Online Interactions
(2015) SKPM08 20151Department of Strategic Communication
- Abstract
- Communication today is not something merely taking place face to face, technology such as the internet and social media channels have opened up for endless interactions taking place in the online world. User generated content in the form of online travel reviews come with many challenges and opportunities for organizations. User generated content has been shown to impact a travelers decision in all stages of their travel plans. Since online travel reviews can be of positive and negative nature, or a mix of both they can have different effects on the organizations reputation. Therefore the purpose of this study is to explore how hotel practitioners deal with the criticism present in online travel reviews and why they have that specific... (More)
- Communication today is not something merely taking place face to face, technology such as the internet and social media channels have opened up for endless interactions taking place in the online world. User generated content in the form of online travel reviews come with many challenges and opportunities for organizations. User generated content has been shown to impact a travelers decision in all stages of their travel plans. Since online travel reviews can be of positive and negative nature, or a mix of both they can have different effects on the organizations reputation. Therefore the purpose of this study is to explore how hotel practitioners deal with the criticism present in online travel reviews and why they have that specific approach. The method applied in to studying this phenomenon was the qualitative multiple case approach consisting of three hotels in Gothenburg, Sweden where the data to explore the first question was collected using the content analysis approach looking at the hotels responses, the second question was explored by conducting semi-structured interviews with three managers from the different hotels. The findings from the study show that the practitioners are aware of the impact online travel reviews have on other consumers reading them and they all agree that it is nice for every guest to receive a response, however most of the participants also stated that due to lack of time not every review has a response. This is also why all of the hotels in this study focus on replying to negative reviews first and then to positive if there is time. The structure they follow when writing their responses are from best practice studies and there are not many differences between the three hotels in terms of response structure. The findings from the study also show the need for a better understanding of the interaction taking place on online travel review sites in order for organizations to be able to manage the communication and use the review information for improvements and for relationship building purposes which is where PR can help. (Less)
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
http://lup.lub.lu.se/student-papers/record/8032515
- author
- Cuk, Armin LU
- supervisor
- organization
- alternative title
- Hotel practitioners experiences of online travel reviews and their approach to responding
- course
- SKPM08 20151
- year
- 2015
- type
- H2 - Master's Degree (Two Years)
- subject
- keywords
- Public Relations, Communication, Electronic Word of Mouth, Online Travel Reviews, USG, Hospitality industry
- language
- English
- id
- 8032515
- date added to LUP
- 2015-10-14 10:31:31
- date last changed
- 2015-10-14 10:31:32
@misc{8032515,
abstract = {{Communication today is not something merely taking place face to face, technology such as the internet and social media channels have opened up for endless interactions taking place in the online world. User generated content in the form of online travel reviews come with many challenges and opportunities for organizations. User generated content has been shown to impact a travelers decision in all stages of their travel plans. Since online travel reviews can be of positive and negative nature, or a mix of both they can have different effects on the organizations reputation. Therefore the purpose of this study is to explore how hotel practitioners deal with the criticism present in online travel reviews and why they have that specific approach. The method applied in to studying this phenomenon was the qualitative multiple case approach consisting of three hotels in Gothenburg, Sweden where the data to explore the first question was collected using the content analysis approach looking at the hotels responses, the second question was explored by conducting semi-structured interviews with three managers from the different hotels. The findings from the study show that the practitioners are aware of the impact online travel reviews have on other consumers reading them and they all agree that it is nice for every guest to receive a response, however most of the participants also stated that due to lack of time not every review has a response. This is also why all of the hotels in this study focus on replying to negative reviews first and then to positive if there is time. The structure they follow when writing their responses are from best practice studies and there are not many differences between the three hotels in terms of response structure. The findings from the study also show the need for a better understanding of the interaction taking place on online travel review sites in order for organizations to be able to manage the communication and use the review information for improvements and for relationship building purposes which is where PR can help.}},
author = {{Cuk, Armin}},
language = {{eng}},
note = {{Student Paper}},
title = {{Online Interactions}},
year = {{2015}},
}