A Rating of the Online Reputation Balance in Lodgings

Abstract

Online reputation is a strategic aspect of lodgings’ image and commercialization. Websites containing tourism reviews have increased their influence on customers’ decisions, leading to the effective management of Internet social media accounts. Customer evaluations of lodgings vary across websites because of differences in the scales used, the variables measured, and the reliability of opinions. The diverse information available on the Internet can produce communication problems in lodgings because the evaluations on online portals can differ. The objective of this paper is to propose an indicator to establish the rating of the online reputation balance, so that lodgings can determine the level of coherence of their communication and image on the Internet. One target for lodging community managers should be to converge different evaluations around a similar value that defines a coherent and real online reputation. The indicator proposed is tested on lodgings of distinct categories in different tourism destinations. Among the aims of the study is to try to provide a simple and practical method for directors to improve the management of hotel communication on the Internet. This is an issue for which research should propose methodologies because it is a new challenge for the competitiveness of accommodations.

Estrategias para fortalecer la ocupación hotelera: estudio de caso en una Cadena de la Ciudad de Medellín

“…Con el fin de mejorar la reputación en línea, los funcionarios de la cadena, monitorean constantemente los portales para conocer los comentarios, y cuando estos no son positivos se busca la forma de resarcir al cliente ofreciéndole descuentos u obsequios para visitas futuras. Esta gestión es muy importante, pues "la reputación en línea es crítica para definir la comunicación, la imagen y la estrategia de ventas en la industria hotelera" (Rodríguez-Díaz et al, 2019).…”

Analyzing the Online Reputation and Positioning of Airlines

“…Online reputation has been widely studied in the tourism sector, with a great impact on capturing the demand for hotels [37]. From the perspective of quantitative research, online customer ratings have been used preferentially on the specialized websites of TripAdvisor, Booking, and HolidayCheck [25,[38][39][40][41]. However, in the airline sector, research has been limited, especially in the statistical analysis of the scales and competitive positioning studies [42][43][44].…”