The impact of customer reviews in social media on the brand reputation for the online accommodation sector

Abstract

Online customer reviews have become a natural part of the online marketplace for both customers and companies in the last few years. For the accommodation sector, a key factor of success is knowing what customers are saying about their services through online reviews. The main objective of this study is to find the best online platform in the accommodation sector that explain the effect of online review on brand reputation and to find the most important factors that influence online review, and how these online reviews contribute to building and boosting the brand reputation. To this aim, we apply an expert multi-criteria technique. The results of this research show that the most influential factors are the Platform characteristics, personal factors and motivation, and source of information, being Airbnb and Booking the most suitable platform for the online brand reputation.