In search of patterns among travellers' hotel ratings in TripAdvisor

This paper sheds light on ways travellers' rating patterns in the hotel review website TripAdvisor differ between independent and chain hotels. To delve deeper, travellers were classified according to their profiles, namely, business, couple, family, friend and solo. Besides, hotels straddled across four geographical regions, namely, America, Asia Pacific, Europe as well as Middle East and Africa. A 5 (profiles) x 4 (regions) two-way factorial analysis of variance was conducted separately for independent and chain hotels. A qualitative analysis was further conducted to tease out the findings from the quantitative analyses. Travellers' rating patterns were found to differ substantially between independent and chain hotels across both profiles as well as regions. The paper concludes by highlighting its implications, limitations and potential directions for future research. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.