“I Like This Art, So I Like This Hotel”—A Mixed Methods Investigation on How Hotel Art Engages Customers in Luxury Hotels

Decorating hotels with art pieces is a favored practice, particularly in luxury hotels. However, research on the investigation of how hotel artworks engage customers and promote their hotel experience is limited. Therefore, a sequential mixed methods approach was employed to address this gap by incorporating two studies. First, a qualitative study (interviews, n = 15) was employed to understand how art engages customers. Second, a quantitative study (survey, n = 268) was performed to empirically test the relationship between customers' artistic engagement and their overall hotel experience. Results reveal that visual art engages customers in a number of ways such as attention holding, cognitive enquiring, and emotive immersion. This study contributes to existing literature by applying cue-utilization theory to examine the impact of visual art in the context of luxury hotel consumption. The results provide valuable guidance to hoteliers on how to display artworks in the future.