Restaurant experiences triggering positive electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) motivations

This study empirically examined which restaurant experiences trigger customers to engage in positive electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), where the quality of restaurant service (food quality, service quality, atmosphere, and price fairness) is the antecedent of eWOM communication. The results of this study suggest that (1) restaurants’ food quality positively influences customers to spread positive eWOM, motivated by their desire to help the restaurant; (2) satisfactory restaurant experiences with service employees triggered positive eWOM, motivated by the need to help the restaurant or to express positive feelings; (3) a superior atmosphere in restaurants elicited positive eWOM motivated by a concern for others; and (4) price fairness in restaurants did not drive restaurant customers toward eWOM. Additionally, this study investigated sources of positive eWOM and types of eWOM media used among opinion leaders in the restaurant industry to enhance the practical implications of the study regarding online marketing. Because of the small number of opinion leaders in the study sample, specifying who the opinion leaders were (the source of eWOM) and the type of eWOM media the opinion leaders used had no effect. Further discussion and implications are provided in the text.     

Hotel stock performance and monetary conditions

Following the investigation of the link between hotel stock returns and macroeconomic factors in the hospitality finance literature, this study further examines (1) the performance of Taiwanese hotel stocks under two various monetary policy environments, namely expansive and restrictive, and (2) the impact of different monetary stringency on the relationship between hotel stock returns and macro variables in Taiwan. Using changes in the discount rate allows us to effectively measure the monetary policy changes and classify the monetary environment as either restrictive or expansive. Empirical results show that hotel stocks exhibited a higher mean return and reward-to-risk ratio during expansive monetary periods. Moreover, the connection between hotel stock returns and macro variables behaved differently under various monetary conditions. In response to monetary policy developments, the implication for hotel stock investors to reallocate their investment portfolios is provided.     

Hotel performance: Rigor and relevant research topics

Academic research (rigor) in alignment with practitioners’ challenges (relevancy) has been advocated as a way of overcoming the ivory tower syndrome. Performance measurement is at the heart of strategic management processes, as it provides a mechanism of demonstrating outcomes. Given the importance of this topic for both theory and practice, this article explores the contribution of academic outputs in terms of academic research outputs (rigor) and current practitioners’ needs (relevancy).Using network analysis and cross-citation bibliometric approaches, a sample of 1155 articles is examined and fourteen clusters are identified. The emergent topics and subtopics from the academic literature are compared to ten insights proposed by Ernst Young to the hotel sector. The findings suggest a good fit between the two approaches together with some gaps. Based from empirical results, nine propositions are articulated.     

eWOM effects on hotel booking intentions,attitudes, trust,and website perceptions

The objective of the study is to examine the effect of comments generated on Facebook on the choice of a hotel. More specifically, it focuses on the study of the influence of comments written by Facebook friends on the intentions of booking a hotel, the trust in the hotel, the attitude toward the hotel, and the perception of its website. The research also examines the moderator role of Internet users’ trust in those comments on these relations. To test these effects, an experimental design was created by manipulating the valence of the comments (positive vs. negative). A survey among 800 university students has confirmed all the hypotheses of the study on the influence of comments generated on Facebook in the users’ decision-making process.     

Hotel engineering facilities: A case study of maintenance performance

Many hotels are using computerised maintenance management systems (CMMS) to organize building and facility maintenance works. The data recorded by a CMMS are useful information to assessment of maintenance performance but few have paid attention to this application. The findings of a pilot case study conducted based on a 618-room hotel in Hong Kong, as reported in this paper, include how the hotel's CMMS was utilized to facilitate maintenance work organization and the analyses of the CMMS records and associated documentary information for a 12-month period. The study revealed that the maintenance workload was dominated by electrical installations, and the guestrooms demanded for far more maintenance works than the other areas. Significant correlation was found between equipment downtime and amount of maintenance work orders. A range of performance curves and indicators which is useful for assessing maintenance performance of hotel engineering facilities is also presented.     

Managerial response strategies to eWOM: A framework and research agenda for webcare

Managers increasingly address client feedback online, a practice known as webcare. Based on a systematic literature review on webcare, we provide a framework that aims to identify potential generalizations, discuss possible explanations for inconsistencies that require further investigation, and identify the under-researched areas concerning the managerial responses to eWOM (electronic Word-of-Mouth). This framework covers several practical and theoretical questions. Our systematic review suggests that organizations should respond to eWOM, especially when it is negative, and should do so in a personalized, detailed, and timely manner. Accommodative webcare should go beyond a mere apology and should focus on solving the issue. We integrate these results from prior research with insights from justice theory, attribution theory, message personalization, and service recovery to develop an extensive conceptual framework describing the factors to consider when engaging in webcare and the potential outcomes. This framework guides our suggestions for future research that should disentangle the many contradictory effects (e.g., when to use defensive webcare) and cover under-researched topics (e.g., webcare strategies for positive WOM specifically or the underlying mechanisms explaining the effects of different webcare strategies), and the mechanisms through which webcare strategies lead to better business performance.     

Exploring asymmetric effects of attribute performance on customer satisfaction in the hotel industry

Understanding the asymmetric effects of attribute performance (AP) on customer satisfaction (CS) is important for the managers in the hotel industry. Although several studies concerning this issue have been conducted, the varies of asymmetric effects across different market segments have not been revealed. To this end, this study aims to explore the asymmetric effects of AP on CS with respect to different market segments, including different types of hotels, different types of travelers and travelers from different regions. Four theories, i.e., expectation-disconfirmation paradigm, three-factor theory of CS, customer delight theory and prospect theory, are adopted to explain the formation of CS from the perspective of different market segments. The penalty–reward contrast analysis (PRCA) and asymmetric impact-performance analysis (AIPA) are used to analyze 1,547,869 user-generated ratings collected form TripAdvisor posted by the travelers from 140 countries concerning 9,596 hotels from 75 capital cities around the world. The results suggest that the asymmetric effects of AP on CS may vary across different market segments, including different types of hotels, different types of travelers and travelers from different regions. In addition, the priorities of hotel attributes for each type of hotel with respect to different types of travelers and travelers from different regions are also analyzed by AIPA. The obtained results will be valuable for researchers to conduct further studies and hotel managers to formulate improvement strategies.     

The complexities of religious tourism motivations: Sacred places,vows and visions

The aim of this paper is to understand the complexity of travel motivations to sacred places. Using ethnographic techniques within the Greek Orthodox context, we argue that while motivations are institutionally constructed, they are fragile, dynamic and progressive; being embedded within everyday performances of religion. This calls into question the fixed centeredness and predetermined sacredness of religious sites. Travel motivations become directly influenced by believers’ intimate and emergent performances not only of places but also of religion itself; the meaning of places being based on lived experiences of doing religion and interacting with the sacred, as exemplified in vows and visions. Such understandings are crucial in predicting the effects of failing pilgrimages and the processes of authentication of places, which can help explain visitation patterns.     

Spiritual attitudes and visitor motivations at the Beltane Fire Festival,Edinburgh

Outside the peak season for tourism to Edinburgh, Scotland, during the evening of April 30th, visitors attend a festival with ancient Celtic overtones. Frequently, the evening is cold and windy. Our objectives are to: identify motivations for attending the festival; trial questionnaire items on spiritual attitude; and assess whether spirituality might be relevant in assessing visitor intentions. The method of investigation involved exploration and confirmation phases to test structures in distinct subsamples. Further, a strict approach was applied to identify factors that had theoretical value. Spirituality attitude is found to be a factor, as well as the motivations of cultural adventure and escape. Given the nature of the event, the time of year and composition of the audience, encouraging repeat visitation and using this to develop and manage Edinburgh's tourism strategy has potential. Recommendations are made to management.     

Web reviews influence on expectations and purchasing intentions of hotel potential customers

The objective of the paper is to study the impact that hotel guests reviews posted on consumer-generated websites have on the consumer decision-making process and service expectations.An experimental study has been conducted to test the hypotheses and the research question. 349 young adults were involved in an online survey that asked to imagine searching for a hotel and reading other customers’ reviews of a hypothetical chosen hotel. Three scenarios were created by studying a few comments posted by customers on the main websites used by tourists.Results show a positive correlation between both hotel purchasing intention and expectations of the customers and valence of the review. On the contrary, the presence of hotel managers’ responses to guests’ reviews has a negative impact on purchasing intentions.The study enriches the stream of research on word-of-mouth in the hospitality industry and analyses a new operational problem for lodging managers. Hotels should reply to online customer reviews or not?     

The Impact of Restaurant Service Experience Valence and Purchase Involvement on Consumer Motivation and Intention to Engage in eWOM

This study examines how different service experiences lead to different motives and intention to spread eWOM (electronic word-of-mouth), focusing on the antecedent roles of restaurant service experience valence and purchase involvement. The findings reveal that consumers are motivated to spread eWOM for self-, other-, and company-focused reasons, and that experience valence and purchase involvement significantly impact such motives. Our findings suggest that highly involved customers have more intentions to provide eWOM following negative experiences and that customers receiving negative experience hope to influence companies through eWOM. This article adds to the body of scholarly research related to eWOM by identifying purchase involvement and service experience as significant antecedents of motivation to provide online reviews.     

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.     

Hotel chain affiliation as an environmental performance strategy for luxury hotels

Stakeholders are increasingly aware of the potential of environmental performance to benefit their health; however, there is a paucity of sustainability studies addressing the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) performance and the brand equity of hotel chains. Unlike traditional economics that treat undesired outputs such as carbon emissions as costless, this research presents an accurate, concise and clear empirical examination of hotel chain affiliation strategy through the Malmquist-Luenberger index to measure the brand competitiveness of the strategy while considering carbon emissions reduction using objective official panel data from Taiwan. The findings reveal that a group of hotel chains has a significantly higher average energy efficiency and branding value than those of a group of independent operators when holistic carbon emissions reduction is considered. Thus, this study encourages stakeholders to promote green hotel policies to independent hotel operators to achieve a higher brand value with lower carbon emissions and to adopt greater use of business intelligence to assist the decision-making of hotel operators in conformity with the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs).     

Strategy,training and performance fit

The importance of human resource qualification for the tourism industry in general and for hotel firms in particular has been a recurrent theme for several years now. The present paper deals with training policy in hotels and has as its aim to know the extent to which their strategic orientation influences: (1) the investment that firms make in training; (2) the preparation of formal plans; and (3) the type of training developed. It is also our intention to check whether this strategy-training link has an impact on hotel performance. With that aim in mind, an attempt will be made to see whether the effect of training on business results is direct or materializes through a number of intermediate variables such as client satisfaction or changes in the behavior of employees (indirect effect). A comprehensive analysis of the literature was conducted to identify the main research and establishing the hypotheses to be tested. Our paper used a sample of Spanish companies with the partial least squares (PLS) method being applied for the analysis. The results show that the development of a training policy oriented to human capital development in the case of hotels following a differentiation strategy leads to improved business results both directly and indirectly, while simultaneously influencing investment as well as formality in training activities.     

Towards a Model of Electronic Word-of-Mouth and Its Impact on the Hotel Industry

ABSTRACT

Scholars and practitioners recognize that spreading word-of-mouth can play an important role in the formation of a hotel’s image. However, the relationships among various measures of online customer engagement are relatively unknown. The present study analyzes the relationships and quantifies the impacts of various measures of online engagement including the number of online reviews, overall rating, and relative ranking. The researchers used path analysis on a sample of 178 hotels to study the relationships among relevant variables and build a model to explain the impact of such measures (Figure 2). The results reveal there is a positive direct effect of the number of reviews on a hotel’s TripAdvisor rating. A negative direct effect was found between TripAdvisor rating and a hotel’s comparative ranking. Finally, the researchers discovered that TripAdvisor rating fully mediates the relationship between the number of reviews and a hotel’s comparative ranking. This article concludes with a discussion of both the theoretical and practical implications of such findings.     

Guest satisfaction in independent and affiliated to chain hotels

In the hotel sector, two basic organisational forms can be distinguished, independent and chain-affiliated, which reflects in the entities' management processes and in the dimensions of the hotel service. Guest satisfaction is the determinant of and the secret to success in the hotel industry, nevertheless the comparison of customer satisfaction of both operational models is scarce. The main goal of this work is to determine whether those differences exist, considering the geographical scope and size of the chain in linked hotels. Customer satisfaction was analysed in 404 four and five-star hotels, measured through the hotel ratings from online travel agent Booking.com, in two tourism destinations in Spain using the Rasch Measurement Theory. Results obtained indicate that the superiority in customer satisfaction of one of these management forms shows for specific dimensions of the service provided.     

The effects of cognitive,affective, and sensory attributes on hotel choice

Over the past decade, experiential marketing has been the focus of many hospitality and tourism studies. Yet the existing literature does not provide experimental evidence of the incremental effects of affective and sensory attributes on the choice of hospitality service and destinations. This study attempts to provide some such evidence by using discrete choice modeling to examine the differential effects of cognitive, affective, sensory attributes on hotel choice. Bayesian D-optimal design based on JMP 8.0 was used to create a discrete choice experiment. Consumer hotel choice was predicted using random parameter logit (RPL) models. These results demonstrate that when customers choose a hotel, they consider not only cognitive attributes (e.g., price, service and food quality, and national brand), but also affective (e.g., comfortable feeling and entertaining) and sensory (e.g., room quality, overall atmosphere) attributes. The results also demonstrate the incremental value of adding affective and sensory attributes to a choice model when compared to a model using only traditional cognitive attributes. The data suggest that hotel managers can effectively differentiate their properties by incorporating affective and sensory attributes in their promotions. Moreover, the findings provide hotel managers with important insights into new product development and marketing communications strategy.     

Modelling the relationship between attribute satisfaction,overall satisfaction,and behavioural intentions in Australian ski resorts

This study models the relationship between attribute satisfaction, overall satisfaction, and behavioural intentions within the context of ski resorts. Utilising a sample of 426 respondents, K-means cluster analysis is used to develop five motivational ski tourist segments, and the influence of attribute satisfaction on overall satisfaction is determined for each tourist segment. A structural equation model (SEM) is used to confirm the relationship between attribute satisfaction, overall satisfaction and behavioural intentions. The study found that different tourist segments were motivated by different attributes and it is not necessary for all attributes to be satisfied in order to achieve overall satisfaction and positive behavioural intentions. The results provide destination managers with insights to influence overall satisfaction, manage tourists’ behavioural intentions, and improve destination competitiveness.     

Corporate social responsibility and tourism: Hotel companies in Phuket,Thailand, after the Indian Ocean tsunami

This paper deals with the subject of corporate social responsibility (CSR) with particular reference to the hotel sector and the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami which was to prove a test of management approaches. It discusses the rising interest in CSR issues, linked to the sustainable development movement, and its particular relevance for the tourism industry. Reactions to the disaster of hotel companies with a presence in the resort of Phuket in Thailand are reviewed and responses reveal a certain level of commitment to CSR in theory and practice. However, there is also evidence of tensions between commercial and more philanthropic activity which must be addressed and reconciled by managers.     

Predicting Hotel Choice Decisions and Segmenting Hotel Consumers: A Comparative Assessment of a Recent Consumer Based Approach

Abstract

Given the intensified competition to attract today's increasingly discerning hotel guests, it is vital for hotel managers to understand the set or bundle of hotel attributes which are demanded by the potential traveler. Unfortunately, marketing research in hotels is still mainly confined to the analysis of guest-related data collected during registration or from guest comment cards. These data, however, have little merit as predictors of customer behaviour and cannot answer the “what if” questions. In recent and past research in hospitality and tourism, researchers have demonstrated the use of product attributes in predicting consumer preferences and segmenting markets (Bell and Morey 1997; Kim 1996). In undertaking this approach to behavioral study, many researchers in the field have been attracted to use conjoint attribute part-worths, (the judgmentally quantified attribute valuesderived from conjoint modeling. This study attempts to utilize the compositional self-explication model as a reference model to assess the comparative superiority of the conjoint model in predicting client preferences among travelers to Hong Kong. It also seeks to reveal subgroup preference variations by using two segmentation approaches. The overall finding indicated that the most important hotel attribute sought by all respondents is Room Rate, followed by Star Rating, Location, Brand and Room Type. In terms of market segments, the results revealed similar preference profiles among leisure, short-haul and infrequent travelers as one group and business, long-haul and frequent travelers as another.