Personal branding of hotel employees: top management support and guest attitude perspective

Document Type : Original Article

Authors

1 Department of Hotel Management, Faculty of Tourism and Hotels, University of Sadat City, Egypt

2 The Higher Institute for Tourism, Hotels and Computer Sciences, Seyouf, Alexandria, Egypt

Abstract

This study aimed to investigate the role of hotel management in supporting hotel employees' branding and how personal branding affects guests' attitudes to the brand. Data were collected from 16 chain hotels located in the Greater Cairo region in Egypt. Two different versions of the surveys were distributed to collect data; one for customers and the other for employees. While 380 valid surveys were collected from employees, a number of 400 surveys were collected from hotel guests. The results demonstrated that employee personal branding is very important to hotels; either employees or customers. The findings also revealed that there is a statistically significant path coefficient between hotel management support and hotel employees' personal branding. In addition, hotel guests had a moderate attitude toward personal branding. This study could help hotel management develop strategies to enhance employee personal branding. The study may also help create new connections between internal and external consumers of organizations and deepen understanding of the personal branding concept in a hotel setting.

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