Knowledge Main Headline

A taste of publicity TripAdvisor-style

中文摘要 / Summary in Chinese

Macao restaurants are making a good impression on diners, indicates research regarding English-language online reviews by customers. But satisfaction levels are lower for the most expensive outlets than for other price points.

The conclusions are in a study by IFT Lecturer Mr. Simon Lei and Dr. Rob Law, from Hong Kong Polytechnic University. The results were featured in their academic paper “Content analysis of TripAdvisor reviews on restaurants: a case study of Macau”, published in the Journal of Tourism.

The pair’s research analysed English-language versions of 614 online reviews about 22 Macao restaurants. They had been published via the popular international travel website TripAdvisor.com.

According to its parent company, TripAdvisor gathers more than 500 million reviews and opinions covering more than 7 million accommodation venues, airlines, tourist attractions and restaurants worldwide. The website reportedly records on average per month approximately 390 million visitors.

For their study, the researchers sorted the sample reviews in 4 categories by ascending price: “fast food or self-service”; “casual or sit-down service”; “formal dining”; and “most expensive or service for special occasions”. The researchers classified each comment as “positive”, “negative” or “neutral”, based on how consumers reviewed elements of each restaurant’s offer, including not only the food, but also service, value for money, atmosphere and other factors.

Results indicated that “the overall customer satisfaction on the dining experience in Macao was positive,” according to the authors. The study found that “positive comments on Macao’s restaurants greatly outnumbered the neutral and negative comments combined in all 4 price categories.”

Nevertheless, the most expensive category of restaurants got double the negative comments (14 percent) of casual or formal dining restaurants (7 percent), the authors noted. According to Mr. Lei and Dr. Law, high-end restaurants did not “readily yield high customer satisfaction because well-travelled customers are already exposed to diverse food qualities and prices offered from other places in the world, which become their bases for comparison.”

eWOM power

“Small cafés” by contrast were more broadly evaluated positively for customer satisfaction. Positive perceptions of “product quality, uniqueness and the knowledgeable, passionate and amicable qualities of the restaurateur” were the reasons for this upbeat assessment, the researchers explained.

They added: “Some smaller restaurants are still popular for providing good food and good services at reasonable prices.”

According to Mr. Lei and Dr. Law, more and more people now post commentaries on their travel and dining experiences online, creating a “powerful and ever-growing customer knowledge base” shared among Internet users worldwide. “With the emergence of Web 2.0 and user-generated content, electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) effects have become gigantic,” they noted. “The seamless integration between review sites and social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, hastens and renders the effects of eWOM as long-lasting,” the researchers wrote.

“To maintain competitiveness in the market”, the authors argued, “firms in the tourism and hospitality industry should not disregard the influence” of customer reviews online.

They added: “Given that business firms have no control over user-generated content, not only should service providers monitor online discussions regarding an individual firm and its competitors, but must also promptly respond to customer complaints and/or address service failures for future encounters.” The authors suggested that, “in order to provide higher customer satisfaction in [such a] competitive industry, restaurateurs need to find ways to uncover what has been said [about their businesses online] … and to respond strategically” to remedy deficiencies identified by customer reviews.

More info

Mr. Simon Lei is a Lecturer in computer information systems at IFT. He holds a MBA from the California State University, East Bay, in the United States, and a second master’s degree in science from New York University, also in the United States. His research interests are focused on information systems in tourism and hospitality. Prior to joining IFT, he held posts in several multinational organisations related respectively to information technology, public utility services, hospitality and education.

Dr. Rob Law has worked in Canada and Hong Kong in the industrial and academic sectors. He joined the Hong Kong Polytechnic University in 1995: he is currently a Professor at the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at that university. He holds a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Regina, in Saskatchewan, Canada. Dr. Law has received many research-related awards and honours, as well as several external and internal research grants.

Simon Lei and Rob Law: “Content analysis of TripAdvisor reviews on restaurants: a case study of Macau”, Journal of Tourism, Volume 16, Issue 1, pages 17-28, 2015.

President’s Corner

A special place

IFTM’s unique positioning means students have access to a deep pool of exclusive opportunities, including exchange and internship programmes outside Macao, allowing them to be exposed to new ideas, and to broaden their horizons. Read More