•Subliminal advertising is found to be significantly influential to consumers’ selection of hotels.•Emoji smiling face as a subliminal message does affect consumers’ hotel choice.•Consumers’ theta band would significantly increase while viewing hotel videos with subliminal message.•Consumers’ beta brainwaves are significantly lower when watching video with a smiling face emoji as subliminal stimuli embedded in the hotel video. This study aims to understand how hotel videos embedded with a smiling face emoji as a subliminal message affect consumers’ selection of hotels, with their brain activities measured and collected while they watched the videos. Data was collected from sixteen participants who completed two rounds of experiments. A chi-square test of homogeneity, paired sample t-test, and Bayes factor were performed to address the two proposed research questions. The results of this study reveal that participants’ selection of hotels would be significantly affected by the subliminal stimuli of a smiling face emoji. Meanwhile, neuroscientific data identifies significant differences between participants’ two (theta and beta) out of five bands of brainwaves while they were viewing hotel videos with and without the subliminal message. Suggestions for future studies and practical operations are also discussed. 通过测量和收集消费者在观看视频时的大脑活动, 这项研究旨在了解嵌入笑脸表情作为潜意识信息的酒店视频如何影响消费者对酒店的选择.数据来自16名参与者, 他们完成了两轮实验.本研究采用卡方齐性检验,配对样本t检验及贝叶斯因子来解决上述两个研究问题.研究结果显示, 微笑表情的潜意识刺激会显著影响参与者对酒店的选择.与此同时, 神经科学数据表明, 当参与者在观看带有和不带有潜意识信息的酒店视频时, 五种波段中的两种 (theta和beta) 的脑电波有显著差异.本文对未来研究和实际操作的建议也进行了讨论.