Literature Review: Emotional and Rational Appeals in Hotel Advertising

This literature review examines the role of emotional and rational appeals in hotel advertising, and the impact of website design on consumer behavior and online bookings. It explores how emotional appeals influence brand preference and consumer attitudes, particularly in the context of services like hotels, where intangible cues are crucial. The review highlights the importance of website design in attracting and informing potential customers, emphasizing the need for high-quality websites that provide relevant information and engage visitors. It discusses the effectiveness of combining emotional and rational appeals in advertising, and references several studies and researchers in the field, including Parboteeah, Leonidou, Hu, Shih, Lee, Han, Henderson, and Schneider & Stangl, to support its arguments. The review also touches upon the significance of online booking and the cost-effectiveness of websites for hotels.

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LITERATURE REVIEW
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Parboteeah, et al., (2009) demonstrated how emotional appeals are crucial in evoking
different types of emotions in viewers hence drawing the attention of viewers and preference
towards the brand and its commodities. Emotional appeals aim at psychological, social or
symbolic wants and are strategic effective in commodities that have value expressive traits such
as specialty products and services. According to Leonidou and Leonidou (2009) products such as
cars command great search features as consumers can measure the characteristics of a vehicle
before purchasing. However, for services such as hotels require high experience features making
it hard to measure the features before purchasing. This leads to a discussion on the validity of
intangible cue strategy being more effective compared to a tangible cue strategy particularly the
hospitality industry with regards to the provision of services.
However, Hu (2012) proved how advertising strategies founded on intangible cues
become effective in the case of services mainly due to the hedonic character of consumption. Hu
(2012) findings supported the hedonic nature of consumption where the environment of hotels
asserted substantial impact on customers’ perceived emotional advantages when incorporated
with individual benefits. Thus, transformational benefits prove to be powerful instruments for
services that depend on experience. The transformational advertisements are commonly
employed in commercials involving services than in commodity commercials due to their
capacity to include the experience of engaging the brand with a bundle of psychographics.
According to Shih (2011), the emotional responses and emotional advertising have a direct nexus
and can trigger a purchase behavior. Emotional responses involved in such advertising can
influence the attitude regarding advertisement and brand. Lee, et al., (2012) found emotional
responses being critical in driving the willingness among tourists to visit destinations. Han, et al.,
(2011) asserted that emotional appeals could be more effective compared to rational appeals in

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establishing positive attitude towards providers of services that have limited awareness and this
may be vital in advertising boutique hotels online particularly to people who have never had an
experience with boutique hotels and are uneducated about the characteristics of boutique hotels.
Henderson (2011) postulated that emotional cues regarding advertisement could have three
different functions in improving the process of advertisement. One is that emotional appeal can
be used to deliver information about the advantages and features of a good or service. In a
nutshell, it is that emotions can represent the purported advantages and features of a good or
service. In employing this to the hospitality industry, emotions, for instance, love, desire, and
happiness can highly rank the features of a hotel such as restfulness and desire. Schneider &
Stangl (2012) postulated further that emotions could be crucial in improving information through
capturing the attention of consumers and ensuring that the message becomes more memorable in
the mind of the customer by outlining the essential benefit of a good or service.
Attitudes towards hotel websites
According to (Parboteeah, et al., 2009) the internet has turned out to be the most effective
form of advertising and many companies are inaugurating the use of websites as part of their
advertising plan. The purpose of the website as a form of advertising provides numerous
opportunities for small and medium sized-enterprises seeking regional and international
reputation at a low budget. For instance, the cost of booking a hotel online is cheaper compared
to booking through a call center. The use of websites also helps hotels eliminate the costs
associated with intermediaries enabling hotels to lower their costs of operations. With regards to
the hotel industry, there is a growing trend towards online bookings according to hoteliers a cost-
effective way to reach out and target tourists enabling them to display their unique selling
points.However, lack of enough knowledge regarding designing hotel websites seems to be the

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main hindrance in this sector; there is lack of preferences with regards to what potential guests
could consider as quality website experiences and what should be included in such websites.
According to (Schneider & Stangl, 2012) websites have been found crucial in persuading,
educating and acting as a reminder to customers regarding services and offerings of a particular
company. Research indicates that in most times consumers first visit a website is to find
information; thus failure to locate vital details renders the chances of booking dramatically
reduced. It is hotel websites that are well designed that provide potential customers with
necessary information such as the location of a destination, which has the effect of increasing the
volume of sales and improve the reputation of such a hotel. Hence for websites crafted for hotels
to thrive and succeed in such a highly contested environment, such websites need to be vital and
appeal to the customer at first hand. This follows the logic that high-quality websites have a
direct influence on the time spent by the customer on such websites and the purchase decision.
However, there seem to be difficulties arising in capturing the attention and interest of the
customer through the websites due to the presence of many websites that advertise through the
search engines. Since attracting the attention of customers is crucially necessary for arousing
their interest through the websites; thus a first initial impression cannot be overlooked. It is,
therefore, the responsibility of web designers to ensure that they provide all the necessary
information with regards to rational and emotional appeals. The use of relevant information and
captivating graphics on the home page are core to driving in a positive influence on the buying
intentions and attitudes of potential consumers. Decaudin &Lacoste (2010) postulated that the
use of emotional and rational appeals as a combination used in advertising proved successful as
supported by their research. The role of rational appeals is to pass information regarding
functional components of a service offering while the use of emotional appeals is to

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communicate about the image of the brand. The logic behind this is that services such as booking
a hotel are indulging chosen via emotional cues rather than valuing service information.
However, it is imperative to note that the influence that a sophisticated home page could have
with regards to the effectiveness of such a website. Websites containing emotional appeal
perspective are most probably to have pictures while websites with a rational appeal perspective
are most likely to provide facts and figures.

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References
Décaudin, J.-M. & Lacoste, D., 2010. Are services advertised differently? An empirical
examination.. Journal of Services Marketing, 24(7), pp. 546-553.
Han, H., Hsu, L.-T. J., Lee, J.-S. & Sheu, C., 2011. Are lodging customers ready to go green? An
examination of attitudes, demographics, and eco-friendly intentions. International Journal of
Hospitality Management, 30(2), pp. 345-355.
Henderson, J. C., 2011. Hip heritage: The boutique hotel business in Singapore. Tourism:and
Hospitality Research, 11(3), pp. 217-223.
Hu, H.-H., 2012. The effectiveness of environmental advertising in the hotel industry. Cornell
Hospitality Quarterly, 53(2), pp. 154-164.
Lee, S., Rondriguez, L. & Sar, S., 2012. The influence of logo design on country image and
willingness to visit: A study of country logos for tourism. Public Relations Revies, 38(4), pp.
584-591.
Parboteeah, D. V., Valaich, J. S. & Wells, J. D., 2009. The influence of website characteristics
on a consumer’s urge to buy impulsively. Information Systems Research, 20(1), pp. 60-78.
Schneider, A. & Stangl, B., 2012. Analysing the Emotional Appeal of a Website through Verbal
and Pictorial Stimuli. Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism, 1(1), pp. 60-71.
Shih, T.-Y., 2011. Developing strategies for TV shopping stores: a second-order structural
equation modelling application. International Journal of Electronic Business Management, 9(4),
pp. 355-367.

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