The effect of online word-of-mouth on hotel performance: empirical evidence from Taiwan's hotel industry

• Main Authors: Wan-Ling Huang, 黃婉玲
• Other Authors: Shu-Chuan Wang
• Format: Others
• Published: 2014
• Online Access: http://ndltd.ncl.edu.tw/handle/e66su4

碩士 === 國立東華大學 === 運籌管理研究所 === 102 === This study focuses on Taiwan-based tourist hotels and examines the degree to which electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) influences hotels’ operational performance. Customer ratings of hotel facilities and service quality on various travel review sites have often been associated with customer loyalty to and satisfaction with hotels. However, previous studies have provided little empirical evidence on the effect of e-WOM on hotels’ actual performance. A major contribution of this study is to explore the relations between customer ratings on multiple well-known review sites and hotels’ financial performance. Specifically, I collected customer-provided hotel ratings from five sites (Tripadvisor, Hotels.com, Priceline.com, Venere.com, and Orbitz.com) as well as hotel statistics provided by the ROC Tourism Bureau and then analyzed if e-WOM affected hotel revenues. The results show that, in addition to traditional factors such as room rate and occupancy rate, the number of online customer reviews also had a significant effect on room revenues and food and beverage revenues of Taiwan’s tourist hotels. As more and more customers now rely on the Internet to search for hotel information and make room reservations, this study shows that hotel revenues have become increasingly dependent on e-WOM. An implication is that hotels must pay more attention to third-party review sties by allocating more resources to online marketing and responding to online customer reviews more quickly and more effectively.