Impact of the length of stay at hotels on online reviews

Abstract

Purpose The length of stay (LoS) is of major importance from the perspective of the management of tourist destinations. As tourists heavily rely on the online reviews of other travelers as a primary information source, this study aims to empirically examine how the LoS can influence the online reviews for hotels, with special emphasis on the textual review content. Design/methodology/approach This study analyzes online review data collected from Booking.com by using the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count program to operationalize review depth, analytical thinking and the authenticity reflected in customer reviews. Based on the analyzed data, this study used a series of regression analyses to understand the impacts of the LoS on online reviews. Findings The author’s analysis found that a longer stay at a hotel causes consumers to be more likely to post online reviews that not only include a numerical rating as well as written content but also lengthier and more detailed descriptions of their hotel experiences. Further analysis found that the LoS at hotels causes systematic differences in the linguistic attributes of the review content. Specifically, consumers who stay longer tend to write reviews with more analytical information, resulting in consumers perceiving the online reviews as more authentic. Research limitations/implications Although the LoS has been considered a significant issue in tourism, studies examining the impact of different lengths of stay on consumers’ post-purchase behaviors are limited. In this light, the author’s findings demonstrate how the LoS can change the linguistic attributes of online reviews. It expands the body of knowledge of the LoS in tourism. Originality/value This study represents the first attempt to empirically examine and reveal how the different length of stay at a hotel systemically influences consumer review-posting behaviors.

Is it better to communicate product information abstractly or concretely? The role of consumer product expertise and shopping-stage mindset

“…Such a message would also be considered less trustworthy (Miller et al , 2007; Robinson and Eilert, 2018). In line with the above, in the case of online reviews, consumers exhibit a more positive attitude toward reviewers when their reviews are more concrete (Aerts et al , 2017) and perceive those reviews as more authentic (Kim and Han, 2022). Likewise, more concrete tweets were more likely to be retweeted (Saini et al , 2022).…”

Perceived price and trustworthiness of online reviews: different levels of promotion and customer type

“…If users write online reviews based on their actual experiences, consumers are more likely to view the information as trustworthy and truthful. Thus, the review trustworthiness mechanism relates directly to consumers’ decision-making processes (Huifeng et al , 2020; Kim and Han, 2022).…”

Noisy Signals: Do Ratings’ Volatility Depend on the Length of the Consumption Span?

“…In the hotel context, though, there is far less evidence on how length of stay impacts rating scores, and empirical findings are inconclusive. Kim and Han (2022) show that length of stay affects review propensity and the content of the written text, with long-stayers offering more analytical information for other consumers. Pokryshevskaya and Antipov (2017) report that length of stay is associated with higher ratings.…”

“…This result falls in line with prior works (Brandes and Dover, 2022;Leoni and Moretti, 2023), suggesting that long stayers exhibit lower reported utility. One argument could be that the longer a consumer stays, the more time he/she has to critically evaluate the services offered (Kim and Han, 2022); for instance, comfort levels might decrease over time in rooms that are generally designed for short stays. foreigners (-0.034).…”

“…Previous works have shown that the duration of tourists' stay at destination affects post-trip satisfaction because of changes in destination perceptions during the course of the vacation experience (e.g., Vogt and Andereck, 2003). For the case of hotels, length of stay has been shown to matter for the likelihood of posting numerical and written online reviews (Kim and Han, 2022) and to be negatively associated with mean rating values (Brandes and Dover, 2022;Leoni and Moretti, 2023). However, to our knowledge, there is no evidence to date about how the stay duration affects the volatility (and therefore polarization) of hotel rating scores.…”