How The Hotel Industry Can Navigate an Active Online Landscape

Authors

Keywords:

Online reviews, hotel, reputation, service quality

Abstract

The emergence of online reviews located on platforms and social networks has presented opportunities and challenges for the hotel industry. Navigating this space to find trends and patterns in an array of reviews proves to be a tall task for the staff in charge of sorting through reviews, but one that businesses have put a lot of emphasis on especially in a vocal online landscape that can submit descriptive reviews that can skew negative, misleading, or spread false information. There are different pieces in understanding the effects of the rising online landscape: the importance given to these reviews (Nwaogu et al., 2014), the expectations the consumer has in mind (Browning, 2013), deciphering the actual criticism from fallacies, the response from the online platforms towards inaccurate information, and the actions hotels are taking to improve service quality in order to craft a better experience for customers in the future (Browning, 2013). The industry is in the midst of an evolving industry with the rise of technology and increased expectations after a pandemic. There are many avenues’ hotels can take in order to politely address negative reviews such as responding to the review directly, implementing strategies and improvements that will indirectly foster a more positive word of mouth online, or by working these online platforms to find ways to uncover reviews that contain misleading or false information. Regardless, it is vital that the hotel address these issues that make staying there more appealing, instead of undermining it.

Author Biographies

  • Shruti Meenakshi, University of Delaware

    Hospitality Business Management Honors student

    Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics

    University of Delaware

  • Sheryl Kline, University of Delaware

    Dr. Sheryl F. Kline is the deputy dean of Alfred Lerner College of Business and Economics and the Aramark Chaired Professor in the Department of Hospitality and Sport Business Management at the University of Delaware. Before joining UD, she served as interim dean and associate dean in the College of Hospitality, Retail, and Sport Management at the University of South Carolina in Columbia, South Carolina. Dr. Kline developed her research interests while at Purdue University where she held the position of C. B. Smith Professor in the School of Hospitality and Tourism Management and was the director for the Center for the Study of Lodging Operations. Her research focuses on organizational behavior and training in the hospitality, meeting and event industry.

    Dr. Kline is ranked in the top 25 most productive scholars in the field of hospitality management She began her academic career at Widener University’s School of Hospitality Management. Before joining academia, she had a successful career as a manager in the casino, hotel and resort industry and has over a decade of hospitality industry experience. She has a B.A. in Economics and English from Rutgers University, MS in Hotel Administration from UNLV and a Ph.D. in organizational psychology from Temple University

How The Hotel Industry Can Navigate an Active Online Landscape - Cover Page

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Published

2023-06-06

Issue

Vol. 3 No. 1 (2023): Student Issue - Spring 2023

Section

Student Papers

License

Copyright (c) 2023 Shruti Meenakshi, Sheryl Kline

Creative Commons License

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International License.