Trust as mediator of corporate social responsibility, image and loyalty in the hotel sector

Abstract

The hotel sector, one of the main pillars of the tourism industry, recognizes its social responsibility and considers it as part of its image. For this reason, firms require new variables and tools to respond to stakeholders’ needs. Trust is an essential variable in meeting these needs. However, managers are unaware that they can achieve much more through trust than through other variables. In this paper, with a sample of 629 guests in four international hotels, we use a model to show that the corporate social responsibility (CSR) association affects not only customers’ loyalty and the image they have of the hotel, but also their trust. Furthermore, this study confirms that the presence of trust as a mediator between CSR and image and loyalty leads to increased loyalty and positive image among guests. Our study shows that hotels should invest in socially responsible initiatives and develop actions to strengthen trust in order to improve their image and increase loyalty. We anticipate that our study will be a starting point for strengthening the literature on this issue, and call on researchers to extend enquiry in this field and provide hotels with guidelines for improvement in the above-mentioned variables using trust as a mediator.