What Determines Consumers' Ratings of Service Providers? An Exploratory Study of Online Traveler Reviews

Online reviews are important sources of information for travelers. However, existing academic understanding of these popular information sources in the tourism and hospitality domain is relatively weak. In this study, we explore the patterns and features of online reviews extracted from a popular travel advisory Web site. We consider factors such as numerical rating distribution, amount of information in the reviews and the relationship between review ratings and various attributes of the lodging properties reviewed on the Web site. The analysis reveals that the reviews are heavily skewed towards positive ratings and there is a paucity of balanced and negative reviews. Further, the correlation between review rating and ratings on individual attributes is very low suggesting that the overall numerical ratings typically used in review systems may not be the ideal indicators of customers' perceived service quality and satisfaction. Textual analysis uncovers nuanced opinions that are generally lost in crude numerical ratings. The implications of this study for future research and practice are discussed.