Luxury accommodation experience: From backdrop to protagonist. A systematic literature review

Luxury accommodation is a growing segment of the hospitality industry and has often been employed as a context of investigation in academic research. Despite its extensive use, lack of clarity still exists in characterising luxury accommodation and the experience it provides. This paper explores luxury accommodation, its characteristics and the elements that make an accommodation experience ‘luxury’. Through a systematic literature review of 78 international peer-review journal articles, our analysis reveals an increased agreement that luxury accommodation differentiates itself not on the basis of its intrinsic product and service offering, but on the luxury experience it provides. The analysis also suggests that specific elements shape the luxury accommodation experience, including high levels of personalisation and strong employees’ involvement in co-creation processes. These experiences are strictly emotional and conscious events which are dependent on the guest’s state of mind at the time of consumption. Our findings contribute to research in experience studies and luxury accommodation, as well as provide a foundation for future empirical research into luxury accommodation experiences.