When politics matter as a contingency factor: Comparing hotel customer satisfaction in Cuba and Western nations

This study explores differences in service delivery in hotels in Cuba, a collectivist economy, and in comparable hotels in Western countries, including Mexico, the Dominican Republic, and Spain. This research extends contingency theory in tourism by incorporating governance quality as a moderating contextual factor and introducing cultural decoupling as a mechanism explaining how governance contexts shape service outcomes across contexts. Customer satisfaction research in collectivist economies examines governance influences. Data was collected through web scraping of customer reviews from major hotel chains on TripAdvisor. robust regressions, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), multivariate analysis. Contextual differences and governance quality indicators were estimated using variance (MANOVA), and matching procedures with Mahalanobis distance. The study identifies contextual differences in customer satisfaction and service quality evaluations between Cuba and Western countries. The contingency factor of governance quality and its dimensions, regulatory quality and voice plus accountability, show negative and significant effects.