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Explore Online Hospitality Management: Price and Reputation

A special issue of Sustainability (ISSN 2071-1050). This special issue belongs to the section "Sustainable Management".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2020) | Viewed by 31388

Special Issue Editors


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Guest Editor
Department of Law, Economics and Cultures, University of Insubria, 21100 Varese,Italy
Interests: social media marketing; e-word-of-mouth; hotel management

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Guest Editor
Department of Business, Law, Economics and Consumer Affairs, Faculty of Arts and Tourism,Università IULM,20143 Milano,Italy
Interests: services marketing; revenue management; yield management; brand; quality

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Over the last years, radical changes in the global economy have profoundly affected business strategies and transformed the relationships between customers and firms. The improvements of Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), the spread of social media applications along with a widespread connectivity and the use of mobile devices, play a central role in the new economic context.

Internet is an effective, efficient and ubiquitous information platform, able to allow both firms and customers to diminish costs for information seeking. On the Web, they have more product and brand choices, being able to compare alternatives more easily. This affects all the steps of the consumers behavior process: how they search for information, make decisions and purchase. A key element is the opportunity to share user-generated content (UGC), interacting with companies and with other peers. The act of sharing online UGC generates a new form of word-of-mouth, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), that influence perceptions, expectations and consumer behavior as demonstrated by marketing research.

The previous trends produced important implications for the hospitality industry. Online content affects searching, travel planning and purchase decisions. In such a context, online reputation plays a key role in driving travellers’ decisions. Reputation, the accumulated impression that external subjects or parties form of the firm and its brands or products, results from their interactions and communications. Online reviews, ratings and rankings contribute to determine the hotel popularity. This, in turn, causes a direct effect on product sales, prices and perceived risk.

Price has acquired a special and more important role, becoming more and more value-based. New technologies offer new and effective managerial instruments for pricing policies. Online sellers have the chance to track and analyze customer behavior, obtaining valuable information about their preferences and about customers’ price sensibility and their willingness-to-pay. Moreover, technology has made dynamic pricing widely possible, commercially feasible and more profitable. Tourism firms have developed revenue management strategies and tactics to improve their profitability.

This Special Issue welcomes a wide variety of academic disciplines encompassing different methodological approaches that will allow for an expanded view of online hospitality management, concerning especially the effects on online reputation and pricing.

Prof. Roberta Minazzi
Prof. Aurelio G. Mauri
Guest Editors

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Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

Keywords

  • Hospitality
  • Hospitality management
  • online reputation
  • eWOM
  • user-generated content
  • price

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Published Papers (4 papers)

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Research

11 pages, 925 KiB  
Article
Differential Effects of the Valence and Volume of Online Reviews on Customer Share of Visits: The Case of US Casual Dining Restaurant Brands
by Jooa Baek and Yeongbae Choe
Sustainability 2020, 12(13), 5408; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12135408 - 3 Jul 2020
Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3661
Abstract
Online customer reviews increasingly influence customer purchase decisions. Indeed, many customers have highlighted the significance of online reviews as an influential source of information. This study reports an investigation of the differential effects of online reviews, such as valence and volume, on the [...] Read more.
Online customer reviews increasingly influence customer purchase decisions. Indeed, many customers have highlighted the significance of online reviews as an influential source of information. This study reports an investigation of the differential effects of online reviews, such as valence and volume, on the customer share of visits. Our findings suggest that valence (i.e., star rating) had more effect, giving a higher average check size to restaurants on the share of visits, while number reviews (volume) did not drive the share of visits to restaurants regardless of the average check size. Therefore, the ideal for casual dining restaurant brands would be to manage highly positive ratings to retain their customers. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Explore Online Hospitality Management: Price and Reputation)
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16 pages, 268 KiB  
Article
Price or Convenience: What Is More Important for Online and Offline Bookings? A Study of a Five-Star Resort Hotel in Taiwan
by Yi-Man Teng, Kun-Shan Wu and Che-Yi Chou
Sustainability 2020, 12(10), 3972; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12103972 - 12 May 2020
Cited by 6 | Viewed by 8209
Abstract
Low price or convenience? What is more important for online and offline bookings? For the sustainable development of the hospitality industry, it is necessary to know the opinions of customers about their online/offline hotel booking experiences. This study aimed to predict the customers’ [...] Read more.
Low price or convenience? What is more important for online and offline bookings? For the sustainable development of the hospitality industry, it is necessary to know the opinions of customers about their online/offline hotel booking experiences. This study aimed to predict the customers’ online/offline booking behavior toward a resort hotel in Taiwan by adapting the marketing mix elements. We first designed and executed a detailed questionnaire involving approximately 300 respondents from a five-star hotel in Taiwan, used hypothesis testing to extract important factors from the data, and finally used logistic regression of these factors to predict the customer choices effectively. The study results show that the majority of the customers believe that booking hotel services online provides for a broader choice, offers more discounts and more privacy than available while booking offline, and is cheaper, faster, and more reliable and convenient. The outcomes of logistic regression confirm that “broad choice,” but not “low price” has the most significant impact on the customers booking a resort accommodation online or offline. Furthermore, the results of the analysis of variance (ANOVA) show that the younger customers (under the age of 45) and those with university degrees are significantly more likely to make the reservations online for a resort. The findings and the recommendations can provide valuable inputs to the resort industry practitioners in Taiwan for improving the online booking services. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Explore Online Hospitality Management: Price and Reputation)
20 pages, 1578 KiB  
Article
The Effects of Green Restaurant Attributes on Customer Satisfaction Using the Structural Topic Model on Online Customer Reviews
by Eunhye (Olivia) Park, Bongsug (Kevin) Chae, Junehee Kwon and Woo-Hyuk Kim
Sustainability 2020, 12(7), 2843; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12072843 - 2 Apr 2020
Cited by 40 | Viewed by 13696
Abstract
Although green practice is increasingly adopted in the restaurant industry, there is still little research in terms of investigating the impacts of green practice on customer satisfaction. This study utilized user-generated content by green restaurant customers to identify various aspects of green restaurants, [...] Read more.
Although green practice is increasingly adopted in the restaurant industry, there is still little research in terms of investigating the impacts of green practice on customer satisfaction. This study utilized user-generated content by green restaurant customers to identify various aspects of green restaurants, including perceived green restaurant practices. Our data are based on U.S. green-certified restaurants available on Yelp. Structural topic modeling was used to discover latent restaurant attributes from user-generated content. With a longitudinal approach, the changes in customers’ interest in green practices were estimated. Finally, the common restaurant attributes and green attributes were used to predict customer satisfaction. This study will contribute to marketing strategies for the restaurant industry. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Explore Online Hospitality Management: Price and Reputation)
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37 pages, 2479 KiB  
Article
Does Culture of Origin Have an Impact on Online Complaining Behaviors? The Perceptions of Asians and Non-Asians
by Raksmey Sann, Pei-Chun Lai and Hui-Chen Chang
Sustainability 2020, 12(5), 1838; https://doi.org/10.3390/su12051838 - 29 Feb 2020
Cited by 11 | Viewed by 5297
Abstract
The main purpose of this study was to analyze and compare the online complaining behavior of Asian and non-Asian hotels guests who have posted negative hotel reviews on TripAdvisor to voice their dissatisfaction towards a select set of hotel service attributes. A qualitative [...] Read more.
The main purpose of this study was to analyze and compare the online complaining behavior of Asian and non-Asian hotels guests who have posted negative hotel reviews on TripAdvisor to voice their dissatisfaction towards a select set of hotel service attributes. A qualitative content analysis of texts which relied on manual coding was used while examining 2020 online complaining reviews directed at 353 UK hotels and posted by visitors originating from 63 countries. The results from the word frequency analysis reveal that both Asian and non-Asian travelers tend to put more emphasis on Booking and Reviews when posting complaints online. Based on a manual qualitative content analysis, 11 different major online complaint categories and 65 sub-categories were identified. Among its important findings, results of this study show that non-Asian guests frequently make complaints which are longer and more detailed than Asian customers. Managerial implications and opportunities for future studies are also discussed. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Explore Online Hospitality Management: Price and Reputation)
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