Drawing on receiver-side signaling theory, this study examines how guests' perceived sustainability (PS) shapes hotel brand awareness (BAW) and brand equity (BEQ), and whether brand familiarity (BFAM) and practice awareness (PRAW) condition those relationships. Survey data from 1,029 U.S. guests of five major hotel chains (Hilton, Hyatt, Marriott, MGM, and Wyndham) were analyzed in Mplus 8.4 using a three-factor confirmatory factor analysis and latent moderated structural equations (LMS). The indirect effect was verified with 5,000 bias-corrected bootstrap draws. Perceived sustainability raises both BAW and BEQ, with BAW partially mediating the PS-BEQ relationship. Brand familiarity strengthens PS-to-BAW but weakens PS-to-BEQ, a dual-sign moderation pattern. Practice awareness strengthens PS-to-BEQ without affecting PS-to-BAW. The pattern holds across measurement invariance checks, an education control, and an unmeasured latent method construct, though PS-to-BAW magnitudes shift enough to warrant caution about effect-size precision. From a managerial perspective, hotels should tailor sustainability communication by audience: less-familiar brands gain more equity from sustainability perceptions, whereas familiar brands retain awareness gains but show smaller direct equity updates. Communication should pair visible credibility cues with concrete evidence of practice, and practice noticing should be instrumented on the guest-feedback side. The paper extends receiver-side signaling theory to hospitality sustainability branding and shows that moderation in a mediation chain can change the sign across paths.

Keywords

Operations Management, ESG, Sustainability, Sustainable Consumer Behavior, Service.