ABSTRACT
Type the words ‘fast changing hospitality industry’ into Google and you will elicit a large number of statements reassuring you of the sector’s dynamism, characteristics that are often extended to hospitality consumers who are regularly depicted as, variously, fickle, experimental and ever-changing in their needs and wants. Such statements are also often found in ‘academic’ articles although they are rarely supported by any quantity or quality of research evidence that would satisfy serious researchers. The discussion in this chapter focuses on consumer behaviour in the hospitality industry, and in particular on the concept of consumer choice. It advocates a more prosaic view of these two concepts, suggesting that continuity, rather than change, is the hallmark of consumer behaviour in the sector and that changes in such behaviour are slow and incremental. The ‘now’ and ‘when’ of the chapter’s title is an imperfect allusion to these suggested realities over more excitable renderings of trends in hospitality consumer behaviour.
