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.     

Thanks for the memories: Exploring city tourism experiences via social media reviews

This study uses online reviews to explore memorable tourism experiences of tourists visiting different city attractions. Seeking to identify a collection of themes and concepts reflecting tourists' memorable experiences during their attraction visits, this study reveals the most shared tourism memories in cognitive-emotive-behavioral themes. By developing a matrix that categorizes tourist city attractions based on an ideographic approach, the study also argues that there are different types of tourist memorable experiences at different types of attractions (i.e., human-marker, nature-sight and human-sight tourist attractions). The findings extend previous understanding of the research in tourism experience and attractions by analyzing 156,986 TripAdvisor tourist reviews of the top ten most popular tourist attractions in London. This study also provides recommendations for destination management organizations and various city tourism stakeholders to plan, market and manage city tourism products and services.     

Tourists’ online reviews of convention centers

Investigating both the valence of online reviews and convention centers’ performance is an effective approach towards understanding convention center visitors’ needs, wants, and expectations. Understanding convention center experiences from the customer perspective can improve venue services and event products for both convention centers and event organizers in a business-to-business context. This study examined TripAdvisor online reviews using a combined automated and non-automated content analysis to explore the dynamic experiences of convention centers. The dual analysis of qualitative and quantitative characteristics resulted in the identification of key concepts, satisfaction/dissatisfaction factors, center-and event-related complaint issues, and tips/suggestions.     

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.     

Helpful Reviewers in TripAdvisor,an Online Travel Community

Online communities need a critical mass for communication, information, and entertainment and should provide useful information for their members in order to obtain this critical mass. The abundance of online travel reviews increases cognitive costs of travelers, and travelers use extrinsic cues to judge the quality of online reviews to eliminate costs associated with the information process. Of various cues used in online environments, this study examined an online reputation system in TripAdvisor.com and profiled the reviewers who post helpful reviews in the online travel community. The key findings include that helpful reviewers are those who travel more, actively post reviews, belong to any age and gender groups, and give lower hotel ratings. This study adds to research of online travel reviewers by characterizing helpful information creators among online content creators.     

Expanding theory of tourists’ destination loyalty: The role of sensory impressions

What shapes tourist's attitudes towards destinations most, abstract destination image or concrete sensory impressions? This exploratory research investigates the unique role played by sensory impressions in understanding destination loyalty through a multi-level validation process utilizing three progressive studies. Study 1, based on online reviews found that positive sensory impressions have a positive effect on loyalty while negative sensory impressions have a negative effect. A field study then revealed that sensory impressions can be distinguished from destination image and provides incremental explanatory power on loyalty. Through a survey of actual tourists, Study 3 verified the robustness of the conclusions of the first two studies and provides evidence that sensory impressions are related to other outcome concepts (perceived quality, value and satisfaction). This research illustrates the mechanisms behind the influence of this emerging construct on destination loyalty, and more importantly, verifies its importance and necessity through a more rigorous multi-level validation.     

Identifying salient attributes of peer-to-peer accommodation experience

This study explores key content and themes from online reviews to explain major service attributes of peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodation sought by guests. The results from lexical analyses indicate that attributes frequently mentioned in guest reviews are associated with location (proximity to point of interest and characteristics of neighborhood), host (service and hospitality), and property (facilities and atmosphere). Reviews focusing on location and feeling welcome are consistently linked with higher rating scores, including accuracy, cleanliness, check-in, communication, value, and overall ratings. This confirms that P2P accommodation appeals to consumers who are driven by experiential and social motivations. Marketing implications are provided.     

A Text Mining and Multidimensional Sentiment Analysis of Online Restaurant Reviews

This study aims to identify the structure of online restaurant reviews and examine the influence of review attributes and sentiments on restaurant star ratings. While past research indicated four attributes specific to restaurant reviews—food, service, ambience, and price—this study proposes context as the fifth attribute unique to online reviews. Sentiment analysis of online restaurant reviews has confirmed the proposed underlying structure of online restaurant reviews. Results showed that consumers’ sentiments in these five attributes significantly explained the differences in star ratings. Food, service, and context are the top three attributes affecting star ratings, followed by price and ambiance.     

Visual Data Mining: Analysis of Airline Service Quality Attributes

The objectives of the study are to identify the key airline quality attributes from online review posts and to examine the effect of identified airline quality attributes on eWOM communication. This study employed data-mining techniques and logistic regression on 901 passenger reviews to evaluate the service quality of passenger airlines. The major contribution was identifying the most salient topics of travelers complimenting and complaining reviews. Passengers’ comments support that service, staff, cabin seat comfort, and entertainment are among the most discussed themes in positive and negative reviews. Additionally, value, seat comfort, staff/service, and catering were found to be significant predictors of airline eWOM.     

Stars,Votes, and Badges: How Online Badges Affect Hotel Reviewers

As online reviews, ratings, and helpful votes in e-commerce platforms become industry-centric, this study examines how virtual badges affect the online behavior of reviewers and readers based on status-seeking theory in an online environment. This study finds that online readers prefer reviews with low ratings to those with high ratings; however, reviewers with high-level badges tend to post moderate ratings and avoid extreme ratings. Casting doubt on the efficiency of current online incentive systems, user-generated content websites may establish a qualitative index to measure the quality of customer reviews from a long-term perspective to encourage reviewers to continue creating high-quality contents.     

Online reviews: Differences by submission device

This study examines the role played by submission devices (mobile vs. desktop) in online travel reviewing behaviour. We analyse over 1.2 million online reviews from Booking.com and detect the presence and distinctive features of online reviews submitted by mobile devices. Our findings indicate that 1) the share of online reviews submitted by mobile increased at a very high rate over time (higher than the growth rate of those submitted by desktop); 2) there is a systematic and statistically significant difference between the features and distributions of online reviews submitted through mobile devices vs. online reviews submitted through desktops. We raise awareness of the role played by submission devices in online travel behaviour research and present implications for future research.     

网络点评对民宿顾客住宿意愿的影响——信任的中介作用探讨

网络点评是影响民宿顾客住宿意愿的重要因素。本研究以信任理论为基础,从顾客需求视角探讨民宿顾客对网络平台的信任和对民宿主人的信任在网络点评和民宿顾客住宿意愿之间的作用。研究发现:(1)网络点评对民宿顾客住宿意愿的直接影响效应显著;(2)顾客信任的二维度(对网络平台的信任和对民宿主人的信任)在网络点评和民宿顾客住宿意愿之间起串联中介作用,但是顾客信任的两个维度不能单独在网络点评和民宿顾客住宿意愿之间起中介作用。本研究揭示了网络点评对民宿顾客住宿意愿的作用路径,为民宿营销提供了新视角。     

Differences in online reviews caused by distribution channels

Since the use of social networks has become part of daily life for most people, many online travel agencies (OTAs) are allowing customers to log in using account credentials for social network services like Facebook (social network interface systems, SNIS) without having to create a local account on OTA sites themselves. This research explores the roles of SNIS in review generation on OTAs. For this purpose, we collected more than 174,000 online reviews for London hotels, posted from 2015 to 2016 on TripAdvisor.com. Through a series of analyses, we find that (1) concerning review generation, the portion of online reviews posted via SNIS shows no significant increase during the period; (2) reviews posted via SNIS tend to have lower ratings and be shorter than reviews posted via local accounts; (3) the channel itself, whether SNIS or a local account, does not have a direct impact on perceived review helpfulness.     

Consumer motivation in providing high-quality information: building toward a novel design for travel guide websites

Given the ever-growing information overload among users of online review websites, understanding the manner in which cognitive costs are reduced has become increasingly important. Despite the emergence of literature that focused on studying consumer motivation to publish high-quality reviews, the effect of direct intervention on this motivation remains relatively unclear. This study targets a unique design based on data from Qunar.com, one of the most popular Chinese travel websites. By developing a conceptual framework and applying survival analysis methods, our results suggest that both the immediate and cumulative effects of expert reviews positively motivate users to post additional eligible reviews; however, their motivation to further improve the quality of their evaluations diminish as they accumulate more expert reviews. Based on the study results, important implications for travel-related websites are presented.     

When online reviews meet virtual reality: Effects on consumer hotel booking

This study examines the direct and interaction effects of online reviews (quality and quantity) and virtual reality on consumer hotel booking. Data were collected from two 2 × 2 experimental studies. The results show a direct effect of both online review and virtual reality's application on behavioral intention, and the influence of online reviews on behavioral intention was weakened when virtual reality was applied. Moreover, online reviews and virtual reality had a significant combined effect on behavioral intention, with greater strength than that of online reviews alone. The findings provide insights for travel and tourism managers to enhance marketing communication effects by proper use of virtual reality to complement online reviews.     

The impact of e-word-of-mouth on the online popularity of restaurants: A comparison of consumer reviews and editor reviews

With the growing availability and popularity of web-based opinion platforms, online product reviews are now an emerging market phenomenon that is playing an increasingly important role in consumer purchase decisions. Generally speaking, there are two types of online reviews: consumer-generated reviews that are based on personal experiences, and reviews that are written by professional editors. However, little prior research efforts have been devoted to evaluate whether these two types of reviews have different influences on the behavior of online users. This study shows that consumer-generated ratings about the quality of food, environment and service of restaurants, and the volume of online consumer reviews are positively associated with the online popularity of restaurants; whereas editor reviews have a negative relationship with consumers’ intention to visit a restaurant's webpage. The findings will help hospitality researchers and practitioners better understand the impact of electronic word-of-mouth on purchase decisions.     

Hospitality and Tourism Online Reviews: Recent Trends and Future Directions

In view of the increasing popularity of online reviews and their significant impact on individual buying behavior as well as on the supply side, this study reviewed and analyzed articles related to online reviews in tourism and hospitality published in academic journals between 2004 and 2013. Based on a keyword-driven search and a content analysis, 50 articles were identified as relevant and classified into five topics. The findings revealed that (a) more than half of the analyzed articles focus on hotels and apply empirical methods based on secondary data, (b) more attention has been paid to the relationship between online reviews and online buying as well as satisfaction and online management, and (c) opinion mining of online reviews, motivation to post reviews, and the role of reviews are evenly distributed. This paper also discussed significant topical and methodological trends, contributes to an overall understanding of existing research and its limitation.     

A comparative analysis of major online review platforms: Implications for social media analytics in hospitality and tourism

Online consumer reviews have been studied for various research problems in hospitality and tourism. However, existing studies using review data tend to rely on a single data source and data quality is largely anecdotal. This greatly limits the generalizability and contribution of social media analytics research. Through text analytics this study comparatively examines three major online review platforms, namely TripAdvisor, Expedia, and Yelp, in terms of information quality related to online reviews about the entire hotel population in Manhattan, New York City. The findings show that there are huge discrepancies in the representation of the hotel industry on these platforms. Particularly, online reviews vary considerably in terms of their linguistic characteristics, semantic features, sentiment, rating, usefulness as well as the relationships between these features. This study offers a basis for understanding the methodological challenges and identifies several research directions for social media analytics in hospitality and tourism.     

Soft power analysis in alienated borderline tourism

This study uses a combined content-semiotic analysis technique to identify visual representations of an alienated frontier between India and Pakistan. Additionally, narratives of tourism marketers, articles from leading newspapers, and online visitor reviews are analyzed to gain an insight into the manner the ‘closing of border gates’ ceremony is orchestrated and experienced. It is found that most tourism marketers offer distorted images of the border to some extent as most travel reviews flag aggressive orchestrations of war heritage at the border. A soft power analysis of content suggests that the tourism organizations can help foster peace relations between the two countries by actively working with the government agencies to tone down war/conflict memories and aggressive display of hard power.     

What moderates the influence of extremely negative ratings? The role of review and reviewer characteristics

Online customer reviews are increasingly used by travelers to inform their purchase decisions. However, the vast amount of reviews available nowadays may increase travellers’ effort in information processing. In order to facilitate traveller’s decisions, social commerce organizations must help travellers rapidly identify the most helpful reviews to reduce their cognitive effort. Academic literature has often documented that negative reviews are judged as helpful by consumers. However, extremely negative reviews are not always perceived as such. This study is the first that unveils what factors moderate the influence of extremely negative reviews on review helpfulness. The study has adopted a sample of 7455 online customer reviews of hotels to test hypotheses. Findings show that reviews with extremely negative ratings are more likely to be helpful when the review is long and easy to read and when the reviewer is an expert or discloses his identity (i.e. geographical origin).