Evaluating Hotels’ Managerial Responses to Online Reviews

Abstract

Online reviews impact consumers' purchasing decisions in the tourism sector as well as in many sectors. It is known that the responses to online reviews are as important as online reviews. For this reason, the main purpose of this study is to examine whether hotel business responds to online reviews. In accordance with this purpose 27,585 online reviews of 318 hotels in Istanbul and Antalya were analyzed by content analysis method. The results of the research shows that the majority of online reviews are not responded by hotels. In addition, the majority of responding comments consist of positive comments and there are also significant differences between responses to online reviews and type of the hotels.