THE INFLUENCE OF CUSTOMER WEB REVIEWS ON HOTEL PERFORMANCE—A CONTENT ANALYSIS ON ITALIAN CUSTOMER OPINIONS

Past literature indicates that user-generated comments have a significant influence in travellers’ decision making process. In particular, online reviews may strongly contribute to improve or diminish the digital reputation of hotels. Consequently, this study tries to identify which services affect hotel reputation and explore whether and to what extent web reputation, exclusively in the positive/negative sense of TripAdvisor reviews, influences the operational performance of hotels. This study focuses on a sample of 20 four-star hotels located in the Province of Rimini. A total of 1988 reviews, covering a period of two years and a half, have been analysed, and then compared with online hotel reservations. Findings from content analysis suggest that traditional core services like room and food as well as interaction with staff represent key factors in determining customers’ satisfaction or dissatisfaction, whereas three regression models have been used to explore linkages between web reviews and reservations. These models seem to suggest the presence of a linear relationship between review titles and online reservations