Abstract:
Since the internet provides an ideal platform for sharing and distributing information, online
consumer reviews have become an important source of information to travellers in recent
years. Consumers now have wide opportunity and ability to post positive or negative
consumption-related experiences and evaluations for any interested party to review. Much
of the existing researches focus on identifying the causal relationship between online
reviews and travellers’ hotel booking intentions but sheds less light on identifying the
individual impact of different content characteristics of online reviews on hotel booking
intention separately. Therefore, this study mainly focuses on identifying how the content
attributes: Usefulness, Reviewer Expertise, Timeliness, Volume, Valence,
Comprehensiveness and Anonymity of online reviews affect travellers’ hotel booking
intention. The sample consists of 384 inbound travellers visited Sri Lanka and the
judgmental sampling method was applied. To achieve the proposed research objective, the
quantitative research method was adopted and data were gathered through self-administered
structured questionnaires from the inbound travellers visited Sri Lanka. Collected data were
analysed using SPSS package and basic descriptive statistics, correlation analysis and
stepwise regression test were run on data to find out the answer for the research question.
Consequently, the findings revealed that usefulness of online reviews, valence of online
reviews and timeliness of online reviews have positive and significant impact on hotel
booking intention. Further, usefulness of online reviews is the most influential content
characteristic of online reviews which has the strongest predicting power on hotel booking
intention of travellers. Hospitality practitioners can enhance their consumer review
management by applying the recommendations provided based on the findings of this study.
