This study was conducted to understand push and pull factors that motivate guests to choose to stay at a boutique hotel in Xiamen, China. The concept of boutique hotels and their rapid expansion worldwide has been noticed by the industry and academics for several decades. The research objective of this study was to establish a framework for push and pull motivation factors for consumers to stay at local boutique hotels in Xiamen. This study represents the first attempt to use push and pull theory, which has been widely discussed in tourism literature, to ascertain motivation of guests to visit boutique hotels. Descriptive statistical analysis was used to present boutique hotel guest profile. Exploratory factor analysis was conducted to reveal the underlying themes of motivation reported by respondents. The principal component analysis revealed three factors in push motivation and two factors in pull motivation. More specifically, "Uniqueness-seeking", "Interpersonal experience", and "Social networking" were derived from push motivation, whereas "Decoration & theme", "Site value" were revealed from pull motivation. This study also identified the difference across socio-demographic features of the guests in boutique hotels on push and pull motivation factors. Significant differences on the push and pull factors were found in age, marital status, and income. The findings of this research may provide useful information regarding customer motivation factors which could benefit hotel managers for designing marketing strategies such as targeting, packaging, and advertisement.
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