Hocance tourism motivations: Scale development and validation

•Developed and validated a scale to measure Hocance tourism motivations (HTM).•To develop and validate the HTM scale we apply a rigorous mixed method approach.•Pragmatism, curiosity, respite, ostentation, and impregnability are five dimensions of HTM.•This scale is useful for academia and industry to understand growing trend of Hocance tourism. Hocance is a compound word of ‘hotel’ and ‘vacance’. This concept is created from the established and popular trending culture of spending vacations in hotels. We applied a rigorous multi-step scale development procedure to craft a scale that measures Hocance tourism motivations (HTM). Using grounded theory, we conducted interviews with individuals with Hocance experience in South Korea to develop a conceptual model involving seven dimensions: pragmatism, pleasure, curiosity, respite, ostentation, impregnability, and amotivation. We tested the proposed scale using data obtained from surveys with 1,000 tourists. To validate the scale, we conducted a further survey (n = 199) with paid membership subscribers of two luxury hotels in Seoul. The survey results confirmed the reliability and validity of five dimensions of HTM namely, pragmatism, curiosity, respite, ostentation, and impregnability. We discussed theoretical and managerial implications and directions for future research for the newly developed scale of HTM.