Online ratings are a major driver of hotel choice. There are many ratings platforms, and the number of evaluations is huge. This article analyzes if hotel ratings vary across platforms, vary over time, and if consistency in ratings can be observed. Longitudinal online ratings taken from 11 platforms over a two-year period were analyzed through Self-Organizing Maps. The findings suggest a similar pattern of online ratings across most of the platforms, except for Yelp and HolidayCheck. In addition, the evaluation patterns are stable over time, and the analyzed attributes do not contribute decisively to explain the overall evaluation of hotels, which implies that tourists use a noncompensatory evaluation model. More interestingly, there is no difference between the evaluation patterns of the platforms that require proof of prior reservation and those that do not. The results were confirmed by means of two qualitative studies undertaken with hotel managers.
AlaeiA. R.BeckenS.StanticB. 2019. “Sentiment Analysis in Tourism: Capitalizing on Big Data.” Journal of Travel Research58 (2): 175–91.
2.
Alarcón-del-AlamoM. C.Gómez-BorjaM. A.Lorenzo-RomeroC. 2015. “Are the Users of Social Networking Sites Homogeneous? A Cross-cultural Study.” Frontiers in Psychology6:1127.
3.
BabićR. A.SotgiuF.De ValckK.BijmoltT. H. 2016. “The Effect of Electronic Word of Mouth on Sales: A Meta Analytic Review of Platform, Product, and Metric Factors.” Journal of Marketing Research53 (3): 297–318.
4.
BilgihanA.BarredaA.OkumusF.NusairK. 2016. “Consumer Perception of Knowledge-Sharing in Travel-Related Online Social Networks.” Tourism Management52:287–96.
5.
BloomJ. Z.2004. “Tourist Market Segmentation with Linear and Non-linear techniques.” Tourism Management25 (6): 723–33.
6.
BloomJ. Z.2005. “Market Segmentation. A Neural Network Application.” Annals of Tourism Research32 (1): 93–111.
7.
ChengM.EdwardsD. 2015. “Social Media in Tourism: A Visual Analytic Approach.” Current Issues in Tourism18 (11): 1080–87.
8.
ClasterW.PardoP.CooperM.TajeddiniK. 2013. “Tourism, Travel and Tweets: Algorithmic Text Analysis Methodologies in Tourism.” Middle East Journal of Management1 (1): 81–99.
9.
ConfenteI.2015. “Twenty-Five Years of Word-of-Mouth Studies: A Critical Review of Tourism Research.” International Journal of Tourism Research17 (6): 613–24.
10.
CreswellJ. W.CreswellJ. D. 2018. Research Design: Qualitative, Quantitative, and Mixed Methods Approaches, 5th ed. Thousand Oaks, CA: Sage.
11.
CurryB.DaviesF.EvansM.MoutinhoL.PhillipsP. 2003. “The Kohonen Self-organising Map as an Alternative to Cluster Analysis: An Application to Direct Marketing.” International Journal of Market Research45 (2): 191–214.
12.
CurryB.DaviesF.PhillipsP.EvansM.MoutinhoL. 2001. “The Kohonen Self-organizing Map: An Application to the Study of Strategic Groups in the UK Hotel Industry.” Expert Systems18:19–31.
13.
FilieriR.McLeayF. 2014. “E-WOM and Accommodation: An Analysis of the Factors That Influence Travelers’ Adoption of Information from Online Reviews.” Journal of Travel Research53 (1): 44–57.
14.
FloydK.FrelingR.AlhoqailS.ChoH. Y.FrelingT. 2014. “How Online Product Reviews Affect Retail Sales: A Meta-analysis.” Journal of Retailing90 (2): 217–32.
15.
GuoY.BarnesS. J.JiaQ. 2017. “Mining Meaning from Online Ratings and Reviews: Tourist Satisfaction Analysis Using Latent Dirichlet Allocation.” Tourism Management59:467–83.
16.
GviliY.LevyS. 2016. “Antecedents of Attitudes toward eWOM Communication: Differences across Channels.” Internet Research26 (5): 1030–51.
17.
JohnsonE. J.MeyerR. J. 1984. “Compensatory Choice Models of Noncompensatory Processes: The Effect of Varying Context.” Journal of Consumer Research11 (1): 528–41.
18.
KeimD. A.MansmannF.SchneidewindJ.ThomasJ.ZieglerH. 2008. “Visual Analytics: Scope and Challenges.” In Visual Data Mining: Theory, Techniques and Tools for Visual Analytics, edited by SimoffS.BöhlenM. H.MazeikaA., 76–90. Berlin: Springer.
19.
KohonenT.2001. Self-Organization Maps, 3rd ed. New York: Springer.
20.
KüsterI.VilaN.CanalesP. 2016. “How Does the Online Service Level Influence Consumers’ Purchase Intentions before a Transaction? A Formative Approach.” European Journal of Management and Business Economics25 (3): 111–20.
21.
LiG.LawR.WangJ. 2010. “Analyzing International Travelers’ Profile with Self-Organizing Maps.” Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing27 (2): 113–31.
22.
LuW.StepchenkovaS. 2015. “User-Generated Content as a Research Mode in Tourism and Hospitality Applications: Topics, Methods, and Software.” Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management24 (2): 119–54.
23.
MazanecJ. A.1992. “Classifying Tourists into Market Segments: A Neural Network Approach.” Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing1 (1): 39–60.
24.
MazanecJ. A.1995. “Positioning Analysis with Self-Organizing Maps: An Exploratory Study on Luxury Hotels.” Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly36 (6): 80–95.
25.
MazanecJ. A.1999. “Simultaneous Positioning and Segmentation Analysis with Topologically Ordered Feature Maps: A Tour Operator Example.” Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services6 (4): 219–35.
26.
MazanecJ. A.2001. “Neural Market Structure Analysis: Novel Topology-Sensitive Methodology.” European Journal of Marketing35 (7/8): 894–916.
27.
Molina-AzorínJ. F.2016. “Mixed Methods Research: An Opportunity to Improve Our Studies and Our Research Skills.” European Journal of Management and Business Economics25 (2): 37–38.
PapathanassisA.KnolleF. 2011. “Exploring the Adoption and Processing of Online Holiday Reviews: A Grounded Theory Approach.” Tourism Management32 (2): 215–24.
30.
ParkS.NicolauJ. L. 2015. “Asymmetric Effects of Online Consumer Reviews.” Annals of Tourism Research50:67–83.
31.
PhillipsP.BarensS.ZiganK.ScheggR. 2017. “Understanding the Impact of Online Reviews on Hotel Performance: An Empirical Analysis.” Journal of Travel Research56 (2): 235–49.
32.
PhillipsP.ZiganK.SilvaM.ScheggR. 2015. “The Interactive Effects of Online Reviews on the Determinants of Swiss Hotel Performance: A Neural Network Analysis.” Tourism Management50:130–41.
33.
RuthsD.PfefferJ. 2014. “Social Media for Large Studies of Behavior.” Science346 (6213): 1063–64.
34.
SalhiM. S.ArousN.EllouzeN. 2009. “Principal Temporal Extensions of SOM: Overview.” International Journal of Signal Processing, Image Processing and Pattern Recognition2 (4): 61–84.
35.
SparksB. A.BrowningV. 2011. “The Impact of Online Reviews on Hotel Booking Intentions and Perception of Trust.” Tourism Management32 (6): 1310–23.
36.
ToralS. L.Martínez-TorresM. R.Gonzalez-RodriguezM. R. 2018. “Identification of the Unique Attributes of Tourist Destinations from Online Reviews.” Journal of Travel Research57 (7): 908–19.
37.
TufekciZ.2014. “Big Questions for Social Media Big Data: Representativeness, Validity and other Methodological Pitfalls.” In: Proceedings of the Eighth International AAAI Conference on Weblogs and Social Media, ICWSM, 14:505–14.
WedelW.KannanP. K. 2016. “Marketing Analytics for Data-Rich Environments.” Journal of Marketing80 (6): 97–121.
40.
XiangZ.DuQ.MaY.FanW. 2017. “A Comparative Analysis of Major Online Review Platforms: Implications for Social Media Analytics in Hospitality and Tourism.” Tourism Management58:51–65.
41.
XiangZ.KrawczykM. 2016. “What Does Hotel Location Mean for the Online Consumer? Text Analytics Using Online Reviews.” In Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism. Cham: Springer.
42.
YangY.ParkS.HuX. 2018. “Electronic Word of Mouth and Hotel Performance: A Meta-analysis.” Tourism Management67:248–60.
43.
YouY.VadakkepattG. G.JoshiA. M. 2015. “A Meta-analysis of Electronic Word-of-Mouth Elasticity.” Journal of Marketing79 (2): 19–39.
