CONSUMERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF SERBIA’S HOTEL PRODUCT QUALITY
Abstract
This study is concentrated on the analysis of consumers’ perceptions of Serbia’s hotel product quality. A total of 71,700 reviews of 240 hotels taken from the Booking.com portal are analysed regarding the features of ‘Cleanliness’, ‘Comfort’, ‘Location’, ‘Facilities’, ‘Staff’, ‘Value for Money’, and ‘Free Wi-Fi’. By applying Kruskal-Wallis H and Mann-Whitney U tests, the differences between the rating scores of these features for different hotel groups have been investigated. The findings indicate that category-wise hotels can be subsumed under two groups among whose scores for the features of ‘Cleanliness’, ‘Comfort’, ‘Facilities’ and ‘Location’ there are statistically significant differences, whereas within the groups they seem to be irrelevant. The first group consists of 5-star and 4-star hotels, and the second consists of the remaining hotels. The results also point out that the 5-star and 4-star hotel guests, although satisfied with the service quality, think that the rates are too high. The hotels are also grouped by their location. These results do not yield a statistically significant difference of the review values of the observed features between these hotel groups, but significant differences are identified within the group of city hotels regarding ‘Cleanliness’ and ‘Value for Money’ features.
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References
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2. Baka,V. (2016). The becoming of user-generated reviews: Looking at the past to understand the future of managing reputation in the travel sector. Tourism Management, Vol. 53, 148-162.
3. Banerjee, S., Chua, A.Y.K. (2014). Applauses in hotel reviews: Genuine or deceptive? Proceedings of Science and Information (SAI) Conference 2014, London, 938-942.
4. Barjaktarović, L., Mašić, S. (2014).Investments and Investment Expectations in Serbian Hotel Industry. Possibilities and Perspectives for foreign Direct Investments in the Republic of Serbia, IIPE, Belgrade,Thematic Proceedings, 536-557.
5. Buhalis, D., Law, R. (2008). Progress in information technology and tourism management: 20 years on and 10 years after theInternet — The state of eTourism research. Tourism Management, Vol. 29, No. 4, 609-623.
6. Cantallops, A.S., Salvi, F. (2014). New consumer behavior: A review of research on eWOM and hotels. International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol. 36, 41– 51.
7. Carvao, S. (2010). Embracing user generated content within destination management organizations to gain a competitive insight into visitors' profiles. Worldwide Hospitality and Tourism Themes, Vol. 2, No. 4, 376 – 382.
8. Čačić, K., Mašić, S. (2013). Uticaj portala Tripadvisor na poslovanje hotela u Srbiji. Marketing, Vol 44, No. 3, 211-220.
9. Ćurčić, N. (2006). Prezentacija turističke ponude Srbije na Internetu. Bulletin of the Serbian Geographical Society, Vol. 2, 277-286.
10. Filieri, R., Alguezaui, S., McLeay, F. (2015). Why do travelers trust TripAdvisor? Antecedents of trust towards consumer-generated media and its influence on recommendation adoption and word of mouth. Tourism Management, Vol. 51, 174-185.
11. Filieri, R., Mcleay F. (2013). E-WOM and Accommodation: An Analysis of the Factors That Influence Travelers' Adoption of Information from Online Reviews. Journal of Travel Research, Vol.53, No.1, 44-57.
12. Hennig-Thurau, T., Gwinner, K.P., Walsh, G., Gremler, D., (2004). Electronic word of- mouth via consumer-opinion platforms: What motivates consumers to articulate themselves on the Internet?. Journal of Interactive Marketing, Vol. 18, No. 1, 38–52.
13. Kim, W.G., Limb, H., Brymer, R.A. (2015). The effectiveness of managing social media on hotel performance. International Journal of Hospitality Management, Vol. 44, 165–171.
14. Knežević, M., Barjaktarović, D., Obradović, P. (2014). Ocenjivanje kvaliteta hotelskih usluga putem Interneta. Međunarodna naučna konferencija SINTEZA 2014, Beograd, 767-771.
15. Kosar, N., Mašić, S., Barjaktarović, L., Lazović M. (2016). Limiting Factors for the Development of the Serbian Hospitality Industry. UTMS Journal of Economics, Vol. 7, No. 2, 235-248.
16. Li, J., Ott M., Cardie, C., Hovy, E. (2014). Towards a General Rule for Identifying Deceptive Opinion Spam. 52nd Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics, Baltimore, USA, Vol. 1., 1566-1576.
17. Liu, Z., Park, S. (2015). What makes a useful online review? Implication for travel product websites. Tourism Management, Vol. 47, 140-151.
18. Mašić, S., Kosar, N. (2016). Hotels and Social Media – Case Study of Serbia. International Scientific Conference ‘Tourism in the Function of Development of the Republic of Serbia - Spa Tourism in Serbia and Experiences of Other Countries’, Vrnjačka Banja, Thematic Proceedings, 277-295.
19. Mašić, S., Kosar, N., Kalmić, L. (2014). Kredibilitet recenzija kvaliteta usluge beogradskih hotela na portalu Tripadvisor. International Scientific Conference SINTEZA 2014, Belgrade, 732-738.
20. Middleton V., Fyall A., Morgan M., Ranchhod A. (2009). Marketing in travel and tourism, Elsevier, Oxford.
21. Ministry of Trade, Tourism and Telecommunications of the Republic of Serbia - Categorized accommodation objects, http://mtt.gov.rs/sektori/
sektor-za-turizam/korisne-informacije-turisticki-promet-srbija-kategorizacija/ (17 February, 2017)
22. Murphy, H.C., Chen, M., Cossutta M. (2016). An investigation of multiple devices and information sources used in the hotel booking process. Tourism Management, Vol. 52, 44-51.
23. Ott, M., Cardie, C., Hancock J. (2012). Estimating the prevalence of deception in online review communities. WWW '12 Proceedings of the 21st international conference on World Wide Web, Lyon, 201-210.
24. Radojević, T., Stanišić, N., Stanić, N. (2017). Inside the Rating Scores - A Multilevel Analysis of the Factors Influencing Customer Satisfaction in the Hotel Industry. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly (First published online January 9, 2017).
25. Shuckert, M., Liu, X., Law, R. (2016). Insights into Suspicious Online Ratings: Direct Evidence from TripAdvisor. Asia Pacific Journal of Tourism Research, Vol. 21, No. 3, 259-272.
26. Statista.com, https://www.statista.com/topics/2704/online-travel-market/, (15 March 2017).
27. Toh, R.S., DeKay, C. F., Raven, P. (2011). Travel Planning: Searching for and Booking Hotels on the Internet. Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 52(4), 388-398.
28. World Travel Market (WTM) Global Trends Report 2015, http://news.wtm.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/11/Global-Trends-Report-2015.pdf (10 March, 2017).
29. Xiang, Z., Gretzel, U. (2010). Role of social media in online travel information search. Tourism Management, Vol. 31, No. 2, 179-188.
30. Xiang, Z., Magnini, V.P., Fesenmaier, D.R. (2015). Information technology and consumer behavior in travel and tourism: Insights from travel planning using the internet. Journal of Retailing and Consumer Services, Vol. 22, 244–249.
31. Yan, Q., Wu, S., Wang, L., Wu, P. Chen, H., Wei, G. (2016). E-WOM from e-commerce websites and social media: Which will consumers adopt? Electronic Commerce Research and Applications, Vol. 17, 62–73.
32. Živković, R., Njeguš, A., Gajić, J., Brdar, I., Mijajlović, I. (2015). Upravljanje onlajn zajednicama u hotelijerstvu. International Scientific Conference SITCON 2015, Belgrade, 133-139.
Published
2017-06-03
How to Cite
Mašić, S., & Konjikušić, S. (2017). CONSUMERS’ PERCEPTIONS OF SERBIA’S HOTEL PRODUCT QUALITY. Tourism International Scientific Conference Vrnjačka Banja - TISC, 2(1), 59-76. Retrieved from https://www.tisc.rs/proceedings/index.php/hitmc/article/view/133
