From Screen to Stay: How Digitally Mediated Content and Service Integration Relate to Multisensory Hotel Experience, Satisfaction, and Loyalty

Increasingly, hotel guests form expectations about their stay based on content that is available through digital channels before they arrive, while at the same time hotels are incorporating digital technologies into the services they provide on site; however, these two aspects have mostly been examined in isolation, and the combined impact of them on the multisensory impression associated with satisfaction and loyalty has not yet been thoroughly investigated. The present study proposes and tests a structural model in which the influence of digital content is associated with tourists’ sensory expectations prior to their arrival, and this, together with the degree of digital service integration, is associated with the multisensory experience reported during the stay, which in turn is associated with visitor satisfaction and loyalty via both direct and indirect paths. Data from 553 Romanian tourists were analyzed using covariance-based structural equation modeling, and the full and partial mediation models were compared by means of a nested chi-square test. All six hypotheses were confirmed. The partial mediation model provided superior fit (Δχ2(1) = 162.53, p < 0.001), and the direct effect of Multisensory Experience on Loyalty (β = 0.561) substantially exceeded the satisfaction-mediated indirect path (β = 0.119), while Digital Content Influence was the strongest single predictor in the model (β = 0.785 on Sensory Expectations). This research extends both servicescape theory and expectation-confirmation theory to the context of digitally mediated hospitality, with practical relevance for hotel managers and digital travel platforms regarding the joint role of pre-arrival content and on-site digital infrastructure associated with the guest experience, and potential, though untested, implications for destination-level standards relating to review authenticity and content quality.