The Effects of Affiliate Credibility, Content Quality, Electronic Word of Mouth, and Customer Experience on Hotel Guest Loyalty

The expansion of online marketing has reshaped the way potential guests obtain information and develop attachment to hospitality services. Nevertheless, empirical findings concerning the combined role of affiliator trustworthiness, digital content standards, e-WOM, and guest experience in explaining hotel guest loyalty remain varied in earlier studies. This research was designed to assess the contribution of those four predictors to hotel guest loyalty in Surabaya and Malang. A quantitative research design was applied by distributing questionnaires to 138 respondents chosen through purposive criteria. The collected data were processed through variance-based structural equation modelling with SmartPLS 4. The findings indicate that affiliator trustworthiness, digital content standards, and e-WOM do not produce a statistically meaningful impact on hotel guest loyalty. In contrast, guest experience demonstrates a significant positive relationship, as reflected in the path coefficient of 0.533, T-statistic of 3.343, and P-value of 0.001. The proposed model accounts for 70.1 percent of the variation in hotel guest loyalty. These results confirm that direct service experience is the most decisive element in strengthening guest loyalty, exceeding the role of digital promotional activities. Therefore, hotel managers are advised to focus on improving the quality of guest experience as a core strategy for maintaining long-term loyalty.