To Refund or Not to Refund?

PolyU’s School of Hotel and Tourism Management | April 26, 2023

2020 saw unprecedented swathes of holiday cancellations. The year COVID-19 hit was a tough one for hospitality and tourism firms, who were forced to make swift decisions about changes to their refund policies. However, no one could clearly envisage how those crisis-induced changes would impact customer loyalty and trust. In the first study of its kind, Dr Daniel Leung and Ms Christine Seah of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management (SHTM) at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University looked at customer reactions to generous or self-serving refund policy changes, and whether these are shaped further by the magnitude of changes and the format in w...