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.     

Exploring the impact of personalized management responses on tourists’ satisfaction: A topic matching perspective

As an online reputation management tool, hotel managers increasingly rely on management responses to online reviews to improve the electronic word of mouth (eWOM). Due to the substantial heterogeneity of textual reviews with different topics, it is particularly challenging to personalize the response for customer relationship management. Based on a panel data of 500 hotels in the state of Texas collected from TripAdvisor, this study examines the influence of personalized management responses on rating increase from a topic matching perspective. The empirical results show that (1) a high level of topic matching of management response leads to an increase of hotel online rating; (2) a high valence and a large variation of existing rating weaken the positive influence of such personalized management response; (3) the influence is stronger for economy hotels compared to luxury ones. Lastly, practical implications are provided.     

Not all words are beneficial: The impact of management response contents on customer engagement behavior

Online reviews play an important role in motivating hotels to enhance customer engagement through appropriate management responses. However, the impact of management responses on customer engagement remains unclear. With data from hotel reviews and management responses, this study demonstrates that customer engagement is significantly reduced when causal explanations and certain words are included in management responses, as indicated by the number of future reviews. We also observe that the negative influence of causal explanations can be alleviated when management responses contain uncertain words. Furthermore, management responses which include positive-emotional words attenuate the negative impact of causal explanations. However, no significant effect is found when negative-emotional words are used in management responses. These findings can help managers develop effective response strategies to facilitate customer engagement behavior.     

Multilevel Analysis of the Relationship Between Type of Travel,Online Ratings,and Management Response: Empirical Evidence from International Upscale Hotels

The diverse characteristics of customers and hotels have been identified as relevant to online customer satisfaction at the individual level. In this study, a comprehensive examination is conducted, through the use of a multilevel, nested model and secondary data set. The results show that both online review experience and management response frequencies can positively affect customer satisfaction. Additionally, hotel managers need to pay more attention to customers who have less online review experience when they carry out targeted response strategies. The findings have various implications for both academic researchers and hotel operators.     

Influencing stakeholders to reduce carbon footprints: Hotel managers’ perspective

Reducing the carbon footprint is an important strategy in addressing the greenhouse effect. Some businesses in the hotel industry have started to consider implementing programmes that involve their stakeholders so that they can reduce their carbon footprints together. However, little research into how hoteliers influence their key stakeholders has been conducted. The aim of this study is to identify who hotel managers consider to be their key stakeholders and what strategies they use to encourage the stakeholders to act co-operatively. These issues are examined by taking a qualitative research approach, in which data were collected from 22 hotel executives through in-depth interviews. The findings reveal the stakeholders identified by the executives are hotel owners, employees, customers, hotels/hotel owners’ associations, governments, consultants, investors, suppliers, environmental NGOs and the wider community. The different influencing strategies used with these stakeholders are discussed.     

The differences in hotel selection among various types of travellers: A comparative analysis with a useful bounded rationality behavioural decision support model

This study aims to investigate the hotel selection differences among different types of travellers through online hotel reviews. Specifically, the study performs a detailed examination of the differences in hotel key factors, criterion importance and selection results among five types of travellers, namely, business, couples, families, friends and solo. Using a sample of 194,885 online reviews on TripAdvisor.com, this study identifies the hotel key factors and criterion importance by employing the term frequency-inverse document frequency algorithm and Word2Vec algorithm. Additionally, a bounded rationality behavioural decision support model with picture fuzzy information is proposed to address hotel selection problems for different traveller types. Our results suggest that different types of travellers present differences in hotel key factors, criterion importance and selection results. However, families and friends have similar hotel selection results. This study can serve as a reference for hotel managers in understanding traveller preferences and for tourism website optimisation.     

The effectiveness of managing social media on hotel performance

This paper investigates how managing online reviews affects hotel performance. An international hotel chain provided the hotel performance data and the online review data. A leading social media firm for the hospitality industry collected the online review data, which the hotel company purchased. The results indicate that overall ratings are the most salient predictor of hotel performance, followed by response to negative comments. The better the overall ratings and the higher the response rate to negative comments, the higher the hotel performance. Therefore, online reviews in social media, specifically overall rating and response to negative comments, should be managed as a critical part of hotel marketing.     

How do hotel managers react to rating fluctuation?

Rating fluctuation is inevitable for hotels listed on hotel booking platforms, which induces potential consumers’ perception of uncertainty and risk. Managerial response is expected to be effective in enhancing the interaction between hotels and consumers. However, how hotel managers react to rating fluctuation remains unclear. In order to fill this gap in the literature, we collect customer reviews and managerial responses from a leading hotel booking platform and build a panel dataset (hotel*month). The empirical results suggest that (1) rating fluctuation induces more managerial responses and requires more response time; (2) upscale hotels are more likely to conduct frequent and timely responses when facing rating fluctuation; and (3) hotels tend to respond more frequent and timely once rating fluctuation is observed by a larger audience. This study concludes by presenting theoretical contributions to the literature and practical implications for operators of hotel booking platforms and hotel managers.     

Free add-on services and perceived value in competitive environments: Evidence from online hotel reviews

This study investigates how free add-on services affect customers’ perceived value in horizontal and vertical competition. We collected 349,879 reviews about over 3000 hotels in 25 U.S. cities from TripAdvisor. Using three balanced data sets generated by coarsened exact matching, the ordered logistic regressions show that free hotel add-on services (including free breakfast, parking, and WiFi) positively affect consumers’ perceived value. However, increased horizontal and vertical competition differentially weakens the positive effects of free add-on services. We not only observe a negative moderating effect of horizontal competition, but also identify three patterns of the marginal effects of these three add-ons in horizontal competition. The moderating effect of vertical competition exists from the higher-grade hotel segment to a lower-grade hotel, but such an effect is insignificant from the lower-grade hotel segment to a higher-grade hotel. Therefore, hotel managers should consider diverse external competitive environments and design appropriate differentiated service strategies.     

How psychological and contextual factors contribute to travelers’ propensity to choose green hotels?

Despite the growing popularity of green hotels, there remains a dearth of research examining travelers’ intentions to choose green hotels. The study addresses this research gap by developing and testing an integrated model of green hotel behavior in an emerging market of India. We use a sequential approach of SEM and fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis on 347 responses collected from Indian travelers to gain a more in-depth understanding of the role of biospheric value, green trust, willingness to pay premium, attitude, subjective norms, and perceived behavioral control in determining green hotel intentions. The findings show that presence of green trust is a significant and necessary condition for green hotel choice. Additionally, absence of willingness to pay premium, biospheric value, attitude, and subjective norm were found to deter travelers from choosing green hotels. These findings offer unique insights for managers in developing marketing strategies to enhance travelers’ green hotel adoption.     

Antecedents and consequences of relationship quality in hotel industry

This study investigated the antecedents and consequences of relationship quality. This study will help hotel managers to develop and implement effective relationship marketing strategies. Effective usage of relationship marketing strategies will be able to improve hotel performance such as share of purchases, relationship continuity, and word of mouth. To analyze data collected from 12 five-star hotels in Seoul, the linear structural relationship (LISREL) model was used to identify structural characteristics of relationship management between service providers and guests. The empirical results of this study were threefold. First, greater service providers’ relational and customer orientation resulted in higher relationship quality. Second, better service providers’ attributes resulted in higher relationship quality. Third, higher relationship quality resulted in higher share of purchases and better relationship continuity and share of purchases.     

Government and social trust vs. hotel response efficacy: A protection motivation perspective on hotel stay intention during the COVID-19 pandemic

Based on protection motivation theory (PMT), this study conceptualizes a research framework to explain and examine customer intentions regarding hotel stays during the COVID-19 pandemic. Data were collected from 700 U.S. consumers via a crowdsourcing website in July 2020. Structural equation modeling was used to analyze the collected data for testing proposed hypotheses. The analytical results showed that the level of threat perceived by customers significantly reduced their intention to stay at a hotel. On the contrary, individual customer response efficacy significantly enhanced their intention to stay at a hotel. Additionally, both government and social trust, as well as hotel response efficacy, were found to significantly increase hotel stay intention by mediating the effects of threat perception and individual response efficacy. To the best of our knowledge, this study is one of the first attempts to apply PMT to explain customer hotel stay intentions during the COVID-19 pandemic.     

Joint effects of management responses and online reviews on hotel financial performance: A data-analytics approach

Hotels are increasingly shifting their online review strategy from passive listening to proactive engagement through management responses. This study investigates the joint effects of management responses and online reviews on hotel financial performance. Based on a large unique dataset of 22,483 management responses to 76,649 online consumer reviews on TripAdvisor over 26 quarters, matched with quarterly hotel financial performance, this study finds that providing timely and lengthy responses enhances future financial performance, whereas providing responses by hotel executives and responses that simply repeat topics in the online review lowers future financial performance. Moreover, review rating and review volume moderate the effects of management responses. When the average review ratings increase, more management responses of greater length should be provided. As review volume grows, the benefits of providing timely and lengthy responses diminish. The study findings generate new implications for managing responses to online reviews to increase hotel financial performance.     

What can big data and text analytics tell us about hotel guest experience and satisfaction?

The tremendous growth of social media and consumer-generated content on the Internet has inspired the development of the so-called big data analytics to understand and solve real-life problems. However, while a handful of studies have employed new data sources to tackle important research problems in hospitality, there has not been a systematic application of big data analytic techniques in these studies. This study aims to explore and demonstrate the utility of big data analytics to better understand important hospitality issues, namely the relationship between hotel guest experience and satisfaction. Specifically, this study applies a text analytical approach to a large quantity of consumer reviews extracted from Expedia.com to deconstruct hotel guest experience and examine its association with satisfaction ratings. The findings reveal several dimensions of guest experience that carried varying weights and, more importantly, have novel, meaningful semantic compositions. The association between guest experience and satisfaction appears strong, suggesting that these two domains of consumer behavior are inherently connected. This study reveals that big data analytics can generate new insights into variables that have been extensively studied in existing hospitality literature. In addition, implications for theory and practice as well as directions for future research are discussed.     

The impact of online user reviews on hotel room sales

Despite hospitality and tourism researchers’ recent attempts on examining different aspects of online word-of-mouth [WOM], its impact on hotel sales remains largely unknown in the existing literature. To fill this void, we conduct a study to empirically investigate the impact of online consumer-generated reviews on hotel room sales. Utilizing data collected from the largest travel website in China, we develop a fixed effect log-linear regression model to assess the influence of online reviews on the number of hotel room bookings. Our results indicate a significant relationship between online consumer reviews and business performance of hotels.     

Accommodating the needs of disabled hotel guests: Implications for guests and management

The purpose of this study are two-fold: (1) to identify disabled guests’ perceptions of their hotel experiences, and (2) to identify the feasibility of implementing disabled guests’ suggestions in hotel design and service policies. Interviews were conducted with leaders of national organizations serving disabled persons and hotel executives. The responses from guests with mobility impairments offered the most suggestions and the greatest need for special accommodations. The mobility disability segment echo those from the hearing and visual impairments segments, with all respondents indicating a need for better staff sensitivity training. Easily implemented suggestions were made for hotel managers to consider when attracting and accommodating guests with disabilities. If adopted by the industry, the recommendations will help hotel operators improve the hotel experiences of guests with disabilities.     

“I have to watch my back”: Exploring Chinese hotel guests’ generalized distrust and coping behavior

The hospitality industry has been suffering from a pervasive climate of suspicion among guests who are concerned about potential hygiene or safety issues. From the perspective of protection motivation theory, this study presents a conceptual model elucidating the underlying mechanism through which generalized distrust shapes hotel guests' defensive coping behavior. Exploratory semi-structured interviews and online posts were combined to identify hotel guests' on-site coping strategies and underlying mechanisms. Then, an online questionnaire was distributed to 532 respondents, and structural equation modeling was used to test the proposed research model. Results provide empirical support for the “cognition–emotion–coping behavior” pattern in cognitive appraisal theory. This study offers valuable insight into the management of hotel guests’ generalized distrust.     

Emotional intelligence,emotional labor,perceived organizational support,and job satisfaction: A moderated mediation model

This study examined the effects of emotional intelligence and emotional labor on job satisfaction in a moderated mediation model, which posits surface and deep acting strategies as mediators between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction and perceived organizational support as a moderator to the mediation effects. Based on a sample of 279 Chinese hotel employees, results showed that: 1) while deep acting partially mediated the effect of emotional intelligence on job satisfaction, surface acting did not mediate; 2) Perceived organizational support effectively moderated the mediation of deep acting between emotional intelligence and job satisfaction; but the moderated mediation was not found with surface acting as a mediator. This study contributes to a better understanding of the roles of emotional intelligence and emotional labor strategies in affecting hotel employees’ job satisfaction and how organizational support can function as an organization resource in changing the psychological mechanisms underlying emotional labor and job satisfaction.     

How Does the Work Status Affect Employees’ Job Attitude and Behavior in the Hotel Industry?

The study focuses on how work status impacts employees’ perception of job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance in the hotel industry. Also, it explores whether supervisors perceive employees’ job attitudes and behavior in the same way as they perceive. Data were collected from a self-administered survey for five-star hotel employees and supervisors in Seoul, South Korea. A total of 335 valid responses were collected from 280 employees and 65 supervisors and analyzed by using structural equation modeling. The results of the study indicated that nonstandard employees expressed higher job satisfaction and higher organizational commitment but perceived lower job performance than standard employees did. Work status had no significant moderating effect on the relationships between job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance; however, the results of this study indicated that supervisors’ perceptions of nonstandard employees’ job satisfaction, organizational commitment, and job performance were quite different from those of the nonstandard employees themselves. This study suggests that hotel operators should develop strategies to fully utilize nonstandard employees who reveal potential for quality service to guests.