Knowledge

How hotels address bad online reviews

中文摘要 / Summary in Chinese

Online reviews are increasingly an important source of information for customers booking accommodation. Even if they do not book their stay online, most clients will at least review online opinions from other customers before making a hotel booking decision. While more and more hotels try using the trend to their advantage, how do they react when a bad review pops on the computer screen?

Results from a new study show hoteliers usually opt for one of the following approaches: publicly respond to both positive and negative online reviews; privately contact complainers; or make no response.

The findings of the research were presented at the ENTER 2016: Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism, held in February in Bilbao, Spain. IFT Lecturer Mr. Kirk Yan and 2 representatives from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University – Dr. Chen Yi-Fan and Dr. Rob Law – were involved in the research project, which was titled “Managing Negative Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) from the Perspective of Luxury Hotel Managers”.

The research included interviews with managers at 13 of Hong Kong’s 4- and 5-star hotels. Each interview took on average 50 minutes and interviewees were asked about their responses to negative online reviews.

Taking control

“The majority of the hotel managers openly addressed positive and negative eWOM. A few managers privately contacted the negative eWOM generators. Only 1 manager regularly monitored and collected eWOM from different channels but did not make any response,” stated the research team.

Through their qualitative study, the researchers concluded that the hotels that adopted a policy of openly addressing all customer comments tended “to take a more active control in influencing and shaping the perception of customers by expressing their voice in management response.”

The study added: “[These hotels] will provide an explanation to clarify and justify issues, especially when misunderstanding and untrue claims are made by customers.” The paper noted that – among those hotel managers that chose to make an open, public response to online criticism – the main motivating factor was the opportunity to allow “future customers to exercise fair judgment by listening to the sides [commentaries] of service providers… [as well as of] previous customers”.

The study findings pointed to 2 reasons leading some hotels to prefer only private contact with the authors of negative online reviews. “The uppermost reason is that managers intend to protect the organisation from abuse and opportunistic customers,” the researchers stated.

“They also value the merit and significant effect of personal touch and attentiveness in complaint handling,” they added.

It was rare for hotels to opt to take no overt action in dealing with negative online reviews, according to the research findings. The authors said the most likely reason for that choice stemmed from a conservative attitude, “because of the uncertainty of the sequential consequence brought by a management response.”

More info

IFT Lecturer Mr. Kirk Yan worked for over a decade in the food and beverage sector, before joining the training and education field. He worked for different upscale hotels and restaurants in Switzerland and Hong Kong.

Mr. Yan has a master degree in hotel and tourism management from the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He joined IFT in academic year 2014/15, and now teaches food and beverage-related courses in the Culinary Arts Management Bachelor Degree Programme.

Dr. Rob Law is a Professor in the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at the Hong Kong Polytechnic University. He has supervised more than 100 postdoctoral fellows and graduate students.

Dr. Chen Yi-fan was one of the PhD students of Dr. Law, with a doctoral thesis dedicated to the topic “Managing negative eWOM by response from the perspective of luxury hotel managers”.

Chen Yi-Fan, Rob Law and Kirk Yan Ka Kui: “Managing Negative Electronic Word of Mouth (eWOM) from The Perspective of Luxury Hotel Managers”, ENTER 2016 Conference on Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism, 2016 – link.

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