Comparing Reservation Channels for Hotel Rooms: A Behavioral Perspective

ABSTRACT

This paper studies the customers’ selection of different sales channels for booking hotel rooms. Direct (hotel website) and indirect channels were considered, in which the latter were distinguished according to online travel agencies, destination marketing organization (DMO) website, and DMO call center. A multinomial logit model was estimated to investigate the influencing factors among a specific set of variables of interest (associated with either customer or hotel). The role of DMO as a third-party actor in booking hotel rooms was also investigated. Results indicated that hotel guest profile and hotel characteristics have different effects on the four analyzed sales channels. The active role of DMO in booking hotel rooms was found to be beneficial to the hotel industry as it attracts specific segments of customers, thus creating additional marketing opportunity. Relevant managerial implications were also outlined.

KEYWORDS:

• Tourism distribution
• hotel room booking
• channel choice behavior
• multinomial logit model

Acknowledgments: We thank the local destination management organization (Ente Turistico Lago Maggiore, Switzerland) for their collaboration in the data collection.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Lorenzo Masiero

Lorenzo Masiero is Assistant Professor, School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 17 Science Museum Road, TST East, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR (E-mail: [email protected]).

Rob Law

Rob Law is Professor, School of Hotel and Tourism Management, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, 17 Science Museum Road, TST East, Kowloon, Hong Kong SAR (E-mail: [email protected]).