Customer Reviews as Drivers of Hotel Online Booking

Online bookings of hotels have increased drastically in recent years. Online hotel booking, the second most important product in online tourism revenue is the focus of this research. Hotels make use of the Internet to not only offer services to customers but to simultaneously provide a platform for customers to give feedback on their stay in a specific hotel. As a result, in addition to the well known star ratings hotels get their individual quality ratings from former guests. Online reviews and online user generated content is considered a tool for word-of-mouth on the Internet.

Studies in tourism and hospitality have investigated the relevance of hotel attributes influencing choice but not yet explored them in an online booking setting. This project presents findings about consumers’ stated preferences for decision criteria from an adaptive conjoint study among 346 respondents. A review of several online booking platforms (www.expedia.de, www.booking.com, www.travelocity.com, www.venere.com, www.hotels.com, www.tiscover.com) reveals that the most commonly featured attributes are star rating, price, location/map, photographs of the rooms and the hotel, evaluations of previous visitors, information about the rooms, information about the hotel amenities and facilities, information on the surrounding area. These criteria are investigated regarding their impact on the booking decision.
The results show that recommendations of friends and online reviews are the most important factors that influence online hotel booking.

The following table reveals details on the average importance values of these criteria.

Key findings investigating part worth utilities

• It is imperative that hotels optimally present themselves online and precisely provide the information required by their customers. A simple improvement such as including pictures significantly raises the average part-worth utility from 1.41 (no picture) to 1.34 (pleasant photo of a hotel room).
• A change from a hotel description with no customer reviews to one with very good reviews produces an average increase in the part-worth utilities from -.32 to 2.02.
• Under an online setting, the traditional star rating apparently does no longer fulfill its purpose. When tourists are offered pictorial cues in conjunction with credentials (online and personal) they tend to disregard the star ratings.

Further details, such as segment specific analyses are available in: Dickinger, A. & Mazanec, J. (2008): Consumers’ Preferred Criteria for Hotel Online Booking. In: Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism, O’Connor, Höpken, Gretzel (Eds.), 244-254.

Contact

Dr. Astrid Dickinger, MODUL University Vienna, Department of New Media Technology & Department of Tourism and Hospitality Management, Am Kahlenberg 1, 1190 Vienna, Austria
Astrid.Dickinger@modul.ac.at | www.modul.ac.at