1,489 research outputs found
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How do online reviewers’ cultural traits and perceived experience influence hotel online ratings?
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to examine the role and influence of online reviewers’ cultural traits and perceived experience on online review ratings of Russian hotels by taking a direct measurement approach.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors adopt an explanatory sequential research design consisting of two stages. In the first stage, based on a sample of almost 75,000 Booking.com online reviews covering hotels located in Moscow (Russia), this study examines quantitatively to what extent the cultural traits of online reviewers and hotel guests’ perceived experience in online reviewing affect online ratings also using censored regressions. In the second stage, it interprets the results in light of semi-structured interviews conducted with a convenience sample of managers.
Findings
Each of the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions (namely, individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and power distance) exerts a significantly negative influence on the hotel online ratings. More specifically, the higher the levels of individualism, masculinity, uncertainty avoidance and power distance, the lower the hotel’s online ratings. Reviewers’ perceived experience in online reviewing is negatively related to online ratings.
Research limitations/implications
The study’s findings bear relevant practical implications for hotel managers and online platform managers in countries that are not typically covered by online consumer behavior studies in hospitality such as Russia. From a theoretical viewpoint, this study contributes to cultural studies in hospitality management and marketing with a further development of the nascent research stream taking a direct measurement approach to the study of cultural influences on consumers’ behaviors. Furthermore, this study offers a better and in-depth understanding of the role of cultural traits on electronic word of mouth, as well as international market segmentation theory in online settings.
Originality/value
The conjoint exploration of the effects of cultural differences and perceived experience in online reviewing adds to the nascent research stream taking a direct measurement approach to the study of the Hofstede’s cultural dimensions on online consumers’ behaviors. The authors make multiple theoretical and methodological contributions, highlighting that online hospitality customers cannot be considered as one homogeneous mass. Instead, the application of Hofstede’s cultural dimensions allows identifying distinctively different online behaviors across international online customers: different online customer groups can be clustered into segments, as they display different online behaviors and give different online evaluations
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Effects of the booking.com rating system: bringing hotel class into the picture
The purpose of this study is to continue the discussion initiated by Mellinas et al. (2015, 2016) on the effects of the Booking.com rating system and more widely on the use of the OTA as a data source in academic tourism and hospitality research. We enrich and complement the original work by Mellinas et al. (2015) by empirically investigating the effects of the Booking.com rating system on the distribution of hotel ratings for the overall population of hotels located in London over two years. Based on more than 1.2 million online reviews, we show that the overall distribution of hotel scores is significantly left-skewed. Moreover, we find that the degree of skewness is positively associated with hotel class: lower-class hotels exhibit distributions of ratings that are statistically less skewed than higher-class hotels
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The “Pink Night” festival revisited: meta-events and the role of destination partnerships in staging event tourism
This paper adopts a managerial perspective to revisit an original case study of the “Pink Night” festival presented by Giovanardi et al. (2014) in an earlier issue of this journal. Our in-depth qualitative study contributes to the event tourism planning and management literature in three ways. First, we shed light on how and why competing Destination Management Organisations (DMOs) cooperate to plan, develop and manage event tourism. Second, we introduce and describe the brand new concept of the meta-event, which is the main theoretical contribution of this work. Third, we elucidate the role of meta-events as brand architecture tools to rebrand and reposition wide tourism areas. We illustrate the theoretical and managerial implications of the meta-event concept for event tourism studies and destination managers
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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
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The role of language in the online evaluation of hospitality service encounters: an empirical study
In an increasingly global travel market, hospitality services encounters involve growing interactions between providers and customers often belonging to different nationalities and cultures and speaking different languages. Extant hospitality management literature has explored the influence of language on service evaluations mostly in offline settings. This study innovatively captures the effect of the language used in online hotel reviews on online consumer ratings in two distinctively different destinations located in culturally different countries: Italy and Russia. Based on almost half a million Booking.com online reviews written by hotel guests in Moscow and Rome, we illuminate if and to what extent domestic vs. foreign language use affects online customer satisfaction. We find that the use of domestic language exerts a positive impact on online ratings in both countries. Implications for hospitality practitioners and managers, developers and managers of online review platforms, and customers of hotel services are discussed
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The determinants of Facebook social engagement for National Tourism Organisations’ Facebook pages: a quantitative approach
This work explores how the National Tourism Organizations (NTOs) of the top 10 most visited countries by international tourists strategically employ Facebook to promote and market their destinations. Based on big data retrieved from the NTOs’ Facebook pages, and leveraging advanced metrics for capturing user engagement, the study sheds light on the factors contributing to superior level of social activity. The findings indicate that the way Facebook is tactically employed varies significantly across sampled NTOs. The panel data regression analyses suggest that engagement is positively affected by posting visual content (namely photos), and posting during the weekends, and negatively affected by evening posting. Post frequency displays no statistically significant effect on social engagement. The study also shows that most of the NTOs (except for Italy, Spain, Turkey and the UK) deploy Facebook with a top-down approach, and spontaneous user generated content (UGC) is allowed to a very little extent
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Using Facebook for travel decision-making: an international study of antecedents
Purpose: This study investigates antecedents of using non-travel-specific social media (specifically Facebook) for travel decision-making before a leisure trip.
Design/methodology/approach: Based on an online survey of 426 young travel consumers from Italy and Sweden, this work applies structural equation modeling and multi-group analysis.
Findings: The study finds support for most of the conventional TAM-related constructs: perceived usefulness, perceived enjoyment, and intention, while ease of use is not found relevant in this context.
Research limitations/implications: Results shed light on the antecedents of using non-travel-specific social media in two countries. Future research might focus on validating the factors identified and add others that might shape usage in the selected countries. Future studies could further investigate possible differences arising from culture, country of origin and age. The analysis can also be extended to other countries.
Practical implications: The analysis might help managers in the hospitality and tourism sector by providing an understanding of the cognitive factors which determine travelers’ decision to use Facebook for trip planning. Thus, managers should get to know these factors in their effort to influence social media in hospitality and tourism settings.
Originality/value: The findings offer interesting perspectives on the applicability of conventional models to the context of non-travel-specific social media platforms. The exploration of cross-cultural differences also adds to the extant body of knowledge
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Does cultural distance affect online review ratings? Measuring international customers’ satisfaction with services leveraging digital platforms and big data
The advent and development of digital platforms has helped enhance the international visibility of brands, products and services, and has also introduced a proliferation of online reviews. This study develops a big data analysis of customer online reviews of hospitality services to gauge the extent to which the cultural distance among service providers and their customers influences online review ratings. By examining almost 715,000 online reviews written by hotel customers from more than 100 different nationalities, the effect of national cultural differences among service customers and providers (namely cultural distance) on online review ratings is innovatively scrutinized. The paper, by considering reviewers’ behavioral features, demographics, and trip-related factors, reveals that the effect of national cultural distance on online review ratings is negative. Several implications for practitioners are also discussed
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Artificial intelligence in service industries: customers’ assessment of service production and resilient service operations
Artificial intelligence (AI) is increasingly embedded into service firms’ operations. However, production systems and operations management scholars have not yet examined if AI-empowered service operations are positively judged by service customers. To bridge this gap, this study draws on the three-factor theory of customer satisfaction applied to online review data, to capture the effect of AI-empowered service operations on overall customer satisfaction, operationalised by means of online review ratings. Based on text analytics techniques applied to a sample of more than 50,000 TripAdvisor ORs covering 35 international hotels in Asia and America, we develop a penalty–reward contrast analysis. The findings reveal that the effects of customer interaction with mechanical AI on customer satisfaction with service operations are asymmetric: positive customer interaction with mechanical AI positively and significantly influences overall customer satisfaction with AI-empowered service operations, whereas negative customer interaction with mechanical AI does not significantly alter customer satisfaction. Taken together, these findings suggest that mechanical AI constitutes a key element of resilient AI-empowered service operations
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Embedding eWOM into efficiency DEA modelling: an application to the hospitality sector
This paper develops and tests an innovative DEA model in the hospitality sector, by originally embedding online customer ratings among the outputs of the model. Based on a sample of 268 independent hotels located in Rome (Italy), we test a eWOM-informed DEA model and find that the introduction of online ratings among the outputs of the model significantly affects the assessment of hotels’ efficiency regardless of hotel category. The efficiency rankings generated by the DEA models embedding eWOM are radically different compared to those resulting from DEA models exclusively based on financial variables. The number of hotels improving their position in the efficiency rankings is lower than the number of hotels decreasing in the ranking. However, the average efficiency variation is positive and higher for 2- and 3- stars hotels than for 4- and 5- stars hotels. Implications for researchers in hospitality and tourism, managers and practitioners are discussed
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