Online reviews and travel magazine awards: their influence on willingness-to-pay
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RESEARCH ARTICLE
Online reviews and travel magazine awards: their influence on willingness‑to‑pay Amanda Belarmino1 · Tevfik Demirciftci2 · Liheng Zhang3 Received: 1 March 2020 / Accepted: 11 August 2020 © Springer Nature Limited 2020
Abstract When guests book a hotel room, user-generated content (UGC) has a significant impact on willingness-to-pay. Prior to advent of the internet, however, guidebooks and travel magazines were resources for guest information. The current study conducted a choice-based conjoint analysis survey of 803 US travelers to examine the current impact of travel magazines on hotel guests’ willingness-to-pay. The participants were given a scenario in which they choose a hotel for beach vacation with the variables of pool, location, star rating, number of online reviews, and inclusion in a “best of” list. This study found that while the number of online reviews and star rating did have a statistically significant impact on willingness-to-pay, inclusion in a “best of” list did not. For researchers, the current study expands the research in UGC, travel magazines, and willingness-to-pay. For hoteliers, this paper quantified the impact of number of reviews and star rating on guest willingness-to-pay. Keywords Online reviews · Travel magazines · Willingness-to-pay · Choice-based conjoint analyses
Introduction Modern travelers are exposed to a plethora of online and offline information when planning a trip. Quality of the hotel website (Wang et al. 2015) and relationship-based marketing on social media are successful strategies for consumer engagement (Tiago and Verissimo 2014). User-generated content has also been found to be important. User-generated content for hotels is available from many online resources, including review-centric websites, search engines (Hanley * Amanda Belarmino [email protected] Tevfik Demirciftci [email protected] Liheng Zhang [email protected] 1
William F. Harrah College of Hospitality Management, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Suite 351, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA
2
Department of Hotel, Recreation & Tourism Management, East Stroudsburg University, 200 Prospect Street, East Stroudsburg, PA 18301‑2999, USA
3
William F. Harrah College of Hospitality Management, University of Nevada Las Vegas, 4505 S. Maryland Parkway, Box 456017, Las Vegas, NV 89154, USA
2017), online travel agencies (Murphy and Chen 2016), and brand websites (Farley 2012). Hospitality researchers have previously investigated the impact of this type of user-generated content on travelers’ willingness-to-stay (Filieri and McLeay 2014) and willingness-to-pay (Nieto-García et al. 2017). Both the number of reviews and the valence of the reviews have a significant impact on guest behavior (Xie et al. 2014). Other resources for travel information are print and online travel magazines like Conde Nast Traveler (CNT Editors 2018). These organizations generate annual awards in the form of “best of” lists, which are generated both by using reader feedback and ra
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