Assessing the Value of Hotel Online Reviews to Consumers

Reino, Sofía; Massaro, Maria Rita

doi:10.1007/978-3-319-27528-4_33

Cited by 1 publication

(2 citation statements)

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“…Gretzel et al (2006) and Wang et al (2002) suggest that the reason for this impact is that social media decreases the uncertainty, and it provides a sense of belonging into virtual travel communities. Other studies argue that the influence of eWOM on purchase decisions may also be related to how the ratings position them on the ranking of searching results (Reino and Massaro, 2016). Thus, those establishments with the highest scores appear first in the searching results.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…As explained in Section 2, not only are scores important in determining consumer's choice (Ö güt and Onur Tas , 2012;Ye et al, 2011;Anderson, 2012;Viglia et al, 2016) but also the position in the rankings in which hotels appear when users undertake a search (Reino and Massaro, 2016). Therefore, based on the differences presented across the system, there is a strong reason to believe that the performance of hotels will vary depending on which licensed software is adopted.…”

Section: Differences Among Licensed Software Providersmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Average scores integration in official star rating scheme

Mellinas

Reino

2019

JHTT

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Purpose Evidence suggests that electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) plays a highly influential role in decision-making when booking hotel rooms. The number of online sources where consumers can obtain information on hotel ratings provided has grown exponentially. Hence, a number of companies have developed average scores to summarize this information and to make it more easily available to consumers. Furthermore, official star rating schemes are starting to provide these commercially developed average scores to complement the information their schemes offer. The purpose of this paper is to examine the robustness of these systems. Design/methodology/approach Average scores from different systems, and the scores provided by one rating site were collected for 200 hotels and compared. Findings Findings suggested important differences in the ratings and assigned descriptive word across websites. Research limitations/implications The results imply that the application of average scores by official organizations is not legitimate and identifies a research gap in the area of consumer and star rating standardization. Originality/value The paper is of value to the industry and academia related to the examination of rating scales adopted by major online review tourism providers. Evidence of malpractice has been identified and the adoption of this type of scales by official star rating schemes is questioned.

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Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%