029, partial ŋ2 =
.03). The interaction was signicant for each dependent variable (atti-
tude toward the hotel brand, F(2, 180) =3.11, p <.05; intention to visit
Fig. 1. Attitudes and Intentions results for Study 2.
J. Jim´
enez-Barreto et al.
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
8
and recommend the hotel, F(2, 180) =3.90, p <.05).
To better understand these interactions, we used a series of planned
contrasts (see Table 3). Supporting our prediction, the sincere brand
beneted equally from using numerical (Mattitude toward the hotel
brand =5.12; Mintention to visit and recommend =4.51) and verbal
quantiers (Mattitude toward the hotel brand =5.24; F(1, 56) =.19, p >
.05; Mintention to visit and recommend =4.60; F(1, 56) =.14, p >.05).
In addition, the exciting brand beneted from numerical (Mattitude
toward the hotel brand =5.75; Mintention to visit and recommend =
4.97) rather than verbal quantiers (Mattitude toward the hotel brand =
5.39; F(1, 68) =9.93, p =.002; Mintention to visit and recommend =
4.40; F(1, 68) =12.53, p <.05). The control condition of hotel brand
personality also demonstrated that the communication of COVID-19
protocols produced a more persuasive result using numerical quanti-
ers (Mattitude toward the hotel brand =5.40) than verbal quantiers
(Mattitude toward the hotel brand =4.76; F(1, 56) =4.35, p <.05) on
attitudes toward the hotel and no signicant difference in persuasive-
ness regarding intention to visit and recommend the hotel (Mintention
to visit and recommend =4.51; Mintention to visit and recommend =
4.15; F(1, 56) =1.44, p >.05).
3.2.3. Findings of study 2
In Study 2, we extended the exploratory ndings of Study 1 with an
experiment. We evaluated tourists’ attitudes and visiting intention while
manipulating hotel brand personality (sincere vs. exciting) and hotel
communication (using numerical vs. verbal quantiers) about its
COVID-19 cleaning procedure. The results demonstrate that after being
presented with hotels’ COVID-19 cleaning programs, tourists’ attitudes
and intentional responses toward the hotel were affected by hotels’
brand personalities and by their use of numerical or verbal quantiers in
their messaging. Findings support our hypotheses (H1a and H1b), hotels
that position their brand as sincere can benet from the use of numerical
or verbal quantiers. In contrast, an exciting hotel brand personality can
benet only from the use of numerical quantiers to positively persuade
tourists through their communications of their cleaning protocols.
4. General discussion
We have introduced to hospitality and tourism literature the inter-
play that exists between hotel brand personality positioning and
communication styles that use numerical and verbal quantiers. In
particular, we have framed our analysis in the context of COVID-19,
demonstrating how certain hotel brand personalities (sincere vs.
exciting) can benet from adopting a numerical or verbal communica-
tion style when presenting their cleaning procedures to tourists. Our
framework contributes rst to hospitality and tourism literature by of-
fering a pioneering examination of numerical and verbal quantiers as
formats for communication in the relationship between hotel brands and
tourists. This approach amplies prior studies’ contributions to the un-
derstanding of hotel communication styles and formats of communica-
tion in the relationship with customers (e.g., Bartosiak, 2020; Berezan
et al., 2016; Bufquin et al., 2020; Gretry et al., 2017). At the same time,
we also expand the research on hotel brand personality and its inuence
on tourists’ attitudes and visiting intentions. In contrast to prior studies
in hospitality and tourism (Lee and Back, 2010; Tran et al., 2013; Su and
Reynolds, 2017), but in line with studies in consumer behavior (Luf-
farelli et al., 2019; Sundar and Noseworthy, 2016), we have
manipulated brand personality as a contextual factor for analysis rather
than measuring only its theoretical dimensions. We, therefore, offer a
novel interpretation of how hotel brand personality can mitigate a crisis
context, such as that of the post−COVID-19 era.
Between our two studies and in line with recent literature focused on
understanding the new communicational paradigm for hospitality rms
(Hu et al., 2021; Im et al., 2021; Shin and Kang, 2020), we have
conrmed that during the COVID-19 pandemic era, hotels’ communi-
cations about how they ensure clean and safe spaces are available for
guests are an essential part of the tourist–hotel relationship.
Based on multimethod research that includes visual elicitation, a
grounded theory approach, a computerized psycholinguistic analysis,
and an experiment, we rst explored a range of tourist attitudes that
emerged while reading hotel communications about their cleaning
programs. The qualitative ndings in Study 1 indicate that hotels posi-
tioning their offers as exciting (vs. sincere) may elicit skepticism in
tourists’ opinions and beliefs about a hotel’s COVID-19 cleaning pro-
cedures. These ndings support our hypothesis that exciting brand
personalities might be penalized in risky consumption situations,
because exciting brand personalities are characterized as unpredictable
and surprising. In contrast, sincere hotel brand personalities may benet
from tourists’ perceptions of them as predictable (Sundar and Nose-
worthy, 2016). Additionally, in Study 1, through the computerized
psycholinguistic analysis, we have revealed that tourists presented with
numerical quantiers processed the information more analytically than
did tourists provided with verbal quantiers. These results support the
idea that numerical quantiers require a higher focus from individuals
on each element or attribute that conrms the communicated informa-
tion (Liu et al., 2020a; Nisbett et al., 2001) when the information is
linked to a personally relevant situation (Liu et al., 2020b; Petty et al.,
1981).
Then, in Study 2, we demonstrated with an experiment that the
persuasiveness of the communication, expressed using numerical or
verbal quantiers, depends on the hotel’s brand personality. When a
hotel positions its brand personality as sincere, the use of both numerical
and verbal quantiers in COVID-19 policies affects equally tourists’
attitudinal and intentional responses toward the hotel. Conversely, if a
hotel brand personality is positioned as exciting, the hotel can signi-
cantly inuence tourists’ attitudes and intentions using numerical
quantiers rather than verbal quantiers. In line with recent studies, this
may occur because when tourists are facing a high personal-risk-
consumption context, such as the COVID-19 pandemic, they require a
higher degree of factual, detailed, and trustworthy information to
carefully decide whether to visit a hotel (e.g., Shin and Kang, 2020;
Zenker and Kock, 2020). In this sense, while tourists are processing
hotels’ cleaning programs, the hotel brand personality acts as a signaling
cue that can cognitively facilitate how tourists form their attitudes and
intentional responses toward the hotel.
In the case of a sincere hotel personality, tourists perceive hotel
communications as more precise, honest, and trustworthy. Thus, the
sincere brand personality primes tourists to process the information with
a high focus on the characteristics of the source (the hotel brand), rather
than to evaluate in a detailed manner the information presented.
Conversely, an exciting brand personality is perceived as more unpre-
dictable and unexpected, which drives tourists to carefully evaluate the
information presented, rather than use the source derived from the hotel
brand personality to form their attitudes and behaviors. We found that
Table 3
Means, standard deviations, and cell counts for Study 2.
Sincere hotel brand Exciting hotel brand Control
Type of quantier Numerical Verbal Numerical Verbal Numerical Verbal
Attitudes 5.12(.89) 5.24(1.00) 5.75(1.09) 4.97(.96) 5.40(.97) 4.76(1.33)
Intentions to visit and recommend 4.50(.85) 4.60(.96) 5.39(1.25) 4.40(1.06) 4.52(1.10) 4.15(1.21)
Cell size 26 32 32 38 30 28
J. Jim´
enez-Barreto et al.
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
9
an exciting hotel brand can compensate for the perceived lack of pre-
dictability and trustworthiness that tourists have for this personality
trait by using numerical quantiers in their communications concerning
COVID-19. We obtained evidence that numerical quantiers are pro-
cessed more analytically by tourists than are verbal quantiers. In
addition, the ndings reinforce the idea of the rhetoric of numbers in
communication studies. It has been observed that the numerical format
of information can be used as a critical signal of precision and truth-
fulness (Merriam, 1990; Roeh and Feldman, 1984).
4.1. Theoretical implications
Our theoretical discussion began by considering prior studies of
brand personality and dual-process and persuasion theories. First, from
dual-process theory (De Neys, 2017; Evans, 2008; Liu et al., 2020a;
Nisbett et al., 2001) and persuasion theory (Petty et al., 1981), we
analyzed how people perceive the use of numerical and verbal quanti-
ers in brand information. We expected that numerical quantiers
would require from tourists a high focus on each characteristic of the
information presented, implicating a strong cognitive effort to further
form a particular attitude or to conduct behavior. This perspective is
based on dual-process theory, which suggests that people process
numbers more analytically than verbal information (Liu et al., 2019,
2020a). At the same time, we observed through the ELM (Petty et al.,
1981) that people perceive that information containing numbers is more
cognitively demanding; thus, individuals will be motivated to process
this information carefully only in situations that are personally
compromising, such as being in a high-risk consumption situation, as is
the case of the pandemic context. On the contrary, we found that the use
of verbal quantiers in brand communication drives individuals to rely
on a contextual understanding of what is communicated and that, in the
end, it facilitates an overall and quick construction of attitudinal and
intentional responses to the brand (Viswanathan and Childers, 1997;
Windschitl and Wells, 1996).
Second, building on prior research in a normal consumption context,
it was discussed that a hotel brand personality could benet from being
congruent with the communication style used in the cleaning program’s
narrative design. From this perspective, a sincere brand based on a
predictable, honest, and transparent trait can use a congruent logic
reinforcing its communications with numerical quantiers that signal
precise and trustworthy information. Meanwhile, an exciting brand
would benet from the use of both numerical and verbal quantiers in
its communications, as this personality trait is based on being unpre-
dictable, innovative, exible, and surprising; thus, it is congruent to use
multiple formats of communication.
However, we critically hypothesized a reverse argumentation when
analyzing the current pandemic situation of consumption. We proposed
that exciting brand personalities could be penalized for using verbal
quantiers that offer an overall and contextual perception in a pandemic
consumption situation. This personality trait has to compensate for its
perception of being unpredictable and surprising by providing as much
factual and precise information as possible, such as using numerical
quantiers. In addition, we argued that a sincere hotel brand personality
could benet from the use of both numerical and verbal quantiers, as
this personality trait tends to be perceived by individuals as predictable
and, in the end, provokes tourists to nd the hotel more trustworthy and
reliable in terms of what it is doing to secure cleaning of rooms and
common areas against COVID-19. The Study 2 results support our ar-
guments by conrming an interaction effect between hotel brand per-
sonality and numerical/verbal quantiers used in communicating
cleaning programs on tourists’ attitudes and intentions to visit and
recommend the hotel.
Finally, in line with the ELM (Petty et al., 1981) and the
dual-processing theory (De Neys, 2017; Evans, 2008; Liu et al., 2020a;
Nisbett et al., 2001), we conrmed that when individuals are presented
with information about hotel cleaning policies they rst evaluate the
source (the hotel brand) to decide whether they will process the infor-
mation by analyzing every detail of the information (central route) or,
conversely, by constructing an overall idea of the information (periph-
eral route). In this case, when tourists are evaluating a risky consump-
tion situation, we found that a sincere hotel brand personality facilitates
their judgment of the hotel’s cleaning program, and, no matter what, the
program contains numerical or verbal quantiers to drive tourists’
positive attitudinal and intentional responses toward the hotel. This
occurs because a sincere brand is considered a relevant cue on which
tourists can base their opinions instead of carefully processing each
informational detail (the peripheral route for ELM). Conversely, in a
risky consumption situation when the hotel is positioned as an exciting
personality based on being perceived as unpredictable and surprising,
tourists are forced to process the information carefully and in detail (the
central route for ELM), and thus they prefer to have more factual and
technical information through numerical quantiers to decide accu-
rately (Chaiken, 1980) whether they will assume a high personal risk by
visiting the hotel during the COVID-19 pandemic.
4.2. Managerial implications
We offer hotel managers evidence to optimize hotel brand–tourist
relationships in the COVID-19 era. Study 1 showed that whether the
communications contain numerical or verbal quantiers, tourists’ atti-
tudes toward hotels will range from perceiving the hotel as a profes-
sional entity that properly cares about guests’ security and well-being to
viewing it as offering limited and insufcient cleaning protocols. In
addition, for hotels with an exciting personality, we found that tourists
could also feel total skepticism about how the hotel is dealing with the
coronavirus. This result showed that, in a pandemic context, tourists
require factual, trustworthy, and concise information for their decision-
making. Derived from participant narratives in Study 1, we recommend
that hotel managers design communications about their COVID-19
cleaning policies that are as thorough as possible. For example,
messaging could include certied cleaning procedures known to prevent
COVID-19.
Furthermore, in Study 2, we observed that hotels with a sincere
brand personality equally benet from using numerical and verbal
quantiers to dene such cleaning procedures. In this case, hotels with a
sincere personality are forced to work with joint tactics based on rein-
forcing the brand’s personality while communicating its procedures
against COVID-19, for example, by remarking on the hotel’s values and
personality before describing each cleaning procedure. We also
contribute ndings for hotels that position their offer as an exciting
brand personality. As noted in the results of Study 2, managers of a hotel
with an exciting brand personality should use a quantication logic
while communicating their cleaning protocols. Such hotels will benet
from using numerical quantiers in COVID-19 communications, as this
format signals precision, professionalism, and care for customers.
4.3. Limitations and future research
This work is not without limitations that should be addressed in
future studies. First, it is necessary to evaluate the external validity of
our experiment, including communication styles that combine both
numerical and verbal quantiers in the same condition with a bigger
sample. Currently, hospitality and tourism organizations are also using
labels to signal that a hospitality area was cleaned with secure proced-
ures against COVID-19 (World Tourism Organization, 2020). It will be
interesting to analyze hotels’ use of COVID-19-free labels combined with
numerical and verbal quantiers to advance in the post-pandemic hotel
industry agenda (Hao et al., 2020).
Second, another question that emerged from this research is related
to the fact that we contextualized our ndings in a pandemic situation
when there is a lack of studies on brand personality linked with the use
of numerical/verbal quantiers in a normal context. Here, the challenge
J. Jim´
enez-Barreto et al.
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
10
is the exceptionality of the pandemic as the study context. We encourage
research using the theoretical and empirical relationship of brand per-
sonality and the use of quantiers in a normal consumption context and
through other kinds of hotel communications that necessarily affect
tourists in a highly personal way, for example, among hotel customer
care programs in which guests receive information about how hotels will
deal with their possible future problems.
Finally, we focused our research on contextual factors, such as ho-
tels’ brand personalities, and communication formats, and the macro-
context that represents the COVID-19 crisis. Thus, we do not know
how individual factors, such as tourists’ cultural values or prior expe-
rience with the hotel brand, could moderate our theoretical and
empirical ndings. Future research should explore how contextual and
individual-level factors play a role while analyzing hotel brand per-
sonality and the type of communication used in hotels’ marketing
communications. Additionally, even though we examine different ho-
tels’ tactics regarding communication style and brand personality when
communicating their cleaning procedures to combat COVID-19, it is not
clear whether major hotel brands that manage multiple brands simul-
taneously would be able to achieve results similar to ours. This may
happen when a major hotel brand is positioned with a personality that is
different compared to a secondary hotel brand of the same group (e.g.,
Marriot International as a major brand and its collection of brands with
different positionings, such as Marriot, Ritz-Carlton, Sheraton, Resi-
dence Inn). Therefore, future studies should include more complex
experimental scenarios to analyze the interplay between hotel brand
personality and the use of numerical and verbal quantiers in marketing
communication, considering contexts with the presence of multiple
hotel brands from the same hotel group.
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy, In-
dustry, and Competitiveness, Individual Grant Number: BES-2016-
078666.
Appendix A. Brand personality and hotels’ COVID-19 cleaning program manipulation for Study 1 and Study 2
(a) Sincere hotel brand (b) Exciting hotel brand (c) Control condition
A research group is interested in getting your feedback on a
new hotel chain. Please, read the hotel’s description and
answer the following question.
A research group is interested in getting your feedback on
a hotel chain. Please, read the hotel’s description and
answer the following question:
A research group is interested in getting your
feedback on a hotel chain. Please, read the hotel’s
description and answer the following question:
The Holton Hotel makes accommodation experiences
for a heartfelt audience. The hotel’s rooms are
considered candid, honest, and sensible.
The Holton Hotel makes accommodation experiences
for a thrill-seeking audience. The hotel’s rooms are
considered to be electrifying, stylish, and one-of-a-
kind.
The Holton Hotel is now approaching big cities in
the US to establish a competitive accommodation
offer to middle- and upper-class consumers.
(a) Numerical quantiers (b) Verbal quantiers
Our Guest, our priority Our Guest, our priority
The Holton Hotel The Holton Hotel
Statement regarding COVID-19:
We procure a 100% comfortable stay for our guests.
We have applied a "pure space" procedure to ensure
that 99% of air pathogens are eliminated from our
rooms.
In addition, we secure, through 10 cleaning phases
per day, that all common areas of our hotels are free of
COVID-19.
Statement regarding the novel coronavirus:
We procure the most comfortable stay for our guests. We have applied a "pure space" procedure to ensure that
all air pathogens are eliminated from our rooms.
In addition, we secure, through several cleaning phases per day, that all common areas of our hotels are free of
coronavirus.
Appendix B. Supplementary data
Supplementary material related to this article can be found, in the online version, at doi:https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2021.102872.
References
Aaker, J.L., 1997. Dimensions of brand personality. J. Mark. Res. 34 (3), 347–356.
Aaker, J.L., Fournier, S., Brasel, S.A., 2004. When good brands do bad. J. Consum. Res.
31 (1), 1–16.
Altschiller, D., 2000. Do dot-coms’ ads reveal a more basic aw? Brandweek 41 (12), 32.
Bartosiak, M., 2020. Can you tell me where to stay? The effect of presentation format on
the persuasiveness of hotel online reviews. Curr. Issues Tour. https://doi.org/
10.1080/13683500.2020.1765749).
Baum, T., Hai, N.T.T., 2020. Hospitality, tourism, human rights and the impact of
COVID-19. Int. J. Contemp. Hosp. Manage. https://doi.org/10.1108/IJCHM-03-
2020-0242.
Berezan, O., Yoo, M., Christodoulidou, M., 2016. The impact of communication channels
on communication style and information quality for hotel loyalty programs. J. Hosp.
Tour. Technol. 7 (1), 100–116.
Bufquin, D., Park, J.-Y., Back, R.M., Nutta, M.W.W., Zhang, T., 2020. Effects of hotel
website photographs and length of textual descriptions on viewers’ emotions and
behavioral intentions. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 87 (May), 102378.
Chaiken, S., 1980. Heuristic versus systematic processing and the use of source versus
message cues in persuasion. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 39 (November), 752–766.
Childers, T.L., Viswanathan, M., 2000. Representation of numerical and verbal product
information in consumer memory. J. Bus. Res. 47 (2), 109–120.
Coulter, R., Zaltman, G., 2000. The power of metaphor. In: Ratneshwar, S., Mick, D.G.,
Huffman, C. (Eds.), The Why of Consumption: Contemporary Perspectives on
Consumers Motives Goals and Desires. Routledge, London, pp. 259–281.
De Neys, W., 2017. Dual Process Theory 2.0. Routledge, London.
Ettinger, A., Grabner-Kr¨
auter, S., Terlutter, R., 2018. Online CSR communication in the
hotel industry: evidence from small hotels. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 68 (January),
94–104.
Evans, J.S.B.T., 2008. Dual-processing accounts of reasoning, judgment, and social
cognition. Annu. Rev. Psychol. 59 (1), 255–278.
Evans, J.S.B.T., Stanovich, K.E., 2013. Dual-process theories of higher cognition:
advancing the debate. Perspect. Psychol. Sci. 8 (3), 223–241.
Foroudi, P., 2019. Inuence of brand signature, brand awareness, brand attitude, brand
reputation on hotel industry’s brand performance. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 76 (Part A,
January), 271–285.
Foroudi, P., 2020. Corporate brand strategy: drivers and outcomes of hotel industry’s
brand orientation. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 88 (July), 102519.
Gretry, A., Horv´
ath, C., Belei, N., van Riel, A.C., 2017. “Don’t pretend to be my friend!”
when informal brand communication style backres on social media. J. Bus. Res. 74
(4), 77–89.
Hao, F., Xiao, Q., Chon, K., 2020. COVID-19 and China’s hotel industry: impacts, a
disaster management framework, and post-pandemic agenda. Int. J. Hosp. Manag.
90 (September), 102636.
Hard Rock Hotels & Casino, 2020. Hard Rock Ofcial Website. Retrieved online: htt
ps://www.hardrockhotels.com/.
Hardeman, G., Font, X., Nawijn, J., 2017. The power of persuasive communication to
inuence sustainable holiday choices: appealing to self-benets and norms. Tour.
Manag. 59 (April), 484–493.
J. Jim´
enez-Barreto et al.
International Journal of Hospitality Management 94 (2021) 102872
11
Hu, X., Yan, H., Casey, T., Wu, C.H., 2021. Creating a safe haven during the crisis: how
organizations can achieve deep compliance with COVID-19 safety measures in the
hospitality industry. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 92 (January), 102662.
Im, J., Kim, H., Miao, L., 2021. CEO letters: hospitality corporate narratives during the
COVID-19 pandemic. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 92 (January), 102701.
Jani, D., Han, H.H., 2014. Personality, satisfaction, image, ambience, and loyalty: testing
their relationships in the hotel industry. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 37 (February), 11–20.
Jun, S.H., Vogt, C., 2013. Travel information processing applying a dual-process model.
Ann. Tour. Res. 40, 191–212.
Kahneman, D., 2011. Thinking, Fast and Slow. Farrer, Straus and Giroux, New York, NY.
Kim, H., Stepchenkova, S., 2017. Understanding destination personality through visitors’
experience: a cross-cultural perspective. J. Destin. Mark. Manag. 6 (4), 416–425.
Kim, H.R., Lee, M., Ulgado, F.M., 2005. Brand personality, self-congruity and the
consumer-brand relationship. ACR Asia-Pacic Advances 6, 111–117.
Lee, S.J., Back, K.J., 2010. Examining antecedents and consequences of brand personality
in the upper-upscale business hotel segment. J. Travel Tour. Mark. 27 (2), 132–145.
Liu, D., Juanchich, M., Sirota, M., Orbell, S., 2019. People overestimate verbal quantities
of nutrients on nutrition labels. Food Qual. Prefer. 78 (December), 103739.
Liu, D., Juanchich, M., Sirota, M., Orbell, S., 2020a. Differences between decisions made
using verbal or numerical quantiers. Think. Reason. https://doi.org/10.1080/
13546783.2020.1720813).
Liu, D., Juanchich, M., Sirota, M., Orbell, S., 2020b. The intuitive use of contextual
information in decisions made with verbal and numerical quantiers. Q. J. Exp.
Psychol. 73 (4), 481–494.
Los Angeles Times, 2020. Tracking Coronavirus in California. Retrieved online: https
://www.latimes.com/projects/california-coronavirus-cases-tracking-outbreak/.
Luffarelli, J., Stamatogiannakis, A., Yan, H., 2019. The visual asymmetry effects: an
interplay of logo design and brand personality on brand equity. J. Mark. 56 (1),
89–103.
Maille, V., Fleck, N., 2011. Perceived congruence and incongruence: towards a
clarication of the concept, its formation and measure. Rech. Appl. En Mark. 26 (2),
77–113.
Merriam, A.H., 1990. Words and numbers: mathematical dimension of rhetoric. South.
Commun. J. 55 (4), 337–354.
Nisbett, R.E., Peng, K., Choi, I., Norenzayan, A., 2001. Culture and systems of thought:
holistic versus analytic cognition. Psychol. Rev. 108 (2), 291–310.
Pennebaker, J.W., Chung, C.K., Frazee, J., Lavergne, G.M., Beaver, D.I., 2014. When
small words foretell academic success: the case of college admissions essays. PLoS
One 9 (12), e115844.
Pennebaker, J.W., Boyd, R.L., Jordan, K., Blackburn, K., 2015. The Development and
Psychometric Properties of LIWC2015 (Working Paper). University of Texas at
Austin, Austin.
Peters, E., Hibbard, J., Slovic, P., Dieckmann, N., 2007. Numeracy skill and the
communication, comprehension, and use of risk-benet information. Health Aff. 26
(3), 741–748.
Petty, R.E., Cacioppo, J.T., Goldman, R., 1981. Personal involvement as a determinant of
argument-based persuasion. J. Pers. Soc. Psychol. 41 (November), 847–855.
Roeh, I., Feldman, S., 1984. The rhetoric of numbers in front-page journalism: how
numbers contribute to the melodramatic in the popular press. Text 4, 347–368.
Salda˜
na, J., 2013. The Coding Manual for Qualitative Researchers, 2nd ed. Sage, London.
Santana, S., Thomas, M., Morwitz, V.G., 2020. The role of numbers in the customer
journey. J. Retail. 96 (1), 138–154.
Shin, H., Kang, J., 2020. Reducing perceived health risk to attract hotel customers in the
COVID-19 pandemic era: focused on technology innovation for social distancing and
cleanliness. Int. J. Hosp. Manag. 91 (October), 102664.
Strauss, A., Corbin, J., 1990. Basics of Qualitative Research: Grounded Theory
Procedures and Techniques. Sage Publications, Newbury Park, CA.
Su, N., Reynolds, D., 2017. Effects of brand personality dimensions on consumers’
perceived self-image congruity and functional congruity with hotel brands. Int. J.
Hosp. Manag. 66 (September), 1–12.
Sundar, A., Noseworthy, T.J., 2016. Too exciting to fail, too sincere to succeed: the
effects of brand personality on sensory disconrmation. J. Consum. Res. 43 (1),
44–67.
Tausczik, Y.R., Pennebaker, J.W., 2010. The psychological meaning of words: LIWC and
computerized text analysis methods. J. Lang. Soc. Psychol. 29 (1), 24–54.
The New York Times, 2020. Coronavirus in the U.S.: Lasted Map and Case Count.
Retrieved online: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2020/us/coronavirus-us-ca
ses.html.
The Washington Post, 2020. Coronavirus U.S. Cases. Retrieved online: https://www.
washingtonpost.com/graphics/2020/national/coronavirus-us-cases-deaths/?itid
=hp_hp-banner-low_web-gfx-death-tracker-duplicate%3Ahomepage%2Fstory-ans.
Tran, X., Dauchez, C., Szemik, A.M., 2013. Hotel brand personality and brand equity.
J. Vacat. Mark. 19 (4), 329–341.
Viswanathan, M., Childers, T.L., 1997. “5” calories or “low” calories? What do we know
about using numbers or words to describe products and where do we go from here?
Adv. Consum. Res. 24, 412–418.
Wang, I.M., Ackerman, J.M., 2018. The infectiousness of crowds: crowding experiences
are amplied by pathogen threats. Pers. Soc. Psycho. Bull. 45 (1), 120–132.
Windschitl, P.D., Wells, G.L., 1996. Measuring psychological uncertainty: verbal versus
numeric methods. J. Exp. Psychol. Appl. 2, 343–364.
Witt, W., 1976. Effects of quantication in scientic writing. J. Commun. 26 (Winter),
67–69.
WTTC, 2020. Latest Research From WTTC. World Travel & Tourism Council (WTTC).
Retrieved online: https://www.wttc.org/about/media-centre/press-releases/pre
ss-releases/2020/latest-research-from-wttc-shows-an-increase-in-jobs-at-risk-in-tra
vel-and-tourism/.
Yalch, R., Elmore-Yalch, R., 1984. The effect of numbers on the route to persuasion.
J. Consum. Res. 11 (June), 522–527.
Zenker, S., Kock, F., 2020. The coronavirus pandemic – a critical discussion of a tourism
research agenda. Tour. Manag. 81, 104164.
J. Jim´
enez-Barreto et al.
