Listening to your employees: analyzing opinions from online reviews of hotel companies

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.

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Impact of the length of stay at hotels on online reviews

Kim

Han²

2022

“…Closed-form evaluations usually only allow employees to score their overall opinion of their company on a five-point scale. These evaluations not only reflect the company’s internal service quality (Chen, 2021) but also predict customer satisfaction and re-patronage intentions, and can accurately predict the company’s financial performance. For example, Fang et al (2021) found a significant correlation between closed-form evaluations and company stock returns, and that higher ratings were associated with higher return on assets, profit margin and asset turnover.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The value of the information in open-ended comments has been verified. For example, Chen (2021) discovered that workplace bullying and dirty work, organizational support and career advancement as significant antecedents of hotel employees’ satisfaction. Additionally, employees of premium hotels expressed more positive emotions in their open-ended comments compared to those from budget hotels.…”

Section: Literature Reviewmentioning

confidence: 99%

The role of employee loyalty in online reputation: evidence from tourism and hospitality sector

Yao,

Han,

2023

Purpose Online employee reviews have a substantial impact on employee recruitment, retention and the overall perception of a company’s image, making them a crucial element of its online reputation. Consequently, these reviews play a vital role in shaping the company’s competitiveness in the talent market. This study aims to investigate the role of employee loyalty in online reputation in the tourism and hospitality sector. Design/methodology/approach This study collected online reviews posted by 334,428 employees across 173 companies in the tourism and hospitality sector. Then, this study proposed a method for measuring employee loyalty toward the company through text comments. Furthermore, the role of employee loyalty in online reputation through regression models was analyzed. Findings Employee loyalty is positively associated with the closed-form evaluations, and the length and readability of open-ended comments is directly and positively associated with review helpfulness and is indirectly associated with review helpfulness through employee online reviews. Employees’ perception of job instability has a significant moderating effect on the above relationships. Research limitations/implications This study contributes to the literature on loyalty in the tourism and hospitality industry, online reputation and employee risk perception. These findings offer a more profound understanding of the extra-role behaviors demonstrated by loyal employees, provide a theoretical foundation for the formation of a company’s online reputation and contribute to helping the tourism and service industry better address risk events. These conclusions provide valuable insights for companies in the fields of human resource management and online reputation management. Originality/value To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to reveal the impact of employee loyalty on the company’s online reputation and provides important theoretical and practical implications for management.

“…For example, smart technology can help human resources (HR) managers to optimise HR, both strategically and operationally, by facilitating rota management; compensation data; recruitment, and onboarding, in collaboration with external agencies, hotel schools and recruitment companies. Smart hospitality also enables a constant flow of relevant employee performance data (Ahmad and Scott, 2019) and assists in evaluating employee satisfaction, through monitoring social media (Shi and Chen, 2021).…”

Section: Smart Hospitality Stakeholders: Reengineering Value Chains A...mentioning

confidence: 99%

Smart hospitality: from smart cities and smart tourism towards agile business ecosystems in networked destinations

Buhalis

O’Connor

Leung

2022

121

Purpose Building on recent smart hospitality systematic reviews and extensive literature analyses, this paper aims to explore recent developments, themes and issues within smart hospitality. It synthesises existing knowledge, extrapolating forward and contributes to the future development of smart hospitality by serving as a reference to enrich academic/industry discussions and stimulate future research. Design/methodology/approach The research examined 8 recent review articles on smart hospitality and tourism and extracted 145 articles in peer-reviewed sources from Web of Science focussed on smart hospitality. These publications supported in-depth analysis to explore the body of knowledge and develop foresight for the future of smart hospitality within business ecosystems at tourism destinations. It synthesises knowledge and provides the basis for the development of a comprehensive in-depth research agenda in smart hospitality innovations as well as the formulation of agile hospitality ecosystems. Findings This paper illustrates that smart hospitality introduces disruptive innovations that affect the entire hospitality ecosystem. Smart hospitality takes advantage of smart cities and smart tourism towards establishing agile business ecosystems in networked destinations. Having reviewed the existing literature, the study developed a conceptual framework and introduced a comprehensive future research agenda. This includes the drivers of smart hospitality, namely, customer-centricity, personalisation, individualisation and contextualisation; marketing-driven hospitality excellence and metaverse; as well as operation agility, asset strategy, talent management and supplier interoperation. It also identified the foundations that provide the infostructure for smart hospitality, including ambient intelligence, big data, processes and sustainability, providing the capability blocks to co-create value for all stakeholders in the hospitality ecosystem. Originality/value This study conceptualises smart hospitality as a disruptive and innovative power that will affect the competitiveness of hospitality and tourism organisations as part of a comprehensive ecosystem. It identifies the key stakeholders and explores how they can take advantage of emerging developments. This paper proposes the drivers and foundation for future research on smart hospitality. The research provides a conceptual synthesis of the literature and the concepts that have been elaborated. The foundations are effectively the infostructure that enables the drivers to add value to different stakeholders. Key issues are identified to stimulate further research on the area to support smart hospitality development and adoption.