Consumer Behaviour: Impact of Online Reviews on Hotel Bookings

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CONSUMER BEHAVIOUR

Contents
Introduction:...............................................................................................................................................3
Online Review:.............................................................................................................................................4
Influences or impacts Reviews have on consumers’ decisions of hotel booking:........................................5
Influence of perception of reviews on the buying decision:........................................................................5
Trusting on recommendations and reviews:...............................................................................................7
Conclusion:..................................................................................................................................................8
References:..................................................................................................................................................9

Introduction:
The online marketing and selling the services and product is providing a great help to the
organization as well as to the customers. It gives various advantages to the customers and
provides helps in the business to the organizations. In the hospitality industries, the online market
of hotels has been increases and customers are searching for online hotels and booking these
hotels. Many factors influence the decision of these customers who are looking for online
options for hotels. They check hotel location, facilities, cost and one other factor that affects their
decision making are the reviews of that hotel. So, this report is focused to assess the impact of
these recommendations or reviews and made recommendations about trusting these reviews.

Online Review:
These are the reviews of the customers who have experienced the services of the hotel before and
provides recommendations about the booking the hotel or share their experience of a hotel.
While online booking of the hotels the customers read these reviews that create a perception
about the hotel and influence their decision of selecting or booking the hotel (Filieri, et. al.,
2018). These reviews can be in different forms as in comments and ratings etc. the review
comments for the hotels have generally described the experience of living in the hotel about a
particular hotel and recommend the customers to stay or not to stay there (DeAndrea, et. al.,
2018). Impaction or influence of these reviews on the perceptions of the customers and their
decision making are described in further sections.
Figure 1 Online reviews

Influences or impacts Reviews have on consumers’ decisions of hotel
booking:
When it becomes hard to choose a single item among many similar items the one thing that helps
us most is the recommendation. Most of the people are influenced by these recommendations.
Similar in case of booking a hotel there are many options available that provide similar services
having fewer differences in costs and facilities provided, so the customers use reviews and
recommendations for help. These reviews and recommendations have a significant impact on the
customer's mindset and create a perception of the hotel (De Pelsmacker, et. al., 2018). These
reviews create a perception about the hotel in the customer's mind and customers get an idea
about the hotel services. This influence from the reviews also affects the decision making of a
customer. Further, the researches show that over 90% of people check the reviews before
booking a hotel (Tan, et. al., 2018). So, when a person does not have any idea about the hotel he
has the only source other than the hotel description is the reviews and that becomes a major
source for him to assess and evaluate the hotel. Also, there are only few people that lefts the
reviews online; these are on who greatly influenced by the facilities provided by the hotel and
other who are not happy with the hotel services, so customer can get both reviews for booking a
hotel. And, these reviews are in language which either extremely supporting or extremely
opposing the hotel. So, these strong comments will further greatly influence the mindset of the
customers. And, in the absence of too many evaluation tools, they consider it as the basis of hotel
selection (Liu, et. al., 2018).

Influence of perception of reviews on the buying decision:
As discussed above the reviews creates an impression of the hotel in customer mind and
customer make a perception about the hotel. This perception affects his decision of booking a
hotel. As mentioned in an earlier section that comments are generally made to strongly support
or oppose the services of hotels that made a significant impact and make a perception about the
hotel services in the customer mind and this perception affects his decision making of booking
the hotel. A survey shows that increasing a rating of .5 has increased the 7% cells of the hotel
(Okumus, et. al., 2018). Also, different surveys show the analysis of comments and their impacts
on the decision making of the customers. Further, the customers searching online hotels don’t
have too many tools for evaluating or assessing the hotel services, so most of the time they have
to trust the reviews and on basis of these reviews, they booked the hotels. Also, in the process of
selecting a hotel, the customer compares the hotels and the comments or reviews present can be
the basis of their comparison that changes their perception and affect their buying process
(Kirilenko, et. al., 2019). So, the reviews or comments made a perception about the hotel in the
customer's mind in the absence of any good assessing or comparing tools the buying process of
the customer is most influenced by these reviews (Thakur, 2018). And, this is how the perception
of reviews affect the buying decision of the customers.

Trusting on recommendations and reviews:
When you searched on Google plumber near you, Google will provide you too many options
with the star ratings and reviews. So, looking at the influence of these reviews on the customer's
decision-making process, the race of getting good reviews has increased and this introduced a
fake review system in the online market. And, as mentioned in the above section generally the
two types of people that generally provide a review of one who is very happy or influenced by
the hotel facilities and services and one who is not happy or angry with hotel management and
facilities. The major group of people does not provide the reviews (Lee, et. al., 2018). Also, the
person providing the reviews on the hotel services may have their interest or benefit in making
reviews or comments. Further, increasing the race of getting better reviews hotels may provide
special benefits to the customers giving them better reviews. So, this shows that trusting and
considering these reviews of your selection basis may not give better results. In this case, the
customers have a question in their minds on which review they can believe and on which review
they can't or in other words how they can recognize the fake reviews (Baker, et. al., 2018).
However, there is not any specific method of analyzing these reviews but you can analyze the
comment that how they are analyzing the hotel services and on what basis they are commenting
on the hotel services. This may help to analyze the hotel.

Conclusion:
The online market presents better options for the customers to choose and compare different
options available but for evaluating and assessing these available options the customers do not
have too many tools or options. So, the report discussed the online reviews and recommendations
about the hotel services and its influence on the customer's perception and decision making.
Also, the report discussed the influence of online reviews on customer's decision making and
buying decisions. It also discussed trusting reviews and recommendations and present analysis
about trusting online reviews. So, it covers the concept of online reviews that helps to understand
its impacts.

References:
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