Guests’ Motives to Write Positive and Negative 5-star Hotel Reviews on TripAdvisor

Abstract

This study aims to examine which motives and review components drive hotel guests to write positive and negative reviews on TripAdvisor. Respondents are only TripAdvisor users who had left an online review message on Egyptian 5-star hotel services in the last year. Primary data was collected using a Web-based survey. Using regression analysis, the results concluded that there are differences between guests" motives in creating positive reviews in comparison to negative reviews on TripAdvisor. For positive reviews, only helping hotel, and social benefits were found to positively influence writing reviews on TripAdvisor. Meanwhile, for negative reviews, venting negative feelings, warning other consumers and social benefits had a positive impact on writing reviews on TripAdvisor. Furthermore, this study concludes that there are no differences in the effect of review components in creating positive reviews in comparison to negative reviews on TripAdvisor. For both positive and negative reviews, all the seven review components are positively impact writing reviews on TripAdvisor. These results enhance the understanding of what motivates guests to post hotel reviews on TripAdvisor, and thus hotels can encourage or discourage these behaviours.