Service Quality Perceptions, Online Visibility, and Business Performance in Rural Lodging Establishments

Abstract

In the tourism industry, most customer feedback and searches for relevant information take place online. Therefore, it is important to improve understanding of the business consequences of both customers’ online comments and businesses’ online visibility. For this study, the authors collected comments and visibility data (advertising expenditures) from a leading rural tourism infomediary website, related to 408 French rural lodging establishments. A complementary survey provided information about the lodging establishments’ performance (reputation and profitability). The results reveal that tourists’ positive perceptions of global service quality, as reflected in their comments, depend on their dual perceptions of the lodging and the surroundings. In turn, positive global service quality perceptions and visibility on an infomediary website positively affect business performance. These findings have implications for tourism scholars, as well as for establishment owners trying to track the factors that affect tourists’ evaluations of their service provision.

Measuring service quality from unstructured data: A topic modeling application on airline passengers’ online reviews

“…Online reviews tend to offer an alternative solution to alleviate this issue by acting as an important source of information for firms to gain a better understanding not only for their product/ service characteristics (e.g., sales performance), but also the conditions of the market they operate. Firms tend to leverage the information content of online reviews to improve their knowledge and understanding of their clientele preferences and the competitiveness of their service/ product offerings (Melo, Hernández-Maestro, & Muñoz-Gallego, 2017;Rodríguez-Díaz & Espino-Rodríguez, 2017). The primary driver for this trend is the abundance of data in unstructured form (e.g., open-ended responses in customer A C C E P T E D M A N U S C R I P T 5 complaints) which, if not extracted, analyzed and converted to actionable interventions, may not lead to improved decision making and, eventually, corporate performance (Xu, Frankwick, & Ramirez, 2016).…”

Online Business Sustainability and Challenges to Meet the Demands of Online Consumers

“…While entrepreneurs are striving to provide good services to receive good testimony to ad on to their credibility, entrepreneurs should also know how to aggregate the comment to maximize their usage. According to Melo et al (2017), they should aggregate information according to positive comments to enhance customer attraction and obtain useful comments to guide improvement. This is to avoid abundance of information.…”

Keputusan afiliasi OTA dan kinerja Hotel: Studi Pada Hotel Berafiliasi

“…Perkembangan praktik pemasaran hotel melalui digital marketing ternyata belum banyak diikuti oleh perkembangan penelitian di bidang tersebut di industri hotel. Hal ini seperti dijelaskan oleh Melo et al (2017) yang menyatakan literatur dan penelitian mengenai digital marketing dan kinerja pada industri hotel belum mendapatkan porsi yang besar. Oleh sebab itu, penelitian ini akan melihat keputusan pemilik/manajemen hotel dalam membuat keputusan untuk memasarkan hotelnya melalui situs OTA apakah akan berdampak pada kinerja hotel.…”