Advances in Hospitality and Tourism Research (AHTR) 2147-9100 2148-7316 Akdeniz University 10.30519/ahtr.528150 Tourism (Other) Turizm (Diğer) Winning the Battle: The Importance of Price and Online Reviews for Hotel Selection https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2867-5897 Cıftcı Olena The University of Mississippi https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1309-9930 Berezına Katerina The University of Mississippi https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2272-1004 Cavusoglu Muhittin Northern Arizona University https://orcid.org/0000-0001-9556-6223 Cobanoglu Cihan University of South Florida 06 10 2020 8 1 177 202 02 17 2019 05 18 2020 Copyright © 2013, Advances in Hospitality and Tourism Research (AHTR) 2013 Advances in Hospitality and Tourism Research (AHTR)

Traditionally, price has been one of the main revenue management levers that allow hotels to sell the right product to the right customer at the right time. Recent research in the area of electronic word-of-mouth has found that travelers’ online reviews may also be an influential factor affecting other customers’ booking decisions. However, it is challenging to determine the value of online reviews for customer decision making and to compare this value to hotel room prices. Therefore, the main goal of this study is to investigate which factors (room rate, online reviews’ rating score, or the number of reviews by other travelers) are more important for customers’ booking decisions and the optimal combination of these factors for booking a hotel. Conjoint analysis was applied to measure the relative importance of the aforementioned factors for travelers’ booking decisions. The results revealed that the overall online rating was the most influential factor with regard to customer decision making about booking a hotel. In addition, the following combination of factors was discovered to be optimal for attracting customer reservations: more than 107 reviews with an average rating of at least 3.3 (on a 5-point scale), and a price level of $130 or below.

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