ABSTRACT Homestays are becoming an increasingly popular form of accommodation, characterized by guest‐host interaction and cultural immersion. Unlike standardized hotels, homestays emphasize social context, making travel companions a critical yet underexplored factor in shaping tourist experiences. This study investigates how service quality influences tourist loyalty in homestay settings, with relationship quality as a mediator and companion type as a moderator. Using 372 valid responses from homestay tourists in China, Partial Least Squares Structural Equation Modeling and multigroup analysis were conducted. Results show that service quality positively affects loyalty, and relationship quality plays a significant mediating role. Additionally, the influence of service quality on relationship quality differs by companion type: tangibility has a negative effect for those traveling with friends or partners but a positive effect for families and groups. The study contributes to the literature by incorporating social facilitation and self‐expansion theories, providing new insight into social dynamics in homestay tourism.
Dai et al. (Sun,) studied this question.