Hotel managers need to understand the marginal utility customers associate with a specific attribute of a hotel in order to effectively set up rate fences and to price their rooms accordingly. This ...study adopted a stated choice experiment and discrete choice modeling method to obtain hotel guests’ willingness to pay (WTP) for a specific set of room attributes within a single hotel property. The attributes include room views, hotel floor, club access, free mini-bar items, smartphone service, and cancellation policy. The study discovered that leisure travelers versus business travelers, and first-time visitors versus repeat visitors, perceive different WTP values for various attributes. These findings provide valuable information for hotel managers to segment their market and conduct revenue management practices in order to maximize revenue and profit. The results also demonstrate the value of discrete choice modeling in obtaining WTP for hotel room attributes.
Consumers are drawn to the inherent quality of a product or service and how it is portrayed and described. This study investigated the impact of language used in property titles on pricing strategies ...and financial performance in peer-to-peer (P2P) accommodations by adopting the Language Expectancy Theory (LET) as a theoretical framework. The findings of this study demonstrate the significance of linguistic styles in property titles for determining P2P room rates, rental volume, and overall performance. Property titles that exhibit formal, logical, and hierarchical thinking are perceived as more sincere, personalized, and informative, resulting in higher rates, more significant rental volumes, and improved overall performance. On the contrary, properties with titles that convey expertise, and confidence, or adopt a positive and upbeat style tend to put lower room rates and yield lower performance yet generate higher volumes. This study expands the application of LET to P2P communication between an Airbnb host and a potential guest.
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to analyze online hotel reviews produced by customers to identify and compare factors known as satisfiers and dissatisfiers based on Herzberg’s two-factor theory. ...This approach was applied to compare full-service and limited-service hotels, which can show different levels of customer expectation.
Design/methodology/approach
A content analysis of 919 satisfaction- and dissatisfaction-indicating reviews of 100 hotels in both full-service and limited-service hotel segments in New York City on Trip Advisor was conducted.
Findings
Results show that satisfiers and dissatisfiers in full-service hotels were distinct, with the exception of two common service-related factors, namely, “staff and their attitude” and “service”. On the other hand, “staff and their attitude” and four room facilities-related factors, “room cleanliness/dirtiness”, “bed”, “bathroom” and “room size”, were revealed as common satisfiers and dissatisfiers in limited-service hotels. To fulfill customer satisfaction and resolve dissatisfaction in both full-service and limited-service hotels, satisfiers and dissatisfiers should be highlighted according to the hotel class; the most critical factor is “staff and their attitude”.
Practical implications
Analysis of online hotel reviews provides understanding of customers’ satisfiers and dissatisfiers, and the results are very useful to hotel management. Therefore, hotel operators should monitor electronic word-of-mouth, recognizing and acting upon previous and current customers’ satisfactory and unsatisfactory reactions.
Originality/value
As technologies such as social media develop, customers are increasingly sharing their satisfactory and unsatisfactory experiences on consumer-generated online review sites. These have become a major source of information not only for customers deciding on a hotel stay but also for hotel managers trying to understand their customers and competitors.
This paper evaluates the main developments of revenue management (RM) over the past decade and discusses RM challenges and research prospects. It examines nine notable emerging themes: total hotel ...RM, big data analytics, distribution, rate integrity, RM and marketing strategies alignment, social media impacts on RM, RM system, applications of RM in non-traditional service sectors, and RM education and training. We argue that these developments have far-reaching implications for real-world RM practice and anticipate that the topic areas will continue to be popular for hospitality and tourism research in the foreseeable future.
This study develops three hypotheses regarding corporate social responsibility (CSR) in the context of the hotel industry. First, the study examines a ranking of consumers' perceived importance of ...the four CSR dimensions proposed by Carroll's hierarchy of CSR in 1991, expecting the following orders: philanthropic, ethical, legal, and economic dimensions, from most to least important. Second, the study investigates the relationship between consumers' perceived importance of and their overall support for CSR. Third, the study introduces the type of hotel (for example, economy, mid-scale, and upscale) as a moderator to provide a better explanation of the relationship between consumers' perceived importance of the CSR dimensions and support for CSR. Contributions to the CSR literature in general, and also specifically relating to the hotel context, and managerial implications are discussed.
Managing shopping risk is a prerequisite to ensuring business prosperity in shopping destinations, as risk is likely to influence perceived value and the choice of future shopping destinations. ...Previous studies have shown that enhancing trust is a means of avoiding or minimizing perceived (shopping) risk. Increased trust is expected to reduce shopping risk and ultimately foster the impression of a shopping destination as reliable. Despite its important role, trust has received limited, if any, attention in shopping- and tourism-related research. As shopping behavior while traveling abroad differs from ordinary shopping in one’s home country, tourists’ shopping activities require in-depth research grounded in psychological theory. This study aimed to examine the influence of trust in a shopping destination on the value of that destination as perceived by tourist shoppers. The findings suggest that trust in a shopping destination positively influences perceptions of the destination’s value in every value category.
Surveys based on Likert scales continue to dominate market research practice despite their limitations. Several researchers have suggested adopting different types of scales and a unique alternative ...for rating the importance level of several attributes is Best − Worst Scaling (BWS). The purpose of this study is to compare two scaling approaches, the Best-Worst Scale (BWS) and the Likert Scale to explore their advantages and disadvantages. This study tried to identify the relative importance of Peer-to-Peer (P2P) accommodation attributes using the aforementioned two scaling approaches. A comparison of the results found that the BWS approach helps to validate priorities from a customer perspective by achieving better discrimination among attributes, while the Likert scale approach is useful for comparing group differences such as gender differences.
This study, by performing a path regression analysis, examines a mediating effect of customer satisfaction between corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities and firm value for US hotels and ...restaurants. Further, the study differentiates positive and negative CSR activities in the analysis. Findings suggest that the customer satisfaction does not play a role of a mediator between the two factors for both hotels and restaurants.
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