Attitudes towards Disintermediation in Hotel Reservations: Spanish Travellers’ Profile

Giacomo Chiappa,Carlota Lorenzo-Romero,Martina Gallarza

doi:10.54055/ejtr.v9i.170

Abstract

This paper investigates the attitudes of different groups of travellers for and against the disintermediation of travel agencies. In the travel and tourism sector, the way in which people plan, buy and consume tourism products has been deeply transformed by the Internet and user-generated content (UGC), thus challenging the role of traditional travel agencies. A web-based survey was carried out among Spanish consumers whose last hotel reservation was made through the Internet. A convenience sample of 986 complete questionnaires was obtained. Multivariate tests were used first to analyse the relationship and dependency between socio-demographic variables and second to look for significant differences between occasional, moderate and frequent buyers regarding their positive and negative perceptions of hotel reservations’ disintermediation process. The findings reveal that significant differences exist between online buyers based on their socio-demographic characteristics and their online purchase experience, whereas they do not differ based on their likelihood of being influenced by UGC in their final choices. Another interesting finding is that the Internet is most frequently used for hotel reservations in short-term leisure and short-haul travel. Implications for travel agency managers are discussed and suggestions for further research are made.

Highlights

In recent years, as is widely known, the use of the Internet has increased dramatically, RESEARCH PAPER accounting for 2.3 billion Internet users in the world with important penetration ratios in countries all over the world (Internet WorldAttitudes towards Disintermediation in Hotel Reservations: Spanish Travellers’ Profile.Stats, 2011)
It is argued that electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) is able to exert a great influence on tourist choices (Litvin et al, 2008) due to the fact that tourism products are intangible goods (Lewis and Chambers, 2000) and are characterized by emotional, economic and psychological involvement (Swarbrooke and Horner, 2007)
Based on the previous literature analysis, this study aims to answer the following questions: Do significant differences exist among online buyers, based on their sociodemographic characteristics and online purchase experience? How does usergenerated content (UGC) influence the online buyers’ choices? Do consumers change the accommodation suggested by a travel agency based upon UGC?

Summary

Introduction

As is widely known, the use of the Internet has increased dramatically, RESEARCH PAPER accounting for 2.3 billion Internet users in the world with important penetration ratios in countries all over the world (Internet WorldAttitudes towards Disintermediation in Hotel Reservations: Spanish Travellers’ Profile.Stats, 2011). The Internet has dramatically changed our behaviour as consumers, in the way in which we plan, buy and consume tourist products and services (Buhalis and Law, 2008) Among these changes, the most significant is in the area of user-generated content (UGC) and peer-to-peer applications, the so-called Web 2.0 (Musser and O’Reilly, 2006). A higher level of credibility and reliability is derived from UGC sources in comparison with market-provided information; they are more likely to affect and influence tourist choices (Gretzel and Yoo, 2008; Weiss et al, 2008; Akehurst, 2009) In such a context, UGC can provoke a change in tourists’ decisions, after obtaining further information online (eMarketer, 2007; Del Chiappa, 2011a,b), causing a shift in the selection of accommodation suggested by a travel agency (Del Chiappa, 2013a). There are many reasons why consumers use social media, represented by the different types of social, functional, hedonic and psychological benefits that they can obtain from using peer-to-peer applications (Parra-López et al, 2011)

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