Good or excellent? Factors determining online hotel ratings. A spatial approach

ABSTRACT

In a competitive environment, where hotel demand is lower than market supply, it is of interest to determine what factors explain how excellence differentiates certain hotels from others. Using spatial quantile regression, this research investigates the effect of locational factors as well as those related to the management of human capital investment in Spanish hotels rated on Booking.com. The study shows that human capital investment in hotels can significantly increase guest delight. As regards location, hotels in protected natural areas that are far from large cities obtain higher guest review scores. Additionally, a spatial spillover effect due to reputation transfer among nearby hotels with median scores is found. However, this effect is not observed for hotels with very high scores. These results can serve to rationalize the available resources and inform hotel owners and managers about the factors required to achieve high scores.

在酒店市场竞争激烈的环境下，其需求低于市场供给，确定哪些因素更影响酒店评级尤为重要。本文采用空间分位数回归方法，调查了Booking.com上评级的西班牙酒店的地理因素和人力资本投资管理相关的因素的影响。研究表明，酒店的人力资本投入可以显著增加客人的满意度。在地理位置方面，远离大城市的自然保护区内的酒店获得了更高的顾客评分。此外，由于得分居中的临近酒店之间有声誉转移现象，其空间溢出效应被观察到。然而，这种效应并没有在得分非常高的酒店上观察到。这些研究结果可以帮助可用资源合理化分配，并使酒店管理者知晓获得高评分所需的因素。

 

KEYWORDS:

• Hotel ratings
• investment
• location
• spillover effects
• spatial quantile regression

Acknowledgments

This work was supported by the Spanish State Research Agency (doi:/10.13039/501100011033) with the research project PID2019-110941RB-I00 and by Junta de Andalucía and FEDER funds with the project B-SEJ-381-UGR18.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Funding

The work was supported by the Agencia Estatal de Investigación [PID2019-110941RB-I00]; Junta de Andalucía [B-SEJ-381-UGR18].