Engaged customers are a crucial asset in many service industries, especially in the tourism and hospitality context (e.g. So, King, Sparks, Wang, & Hall, 2016). Positive effects of customer engagement (CE), such as word-of-mouth, community participation, or provision of new ideas for services are likely to become increasingly important for companies and help them develop unique offerings and generate new revenue streams (e.g. Kumar & Pansari, 2016; Venkatesan, 2017; Verhoef, Reinartz, & Krafft, 2010). Although previous research has repeatedly emphasized the positive effects of CE, the patterns that bring about CE are less clear. This research contributes to the investigation of CE antecedents and draws on data elicited from a series of focus group discussions and interviews with customers, experts and executives in the services, hotel, and tourism industry. The findings from these qualitative studies point to complex patterns of customer and firm based antecedents (e.g. Brodie et al., 2011; van Doorn et al., 2010) that play a role in stimulating CE. Among other results, the findings show that customers exhibit different motives for engaging, such as feelings of familiarity, pride and belonging, helpfulness or emotions and companies need to adjust their approaches to meet these motives. In sum, these findings contribute to the literature on CE by unveiling different antecedents of CE and investigating their interplay. This article also contributes to the services and relationship management literature by investigating which relationship characteristics play a role in CE and how they bring about engagement behaviors.