Yelp.com ratings and the businesses visited by cruise passengers in Bar Harbor, Maine

ABSTRACT

This study examines the effects of Yelp.com ratings on the businesses visited by cruise passengers that came to Bar Harbor, Maine. Results – based on survey data of where people report that they shop and eat – indicate that being a top-10 rated store or restaurant is associated with a large increase in the number of visits by cruise passengers. Furthermore, there’s a substantial drop-off in the impacts going from a ‘top-10’ to ‘second-10’ rated business.

KEYWORDS:

• Online ratings
• Yelp.com
• shopping
• restaurants

JEL CLASSIFICATION:

• L25
• L83

Acknowledgments

This project received funding from the Maine Port Authority/Cruise Maine and the Town of Bar Harbor. The author’s research program is also funded, in part, by Hatch Multistate Grant #ME031808 (NE 1749) from the USDA National Institute of Food & Agriculture. The author thanks Dominic Gayton, Sean Larkin, James McConnon and Patrick Robinson for their assistance with data collection.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes

¹ The only restaurant in Bar Harbor that is part of a national chain is a Subway sandwich shop.

² In 2017, a year with over 220,000 passengers, they accounted for 3.6 to 6.0 percent of annual restaurant sales in the Bar Harbor Economic Summary Area (Gabe and McConnon 2018).

³ About 85 percent of the passengers surveyed spent seven hours or less in port (Gabe et al. 2017).

⁴ These calculations are based on Yelp.com reviews posted as of 1 September 2016.

⁵ The Hannaford supermarket and Havana restaurant are located about 0.4 and 0.5 miles from Harbor Place, respectively, which have estimated walking times of eight and ten minutes.

⁶ The researcher’s stride length is just under 30 inches, which means that 100 steps cover about 250 feet.

⁷ The variables indicating the types of goods sold are not mutually exclusive. Of the 158 businesses in the analysis, 41 percent sell food, 32 percent sell gifts, 20 percent sell clothing, 13 percent feature t-shirts, 13 percent have bars, and 10 percent feature art.

⁸ The result related to t-shirts may suggest that cruise passengers are more apt to purchase ‘authentic’ souvenirs (Littrell, Anderson, and Brown 1993).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the USDA National Institute of Food & Agriculture [Hatch Multistate Grant #ME031808 (NE 1749)];Maine Port Authority / Cruise Maine and the Town of Bar Harbor.