CUSTOMER SATISFACTION AND ONLINE HOTEL REVIEW EVALUATION

Abstract

In this article, we analyse the relationship between customers' satisfaction with several types of hotel attributes and reviewer's descriptive information included in online hotel reviews. In particular, we consider the possibility of a causal relationship between reviewer's descriptive information and customer satisfaction ratings. For this purpose, we construct dummy variables that represent the characteristics of reviewer's descriptive information and use them as explanatory variables in a multivariate ordered probit model. From our empirical results, we find that reviewer's descriptive information related to hotel's attributes have substantial effects on corresponding customer satisfaction. In particular, the evaluations of service and hospitality have substantial effects on all satisfaction variables.