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.

The impact of online user reviews on hotel room sales [Summary]

Impact of tourist-to-tourist interaction on tourism experience: The mediating role of cohesion and intimacy

Exploring the role of extrovert-introvert customers’ personality prototype as a driver of customer engagement: Does relationship duration matter?

While social media receive considerable scholarly attention, studies reveal mixed outcomes in relation to its influence on tourists’ destination choices. There is nonetheless a persistent perception that social media has a fundamental influence on destination choice. However, those studies that do find a social media influence are in contexts where tourists are predisposed to be influenced (the contexts were selected due to social media presence or influence). These studies also have limitations in terms of social media types, tourists and destinations. This research responds to the challenges and explores social media influence across diverse destination choice contexts. Through face-to-face interviews conducted with 39 Australian tourist decision-makers, the findings reveal that social media influence is only apparent when specific context-conditions are co-present. Instead, most destination choice contexts are likely to result in low levels of social media influence. The findings advance theory by identifying three contextual dimensions for social media influence: level of social media engagement; destination novelty or familiarity; and complexity of the planning decision. This research importantly demonstrates the need to illuminate context when conceptualising social media influence on tourists’ destination choices. Practically, destinations should utilise social media to demonstrate ease of visit planning.

Social media influence on tourists’ destination choice: importance of context

In this study, 732 Turkish tourists from 25 five-star hotels serving in Bodrum (Turkey) were surveyed via questionnaires to investigate the effects of brand personality (BP), self-congruity...

Effects of brand personality, self-congruity and functional congruity on hotel brand loyalty

The role of the personality in the travelers’ decision-making was investigated, in relation to the usage of the content generated in social media. Based on the EBM decision-making model and the Big...

Konstantina Tsiakali

Papers

User-generated-content versus marketing-generated-content: personality and content influence on traveler’s behavior