From Engagement to Action in Hospitality Management: Brand Experience and Value Co-Creation as Dual Engines of Hotel Loyalty

This study develops and tests an Engagement–Experience–Co-creation–Loyalty (EECL) framework explaining how hospitality brand engagement (HBE) is translated into multidimensional hotel loyalty through two parallel mechanisms: Hospitality brand experience (HBX) and hospitality value co-creation (HVCC). A variance-based PLS-SEM model with seven reflective latent constructs and 57 indicators was estimated using data from 1407 members of four global hotel loyalty programs; generational cohort was used only as a grouping variable in multi-group analysis, not as an additional construct. MICOM established measurement invariance across Generation Z, Millennials, Generation X, and Baby Boomers. HBE is positively associated with both HBX and HVCC, and both mechanisms transmit its relationship to cognitive, affective, and conative loyalty. These three attitudinal facets jointly predict action loyalty, supporting a parallel rather than strictly staged loyalty-formation logic in hotel loyalty-program contexts. Younger cohorts translate engagement more strongly into experience and co-creation, whereas older cohorts rely more on experience when forming cognitive loyalty. The study contributes a hospitality-specific, predictive, and cohort-sensitive explanation of how engagement is converted into hotel loyalty.