The one most typical characteristic within this line of research seems to be, that the attributes
are provided to the respondents as a list of some kind and respondents react to the features by
ranking them as more or less important. One exception to this rule is provided by Dube and
Renaghan (2000) choosing an open question format asking for important hotel attributes and
ending up with 1275 different answers. Both approaches have advantages and drawbacks. The
closed question format eases statistical testing it restricts the variety of answers and thus is in
danger of ignoring possible important additional factors. The open question format asking for
the importance of attributes on the other hand provides the widest possible view but makes it
difficult to differentiate which attributes are core requirements and which ones only add little
value to a pleasant hotel experience. The study presented in this paper takes a slightly
different point of view: In order not restrict the range of possible answers, open answer format
is chosen and to prevent respondents to list less relevant attributes (by asking directly which
factors are perceived as important), the questions streamline the associations to expectations
prior to seeing the hotel and the disappointments experienced in the past. The assumption is,
that answers to these questions would help to pin down central issues of a hotel offer.