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This study attempts to assess how tourists use smart tourism technologies at destinations and measure the effects of STT usage on overall travel experience and future revisit intention. Although STTs have received growing attention, little research has evaluated tourists’ experience with STTs available at various smart tourism destinations and potential consequences. Building on studies on online tourism information sources, this study develops a conceptual framework to test hypotheses related to STT experiences and consequences. Based on an online survey with travelers to top five US smart cities, this study classifies the most frequently used STTs and examines tourists’ overall experience and satisfaction with STTs as well as their revisit intention. Findings suggest that three attributes of STTs—informativeness, interactivity, and personalization—are the key factors affecting tourists’ experience, satisfaction, and revisit intentions. The level of perceived security/privacy moderates the relationships between three STT attributes and tourists’ memorable experience.

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Purpose This paper aims to explore how emotional expressions embedded in online hotel reviews influence consumers’ helpfulness perceptions. In particular, this study develops and tests hypotheses analyzing empirical data with a text-mining method in the context of hotels to investigate how review valence influences the perceived helpfulness of online hotel reviews and to examine the role of negative emotional expressions embedded in online consumer reviews with respect to perceived helpfulness. Design/methodology/approach This study collected 520,668 online reviews involving 488 hotels in New York City (NYC) on Tripadvisor.com. Of these reviews, 69,202 reviews (13.29 per cent) that had received helpfulness votes were analyzed by a text mining method and negative binomial regression. Findings This study demonstrates that negative reviews are considered more helpful than positive reviews when potential customers read online hotel reviews for their future stay. However, when intensively negative emotions were expressed, the degree of helpfulness regarding negative reviews was diminished. Originality/value While emotional expressions prevail in online consumer reviews, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the consequences of emotional expressions in consumers’ information processing and decision-making. Due to the nature of service, given the inseparability of production and consumption, which often hinders the execution of flawless service, consumers tend to be more dependent on reviews to minimize any potential failures they may encounter later on. Therefore, this study fills a gap by demonstrating that negative reviews and emotional expressions play a more crucial role in consumers’ information processing and decision-making.

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Purpose This study aims to examine determinants of perceived website quality and associations among consequences of perceived website quality. Adopting the framework of loyalty development, causal links are investigated among the website quality, customers’ perceived service quality, their satisfaction, return intention and loyalty in the context of the lodging industry. Design/methodology/approach An online field survey is conducted with internet bookers. A confirmatory factor analysis and a parameter estimate analysis using structural equation modeling are adopted to analyze the data. Findings The progression of the phases of loyalty proceeds in a linear fashion on a lodging website. Mediation effects of customer satisfaction and return intention are detected. Moderation effects of gender were also detected in the relationships among website service quality and consequences of website service quality. Research limitations/implications Caution is advised in generalizing findings of this study due to convenience sampling, although findings of the study do confirm results of previously conducted studies. Practical implications This study provides practical tips for website development for hospitality management to understand the e-loyalty formation process so that appropriate marketing strategies can be established to accommodate the type and degree of individual customer’s loyalty as well as gender-specific expectations from prospective customers. Originality/value This study demonstrates that customer loyalty formation in both physical and online environments has identical processes in the context of the lodging industry. The male group, compared to the female group, appears to be more sensitive in perceiving the effects of functionality of a lodging website, tends to develop customer satisfaction when perceiving website service quality and inclines to develop customer loyalty when having return intention.

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