An Investigation of Gen-Y's Online Hotel Information Search: The Case of Hong Kong

The Internet has made searching for hotel room information and making online reservations common practices among hotel guests. Despite constantly changing consumer behavior and widespread application of online hotel information sources, limited studies have been conducted to examine the online sources used frequently by customers and the related attributes of such sources. As such, drawing from an online questionnaire survey with 205 respondents, findings in this study indicate that there are no socio-demographic effects on future purchase intention of Generation (Gen) Y travelers. Moreover, websites of suppliers (e.g. official websites of hotels), travel intermediaries (e.g. Hotels.com), and social media (e.g. TripAdvisor) are the three major types of websites used by Gen Y hotel guests. Travel intermediary websites are often used to search for hotel information, whereas social media websites are used to make reservations. Based on these findings, implications for hotel managers are discussed.     

The role of language in the online evaluation of hospitality service encounters: An empirical study

In an increasingly global travel market, hospitality services encounters involve growing interactions between providers and customers often belonging to different nationalities and cultures and speaking different languages. Extant hospitality management literature has explored the influence of language on service evaluations mostly in offline settings. This study innovatively captures the effect of the language used in online hotel reviews on online consumer ratings in two distinctively different destinations located in culturally different countries: Italy and Russia. Based on almost half a million Booking.com online reviews written by hotel guests in Moscow and Rome, we illuminate if and to what extent domestic vs. foreign language use affects online customer satisfaction. We find that the use of domestic language exerts a positive impact on online ratings in both countries. Implications for hospitality practitioners and managers, developers and managers of online review platforms, and customers of hotel services are discussed.     

Sustainability Management of Hotels: How Do Customers Respond in Online Reviews?

The purpose of this study was to investigate how guests respond to the sustainability efforts of sustainably managed hotels by discussing them in reviews posted online. Thus, an exploratory research design and the content analysis method were chosen for this study. The content analysis technique was used to analyze User Generated Content and to explore what attributes of sustainability are perceived as the most important by hotel guests in online reviews and whether they generate positive or negative feelings. An analysis of the reviews showed that hotel guests perceive sustainability positively: most indicators were discussed in a positive context, and reviews that contained sustainability attributes had higher guest ratings than other reviews. Explicit references to sustainability were found in only 6.8% of all customer comments. The most frequently encountered indicators in guest reviews were biodiversity, education and sustainable products. Customers mainly discuss attributes that have direct impacts on their experience or are observable at the hotel. Customers are likely to realize that a hotel’s commitment to sustainability can excuse the hotel for a suffered inconvenience. This finding implies that hoteliers should educate guests on their sustainability measures, as higher awareness may increase customer satisfaction.     

Satisfaction and positive emotions: A comparison of the influence of hotel guests’ beliefs and attitudes on their satisfaction and emotions

This research provides a comparative study of two comprehensive servicescape models to explore the underlying influence of various hotel elements on guests’ satisfaction with, and emotional responses to, their hotel stays. Based on the theory of reasoned action (TRA) and the theory of planned behavior (TPB), this research sought to identify the differences in guests’ beliefs and attitudes about the elements of hotels’ public areas, rooms, ambiance, social, and green practices in determining their satisfaction and emotions. Two structural models were developed illustrating the theorized interrelationships between identified constructs. Data collected through an online survey from 310 guests stayed in upscale hotels with four-star ratings were used for the analysis. Results from two structural models revealed that the model with attitudes is a better predictor of guest satisfaction and emotions than the model with beliefs. Further, emotionally attached guests engage more in WOM than did satisfied guests. Hotel managers need to offer experiences that consist of elements that matter to customers since customers’ attitude towards various service elements determine their satisfaction and emotional attachment with hotels. Additionally, in order to get brand promoters through WOM recommendations, hotels need to focus on emotionally attached customers than satisfied customers.     

Hotel safety and security systems: Bridging the gap between managers and guests

Safety and security are important factors in guests’ selection of a hotel. Hoteliers normally follow local regulations when designing a hotel's safety and security systems, but which system features hotel guests perceive to be the most important and which they expect to find in place remain open questions. The main aim of this research is thus to investigate the gap between hotel safety and security managers’ and hotel guests’ perceptions of the relative importance of safety and security facilities. Two sets of questionnaires – designed for managers and guests, respectively – containing 32 attributes were used to gauge respondents’ perceptions of different hotel safety and security system installations. Independent t-tests and one-way ANOVA were employed to examine significant differences in the way managers and guests rate the importance of hotel in-house safety and security systems.The findings reveal that guests perceive “well-equipped fire prevention systems in accordance with local regulations”, “an emergency plan”, “an emergency lighting system”, “a 24-h uniformed security guard” and “the regular testing of hotel safety and security systems” to be the top five in-house safety and security systems, whereas hotel managers perceive “closed-circuit television systems for hotel public areas”, “emergency lighting systems” and “application of a guest key to activate the lifts to guest floors” to be the third through fifth most important. The results also indicate two good matches, six under-perceptions and four over-perceptions, indicating that managers may require a better understanding of guest expectations.In addition to gap analysis, this study discusses the importance of staff safety and security training, the acceptance of high-tech safety and security systems and the need for female guest floors, and provides a number of insights to help hotel managers better understand the needs of their customers, thereby allowing them to employ measures that are likely to keep customers’ satisfied.     

Can Response Management Benefit Hotels? Evidence from Hong Kong Hotels

With the growing influence of online reviews, more hotels are adopting online response management, but whether this works and benefits a hotel has rarely been studied. In this research, we study the impact of response management on hotel online ratings using data retrieved from TripAdvisor with a focus on Hong Kong hotels. We find that (1) high class hotels are more likely to adopt response management; (2) there is no significant difference among different hotel classes in terms of response rate; and (3) targeted response management has a significant positive effect on hotel ratings. In addition, Asian customers tend to give lower ratings than Western customers. We outline specific implications for hotel managers and their online management and offer suggestions for future research based on the empirical findings.     

Online Reputation Monitoring: An Exploratory Study on Italian Hotel Managers’ Practices

This study aims to understand current Italian hotel managers’ practices in monitoring online reviews included on travel websites and online travel agencies. Results obtained by a web survey indicate what hotel managers monitor (rating, rankings, guest comments regarding different service elements) and managers’ orientation in replying to customer reviews. Findings may support online reputation management tools providers and consulting firms by highlighting the degree of hoteliers’ interest in UGC monitoring and providing insights on possible factors that differentiate current management practices and should be considered in order to offer technical solutions coherent with the distinctiveness of Italian context.     

Cooperation and competition between online travel agencies and hotels

With the advent of O2O (online to offline) mode, Online Travel Agency (OTA) websites help to introduce new customers to hotels. However, since OTAs charge a hefty commission, hotel managers hope returning customers can book future visits from hotel websites instead of OTA websites. The study is to investigate how OTAs and hotels cooperate and compete with each other at the same time in the multichannel environments. The results show that OTAs can attract new and returning customers by website service quality while hotels can attract returning customers by perceived value. On the other hand, OTA website service quality has a negative effect on intention to rebook via hotel websites and the intention to rebook via OTA and hotel websites indeed have a negative relationship. Thus, the two channels compete with each other for customers' future visits.     

Impact of online reviews on hotel booking intention: The moderating role of brand image,star category,and price

This paper analyses the impact of online reviews on hotel booking intention. The moderating effect of brand image, star category, and price on this relationship was also tested. A quantitative approach has been followed by collecting questionnaires from a convenience sample of 432 customers who have previous experience with online booking. Results of the research revealed that reviews with positive valence do not affect booking intention, while reviews with negative valence have a strong impact. In addition, it was found that several moderators made this impact more or less severe. Brand image demonstrated a slight moderating effect due to the factor's inherent subjective nature. A moderating effect was also observed for both price importance and star category on the relationship. In conclusion, this study emphasizes the need for hotel managers to address online customer reviews, and specifically negative ones, to take advantage of promotional opportunities.     

Understanding homophily of service failure within the hotel guest cycle: Applying NLP-aspect-based sentiment analysis to the hospitality industry

Online complaints have become increasingly influential on the purchasing behavior of customers in recent years. In an effort analyze large quantities of textual complaints and detail the various aspects of them, Aspect-Based Sentiment Analysis was looked to as an ideal framework to take on the task. This study set out to synthesize specific service failure items and categorize them into the groupings related to the hotel guest cycle and the corresponding operations, then compare the patterns of expression used by Asian and Non-Asian guests as the related their hotel experiences. A total of 390,236 online complaint terms posted about 353 hotels in the UK by hotel guests from 63 nations were manually derived from TripAdvisor for analysis. With consideration given to the homophily theory, we posited that Asian and non-Asian guests would exhibit similarities and differences with respect to the service failures they encountered when presented with various items of service. The results confirmed this as Asian guests were shown to encounter more service failures with respect to the engineering segment of operations (e.g. hotel room equipment issues), while non-Asian guests encountered more service failures on the housekeeping end of operations (e.g. toilets, public areas, cleanliness, and bedding). By organizing the failures according the four stages of the guest cycle, it was observed that approximately 80% of the service failures occurred during the occupancy period. This study contributes to the existing literature on hotel guest satisfaction both with respect to the methodology it uses and the new findings it presents on differences in perceptions of service failures members among different cultures.     

Why do you use Yelp? Analysis of factors influencing customers’ website adoption and dining behavior

The number of review websites has increased within the past years since more people rely on online reviews to help their decision-making process. Previous studies have either focused on the attributes of the content posted on review websites (i.e., reviews) or customers’ behavior concerning their selection of review website on which to post reviews. This study, however, extends the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM) to investigate the factors that influence individuals’ restaurant review website adoption behaviors to read reviews and make dining decisions. In addition, this study will look at the differences in individuals’ perceptions of various restaurant review websites (i.e., Yelp vs. others). The findings revealed the role of influential factors on individuals’ review website adoption and dining decisions as well as the differences in proposed structural relationships among various restaurant review websites.     

Investigating cross-national heterogeneity in the adoption of online hotel reviews

Increasing reliance of potential guests on online hotel reviews has given rise to trepidation among some hospitality managers recently, thus necessitating a better understanding of its adoption. Literature on multicultural studies have suggested that behavioral models do not universally hold across cultures. In view of the limited generalizability and applicability of extant cross-cultural studies to this context, this study generates cross-national insights into the antecedents of travelers’ intention to use online hotel reviews to better understand the use of consumer-generated reviews across cultures. Generally, the predictive power of the model derived from the Motivation Theory and TAM holds true for both the United States and Singapore. Nonetheless, tests for structural invariance reveals some noteworthy differences between the two countries. The results highlight the complex cognitive mechanisms determining the acceptance of online hotel reviews in each country as moderated by national culture orientations. Findings hold implications for practitioners and researchers as they navigate through social media in different cultural contexts.     

Unravelling the effects of cultural differences in the online appraisal of hospitality and tourism services

International travelling has increased the likelihood of service interactions between customers and providers of different nationalities, frequently speaking various language, and repeatedly experiencing issues with intercultural communication. By examining more than 700,000 online reviews written by hotel guests of 101 different nationalities, using 84 different languages in their reviews, this study unravels cultural differences and examines through a direct measurement approach the simultaneous influence of national and linguistic differences between service customers and providers on online review valence. After controlling for reviewers’ demographics, behavioral features, trip related factors and location of service provider, the study findings reveal that while the influence of national cultural distance on online ratings is country- and destination- dependent, the usage of a common language is positively associated with online review valence irrespective of the destination/country where the service provider is located. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Understanding service experience and its impact on brand image in hospitality sector

This paper provides an understanding of customers’ common expectations and other important factors that enhance service experience during guest stay in the three selected four star rated hotels in Jammu, Chandigarh and Delhi, India. A structured questionnaire was used to collect data from hotel managers and individual customers. Guest's attitudes, their expected and unexpected feedback in addition to analyzing the important information that helps in finding out particular areas critical to customer service quality are explored. Overall the results indicate that expectations of the guests and actual experiences are at disparity. Viable recommendations to the hotel owners in particular and the hospitality industry overall are made which are likely to improve customer's memorable experience.     

Extending the scope of hotel client reactions to employee injustice: Hotel employer reviews on the Internet

Third-party literature is concerned about the way others perceive what happens in organizations. When dealing with the perceived justice of the employer-employee relationship, it has mainly adopted an on-site approach. The scarce research focusing on the consequences of perceived justice for client variables in hotels has shown that it can impact client loyalty. In this study, we adopt an on-line view, and we analyze how the comments posted by hotel employees on the Internet about their work conditions influence guest perceptions. This topic is relevant because it is well known that clients’ perceptions influence client satisfaction, WOM and revisit intentions. Through an experiment based on real hotel employer reviews, results confirm that these comments have an impact on the organizational image dimension of service quality, hotel clients’ satisfaction, WOM, and revisit intentions. Thus, as occurs with client eWOM, hotel managers should be aware of these comments and manage them appropriately.     

Understanding service attributes of robot hotels: A sentiment analysis of customer online reviews

Robots and artificial intelligence are essential to the future of the hospitality industry, and they are receiving increasing interest from hotel managers and researchers. However, the adoption of robotic services in hotel operations is a challenging task owing to the current level of technology and lack of understanding on the relationship between various aspects of robotic services and customer satisfaction. Moreover, no prior study has examined the service attributes of robots in hotels. To fill these gaps, this study analyzes customers’ sentiments on major hotels employing robotic services expressed through online reviews. A list of robot quality and operational area attributes is first constructed, through which underperforming robot service areas are identified. Sentiments on robotic services have a positive correlation with hotel service satisfaction, which plays an important role in determining the overall satisfaction of customers. The analysis and findings are valuable to researchers and managers for future research and adoption of robotic services in hotels.     

Impact of hotel website quality on online booking intentions: eTrust as a mediator

Growing competitiveness in the marketplace pushes hoteliers to fully take advantage of their websites as a marketing tool. This study proposed that a trusting relationship with customers could be developed by investing in hotel website development. A research model that incorporates hotel website quality, eTrust, and online booking intentions was put forward. The software AMOS 20.0 was adopted to analyze the proposed inter-variable relationships. Statistical results demonstrated that hotel website quality is a strong predictor of eTrust which then also mediates the relationship between website quality and consumers’ online booking intentions. Implications were offered for practitioners based on the results.     

Mechanisms of consumers' trust development in reviewers' supplementary reviews: A reviewer-reader similarity perspective

The literature on online reviews tends to focus on initial consumer postings and reviews, but supplementary online reviews posted by the same reviewer remain an unexplored area in marketing in general and hospitality in particular. To address this gap in the research, this study offers a research model that examines the effects of reviewers' attributes on consumer trust and positive behavioral outcomes, using hotel attributes performance as a moderator. Using responses from 414 hospitality consumers in China, our findings reveal that reviewers whose supplementary reviews use similar identities to those of their initial review, review similar firms, and use similar websites gain consumers' trust. Hotel attributes performance has a strong positive moderating effect on the relationship between reviewers' attributes and consumers' trust, and the trust engendered in this way creates the psychological comfort that leads to positive behavioral outcomes. Implications for theory and practice are discussed along with suggestions for future research.     

Antecedents of customer WOM in glamping: The critical role of original ecology

Glamping has grown increasingly popular as a new type of outdoor hotel that combines nature with luxury. Glamping operations managers must fully understand how certain attributes of their business affect their customers’ word-of-mouth (WOM) in order to sustain growth and attract new customers. There has been little previous research on the influence of nature-related attributes on customers’ emotions and WOM. To address this gap, we conducted interviews in two glampsites based on the Stimulus-Organism-Response (SOR) framework. We also analyzed online reviews for 20 glampsites. We conducted qualitative analysis on the data using grounded theory techniques. We found that original ecology (including authenticity, scenery, and natural lifestyle) and accommodation environment (including room and public space) can affect customers’ emotional value (including tension release, enjoyment, and social bonding), which can in turn affect their WOM. The results presented here may provide useful implications for both researchers and glamping business managers.     

Guest satisfaction & dissatisfaction in luxury hotels: An application of big data

In order to understand the pivotal attributes of luxury hotel service in Malaysia, this study analyses big data in the form of online reviews, as available in TripAdvisor. The content analysis, which was performed using the word frequency analysis has revealed that the main themes of luxury hotel service quality include hotel-related attributes, room-related attributes, staff-related attributes, travel-related attributes, and possible outcomes. The critical incident technique has also been performed to examine the antecedents and outcomes of hotel guests’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction. In this study, quality of rooms and interaction with employees have been determined as major drivers of customers’ word of mouth and revisit intentions. This study contributes with an empirical analysis of particular features of textual context and discussion of the concept of luxury service in the developing countries has been largely neglected so far.