Relationship marketing: advantages, limitations and its effect on the customer loyalty at university hotels

الملخص EN

Relationship marketing is an important tool to overcome the marketing challenges related to environmental changing.

The objective of this research is to study the structure, procedures, obstacles and the impact of relationship marketing system applied at the university hotels.

This study was applied to university hotels in Middle Egypt governorates (Assuit, El Minia, Beni Suief and El Fayoum).

The main hypothesis of this study was that "The relationship marketing procedures influences significantly the customer loyalty through the structure of relationship marketing system at university hotels".

The research method adopted in this research combined two techniques; the first one was semi-structured interviews with the general managers and their assistants.

The second technique applied questionnaire survey for university hotels' customers.

The validity and reliability of the study tools were tested.

The Cochran's formula was used to determine the optimal sample size based on the pilot study results.

The study sample included all managers of studied hotels and a total number of 203 of customers.

Data collected was analyzed statistically using SPSS version 21.

The researchers used correlation and regression coefficients, variances analysis tests and path analysis test to test the validity of the study hypotheses.

Results of the study indicated that; "There is a statistically significant effect of the relationship marketing procedures on customers’ loyalty in the university hotels", this influence is separate from the effect of structure of the relationship marketing system in the university hotels, "There are statistical significance differences between university hotels at Middle Egypt with regard to the level of relationship marketing procedures" and "There are low levels of limitations in the use of relationship marketing with 95% confidence interval for mean at university hotels".

The study tested the significance of the study model and equation that represents the influence of relationship marketing structure and procedures on customer loyalty at university hotels and suggested some recommendations.