Enhancing guest behavioral attitudes and intentions through experiences: a socio-cognitive mindfulness perspective

Hospitality businesses today are expected to go beyond excellent service by creating memorable experiences that actively enhance guest well-being. While prior research emphasizes the role of physical environments and service interactions, cognitive mechanisms remain underexplored. This gap is important as guests increasingly seek restoration yet struggle with challenges such as work-related rumination and disengagement. This study introduces socio-cognitive mindfulness as a novel antecedent of guest experience. Across two large-scale analyses of hotel reviews and an online experiment, findings show that mindfulness interventions improve hotel ratings and revisit intentions. Mediation analyses reveal that well-being and experience evaluations sequentially explain these effects.