Online Travel Reviews Research Articles

Empowering the new traveller: storytelling as a co-creative behaviour in tourism

The work proposes a theoretical and empirical model that investigates how storytelling is a powerful co-creative behaviour in tourism. The contribution takes a step forward from the classical theories on co-creation and develops the case where consumers act almost independently from traditional brands. The empirical study adopts an interpretive approach to analyse online travel reviews. Data are interpreted through Yi and Gong's model on consumer value co-creation behaviour [(2013). Customer value co-creation behavior: Scale development and validation. Journal of Business Research, 66, 127], the Phase dynamics theory of travel epiphany behaviour [Woodside, A. G., & Megehee, C. M. (2010). Advancing consumer behaviour theory in tourism via visual narrative art. International Journal of Tourism Research, 12(5), 418–431], and the Archetype theory [Woodside, A. G., Sood, S., & Miller, K. E. (2008). When consumers and brands talk: Storytelling theory and research. Psychology & Marketing, 25(2), 97–145]. The study indicates that storytelling behaviours in value co-creation activate a ‘customer delight' response, which is an affect-based construct.

Intenção de uso de comentários de viagem online na escolha de um meio de hospedagem: Fatores influenciadores

Cada vez mais os consumidores estão lendo e compartilhando comentários relacionados a viagem na Internet que são publicados por viajantes ao invés de consultarem informações geradas pelos próprios prestadores de serviços turísticos. O presente trabalho tem como objetivo analisar os fatores que influenciam a intenção de uso de Comentários de Viagens Online (CVO) na escolha de um meio de hospedagem. Para compreender quais são esses fatores influenciadores relacionados ao CVO no contexto brasileiro, o presente trabalho utiliza o Modelo de Aceitação Tecnológica e a Teoria Motivacional para dar o suporte na investigação. A metodologia sugerida foi a de cunho exploratório-descritivo, com abordagem quantitativa. A coleta de dados foi realizada com 53 estudantes universitários que já utilizaram o CVO na escolha de um meio de hospedagem. O estudo fez uso da técnica de Modelagem de Equações Estruturais Partial Least Squares (PLS), para testar o modelo proposto de oito hipóteses. Para avaliar as cinco variáveis do modelo de pesquisa (facilidade de uso, utilidade percebida, prazer percebido, atitude, e intenção), o PLS avaliou o modelo de mensuração e estrutural da pesquisa. Ao todo, cinco hipóteses foram confirmadas, e três foram rejeitadas. O que pode se concluir pelas hipóteses aceitas é que os viajantes entrevistados que acham útil o CVO, tem atitude e intenção de utilizá-lo na escolha de um meio de hospedagem.

Determinants of Customer Satisfaction in the Hotel Industry: An Application of Online Review Analysis

This study illustrates that determinants of customer satisfaction in hospitality venues can be identified through an analysis of online reviews. Using text mining and content analysis of 42,668 online traveler reviews covering 774 star-rated hotels, the study found that transportation convenience, food and beverage management, convenience to tourist destinations and value for money are identified as excellent factors that customers booking both luxury and budget hotels consider important and for which the performance is much satisfactory to them. Customers paid more attention to, but were less satisfied with, bed, reception services and room size and decoration. Most determinants of customer satisfaction also showed a consensus over luxury versus budget hotels, except for factors referring to lobby and sound insulation. As per its findings, the article concludes by presenting theoretical and managerial implications.

Personal profile information as cues of credibility in online travel reviews

Given the importance of traveller reviews as sources of travel-related information, source credibility is becoming an increasingly crucial issue in terms of research and application. This study examines the role of self-disclosed personal profile information (PPI) as cues of source credibility in the context of travellers' use of online reviews for trip planning purposes. The results show that the perceived congruence between PPI, i.e. reviewer location and travel interest, and the textual content of the review influences subjects' judgements of the reviewer's credibility. The findings suggest that the reviewer's self-disclosed PPI serves as credibility cues for travellers' assessments of travel reviewers. The implications of the study, as well as directions for future research, are discussed.

Online travel reviews as persuasive communication: The effects of content type, source, and certification logos on consumer behavior

Online review sites provide increasingly important sources of information in tourism product purchases. We tested experimentally how source, content style, and peripheral credibility cues in online postings influence four consumer beliefs, and how those in turn influence attitudes and purchase intentions for an eco-resort. We compared tourists' posts to managers' posts, containing vague versus specific content, and with or without peripheral certification logos. First, we tested effects of tourists' beliefs about utility, trustworthiness, quality and corporate social responsibility on attitude toward the resort and purchase intentions. Second, we tested the role of source, content, and certification on the beliefs. The interactions are complex, but broadly tourists treat specific information posted by customers as most useful and trustworthy. Their purchase intentions are influenced principally by their overall attitude toward the resort and their beliefs in its corporate social responsibility.

Using online consumer reviews as a source for demographic recommendations: A case study using online travel reviews

Online consumer reviews play an important role in the decision to purchase services online, mainly due to the rich information source they provide to consumers in terms of evaluating “experience”-type products and services that can be booked using the Internet, with online travel services being a significant example. However, different types of travelers assess each quality indicator differently, depending on the type of travel they engage in, and not necessarily their cultural or age background (e.g. solo travelers, young couples with children etc.). In this study, we present architecture for a demographic recommendation system, based on a user-defined hierarchy of service quality indicator importance, and classification of traveler types. We use an algebraic approach to ascertain preferences from a large dataset that we obtained from the popular travel website Booking.com using a web crawler and compared with the customer-constructed preference matrix. Interestingly, the architecture of the evaluated recommendation system takes into account already defined demand characteristics of the hotels (such as the number of reviews of specific consumer types compared to the total number of reviews) in order to provide an example architecture for a recommendation system based on user-defined preference criteria.

What Determines Consumers' Ratings of Service Providers? An Exploratory Study of Online Traveler Reviews

Online reviews are important sources of information for travelers. However, existing academic understanding of these popular information sources in the tourism and hospitality domain is relatively weak. In this study, we explore the patterns and features of online reviews extracted from a popular travel advisory Web site. We consider factors such as numerical rating distribution, amount of information in the reviews and the relationship between review ratings and various attributes of the lodging properties reviewed on the Web site. The analysis reveals that the reviews are heavily skewed towards positive ratings and there is a paucity of balanced and negative reviews. Further, the correlation between review rating and ratings on individual attributes is very low suggesting that the overall numerical ratings typically used in review systems may not be the ideal indicators of customers' perceived service quality and satisfaction. Textual analysis uncovers nuanced opinions that are generally lost in crude numerical ratings. The implications of this study for future research and practice are discussed.

The Influence of Online Reviews on Consumers' Attributions of Service Quality and Control for Service Standards in Hotels

ABSTRACT Online travel reviews are emerging as a powerful source of information affecting tourists' pre-purchase evaluation of a hotel organization. This trend has highlighted the need for a greater understanding of the impact of online reviews on consumer attitudes and behaviors. In view of this need, we investigate the influence of online hotel reviews on consumers' attributions of service quality and firms' ability to control service delivery. An experimental design was used to examine the effects of four independent variables: framing; valence; ratings; and target. The results suggest that in reviews evaluating a hotel, remarks related to core services are more likely to induce positive service quality attributions. Recent reviews affect customers' attributions of controllability for service delivery, with negative reviews exerting an unfavorable influence on consumers' perceptions. The findings highlight the importance of managing the core service and the need for managers to act promptly in addressing customer service problems.

Communicative functions of Online Travel Review titles: A pragmatic and linguistic investigation of destination and attraction OTR titles

The choice of tourism products usually requires time and effort, because of their nature and the huge amount of information available. In the online domain, the most credited source of information is word-of-mouth, which is mainly spread through social networks. The decision of which source to consult is often made relying on a first impression of search results, based on metadata. The paper considers Online Travel Review titles, and investigates their communicative functions adopting a pragmatic and linguistic approach. The results aim to describe characteristics of this type of metadata and provide indications for platform managers and designers.

User-Generated Content and travel planning: An application of the Theory of Planned Behavior

User-Generated Content (UGC) such as online travel reviews written by travelers and posted to virtual communities are being used more frequently to communicate travel-related information. UGC is therefore helping travelers to make decisions about their travel. Utilizing the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), which is one of the most comprehensive models explaining behavioral intention, this study contributes to the further development of theories of online consumer behavior by determining which factors are most important in relation to the use of UGC in the travel industry. The TPB has three independent determinants of behavioral intention: attitude toward the behavior, subjective norm, and perceived behavior control. Therefore the aim of this paper is to examine the roles of attitude, subjective norm and perceived behavior control in respect of travelers’ intention to use UGC when making travel plans.

Farm tourism experiences in travel reviews: A cross-comparison of three alternative methods for data analysis

This paper demonstrates three alternative approaches for mining consumer sentiment from large amounts of qualitative data found in online travel reviews. Manual content coding, corpus-based semantic analysis, and stance-shift analysis represent methods varying greatly in both process and output. For illustration purposes, they are applied in an exploratory study focused on consumers' reaction to farm stays in order to demonstrate how large volumes of qualitative data can be analyzed quantitatively in a relatively efficient and reliable way. A total of 800 narratives describing farm stay experiences and representing four national settings (Australia, Italy, UK, and USA) was collected. The results reveal that each method provides unique insights of what a farm stay vacation evokes, helpful to farm entrepreneurs wishing to develop a tourism business. The findings indicate universal values as recurrent key drivers of customer satisfaction closely relate to rural experiences. Comparing the national datasets, local differences are evident, highlighting regional variations in terms of service products and consumer preferences. From a methodological viewpoint, all three methods produce reliable results by evidence of the similarities across all three analyses. The current study shows manual content coding, corpus-based semantic method, and stance-shift analysis can capture the peculiarities of rural experiences in different national settings.

Helpful Reviewers in TripAdvisor, an Online Travel Community

ABSTRACT Online communities need a critical mass for communication, information, and entertainment and should provide useful information for their members in order to obtain this critical mass. The abundance of online travel reviews increases cognitive costs of travelers, and travelers use extrinsic cues to judge the quality of online reviews to eliminate costs associated with the information process. Of various cues used in online environments, this study examined an online reputation system in TripAdvisor.com and profiled the reviewers who post helpful reviews in the online travel community. The key findings include that helpful reviewers are those who travel more, actively post reviews, belong to any age and gender groups, and give lower hotel ratings. This study adds to research of online travel reviewers by characterizing helpful information creators among online content creators.

RECONFIGURING RELATIONS OF ACCOUNTABILITY: THE CONSEQUENCES OF SOCIAL MEDIA FOR THE TRAVEL SECTOR.

The article discusses how and why accountability is performed online on social media websites and online review sites such as the travel site TripAdvisor. Evidence shows that online travel reviews have material effects on business and management, and can influence profit and loss. Practices of detachment and objectification are described as an integral part of knowledge production within TripAdvisor, where the knowledge produced is viewed as technical in nature and unbiased. The dynamic rearticulations that collectively produce TripAdvisor's online rankings as experienced by particular hotels are considered. The reconfiguration of relations of accountability in the travel sector via the enactment of online verification through social media is also discussed.

An Exploratory Study of Travelers' Use of Online Reviews and Recommendations

Travelers are increasingly turning to online reviews and recommendations to plan trips. This article investigates the sources and types of online travel reviews and recommendations, and examines the heuristics used by subjects when making travel decisions. The results of this study indicated that those reviews and recommendations come from peer travelers, third parties, or travel companies; they can be categorized into text-based recommendations, symbolic recommendation, numerical ratings, or narrative reviews. Also, the results indicated that the subjects used several heuristics to make their decisions.

What Motivates Consumers to Write Online Travel Reviews?

The Web provides a fertile ground for word-of-mouth communication and more and more consumers write about and share product-related experiences online. Given the experiential nature of tourism, such first-hand knowledge communicated by other travelers is especially useful for travel decision making. However, very little is known about what motivates consumers to write online travel reviews. A Web-based survey using an online consumer panel was conducted to investigate consumers' motivations to write online travel reviews. Measurement scales to gauge the motivations to contribute online travel reviews were developed and tested. The results indicate that online travel review writers are mostly motivated by helping a travel service provider, concerns for other consumers, and needs for enjoyment/positive self-enhancement. Venting negative feelings through postings is clearly not seen as an important motive. Motivational differences were found for gender and income level. Implications of the findings for online travel communities and tourism marketers are discussed.