Through the Eyes of the Traveler: Consumer Evaluation of Hotels in Eastern European Capitals Compared with Western, Southern, and Northern Europe
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15549/jeecar.v1i2.65Keywords:
Tourism, Eastern Europe, hotels, online consumer reviews, content analysisAbstract
With the movement of Russian troops into the Crimean peninsula, and the subsequent vote on secession from Ukraine and joining with Russia, many voices wanted to be heard. The focus of this study is to provide insight as to the views from an interested, but arguably neutral player in the discussion; the second largest country in the world, but one with the third largest population of those with Ukrainian heritage outside of Ukraine and Russia, Canada. Newspaper articles from the period of the crisis from February and March 2014 were collected and analyzed. The articles were published in three national newspapers and also three newspapers with a significant population of those with Ukrainian heritage. Evidence from this sample of suggests that there was a dominance of negative coverage as to the role of Russia consistent with prior research. The articles reviewed were found to present non-neutral coverage particularly through opinion pieces, which also tended to be both longer and more frequently published than neutral, or alternative articles.
References
Anderson, M. (2013). Local Consumer Review Survey 2013, retrieved June 11, 2014 from http://www.brightlocal.com/2013/06/25/local-consumer-review-survey-2013/
Anonymous. (1991). Sounding entrepreneurial, Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly, 32(2), 15.
Barsky, J., and Honeycutt, R. (2011). Study shows TripAdvisor is a reliable review source, Hotel Management, 226(9), 10.
Bertschi, C., and Perret, S. (2014). 2014 European Hotel Valuation Index. London.
Chen, P.-Y. S., Wu, S.-Y., and Yoon, J. (2004). The impact of online recommendations and consumer feedback on sales. Paper presented at the International Conference on Information Systems (ICIS) 2004, Washington, DC.
Chen, Y., and Xie, J. (2008). Online consumer review: word-of-mouth as a new element of marketing communication mix, Management Science, 54(3), 477-497.
Chevalier, J. A., and Mayzlin, D. (2006). The effect of word of mouth on sales: online book reviews, Journal of Marketing Research, 43(3), 345-354.
Churchill, D. (2004). European Enlargement, Business Travel World (April 2004), 44-45.
United Nations Statistics Division (2014). Composition of macro geographical (continental) regions, geographical sub-regions, and selected economic and other groupings, retrieved September 10, 2014 from http://unstats.un.org/unsd/methods/m49/m49regin.htm
Euromonitor. (2014). Euromonitor International’s Top City Destinations Ranking, retrieved April 2, 2014 from http://euromonitor.typepad.com/files/pdf_topcities-v1.2.pdf
Ghitelman, D., and Nigro, D. (1996). East side story, Meetings & Conventions, 31(13), 20.
Godes, D., and Mayzlin, D. (2004). Using online conversations to study word-of-mouth communication, Marketing Science, 23(4), 545-560.
Hall, J. (2012). Tripadvisor banned from claiming its reviews are real, Telegraph, February 1, retrieved September 10, 2014, from http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/travelnews/ 9052317/Tripadvisor-banned-from-claiming-its-reviews-are-real.html
Hsu, Y.-L., Chen, K.-Y., and Ting, Y.-S. (2012). Travel review websites as innovative marketing venues for hotels, International Journal of Organizational Innovation, 5(2), 179-212.
Hughes, H. L., and Allen, D. (2008). Visitor and non-visitor images of Central and Eastern Europe: a qualitative analysis, International Journal of Tourism Research, 10, 27-40.
Hughes, H. L., and Allen, D. (2009). Central and Eastern Europe and EU accession 2004: views of the impact on tourism, Tourism and Hospitality Research, 9(3), 185-198.
Jeong, M., and Jeon, M. M. (2008). Customer reviews of hotel experiences through consumer generated media (CGM), Journal of Hospitality and Leisure Marketing, 17(1/2), 121-138.
Law, R., and Cheung, S. (2010). The perceived destination image of Hong Kong as revealed in the travel blogs of mainland Chinese tourists, International Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Administration, 11(4), 303-327.
Lockyer, T. L. G. (2007). The International Hotel Industry: Sustainable Management. New York: The Haworth Press.
Madlberger, M. (2014). I am off then: drivers of travellers’ intentions to book trips online. An integrated study on technology acceptance and satisfaction. Paper presented at the Web Information Systems and Technology Conference (WEBIST) 2014, Barcelona, Spain.
Melián-González, S., Bulchand-Gidumal, J., and López-Valcárcel, B. G. (2013). Online customer reviews of hotels: as participation increases, better evaluation is obtained, Cornell Hospitality Quarterly, 54(3), 274-283.
Miao, Q., and Li, Q. (2010). Fine-grained opinion mining by integrating multiple review sources, Journal of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, 61(11), 2288-2299.
Ong, B. S. (2012). The perceived influence of user reviews in the hospitality industry, Journal of Hospitality Marketing and Management, 21(5), 463-485.
Puczko, L., and Ratz, T. (2006). Product development and diversification in Hungary. In Hall, D., Smith, M. & Marciszweska, B. (Eds.), Tourism in the New Europe: The Challenges and Opportunities of EU Enlargement (pp. 116-126). Wallingford, UK: CABI.
Ramanathan, R. (2012). An exploratory study of marketing, physical and people related performance criteria in hotels, International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 24(1), 44-61.
Spritzer, D. A. (2005). Russian revolution, Travel Weekly: The Choice of Travel Professionals, April 2005, 52-53.
Tavitiyaman, P., and Qu, H. (2013). Destination image and behavior intention of travelers to Thailand: the moderating effect of perceived risk, Journal of Travel and Tourism Marketing, 30(3), 169-185.
Tripadvisor. (2014). About TripAdvisor, retrieved July 14, 2014 from http://www.tripadvisor.com/PressCenter-c6-About_Us.html
Worldbank. (2014). International tourism, number of arrivals, retrieved July 14, 2014 from http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/ST.INT.ARVL
Downloads
Published
How to Cite
Issue
Section
License
The JEECAR journal allows the author(s) to hold the copyright and publishing rights of their own manuscript without restrictions.
This journal applies the Creative Attribution Common License to works we publish, and allows reuse and remixing of its content, in accordance with a CC-BY 4.0 license.
Authors are free to: Share — copy and redistribute the material in any medium or format and Adapt — remix, transform, and build upon the material for any purpose, even commercially.
Under the following terms: Attribution — You must give appropriate credit, provide a link to the license, and indicate if changes were made. You may do so in any reasonable manner, but not in any way that suggests the licensor endorses you or your use.
No additional restrictions — The author may not apply legal terms or technological measures that legally restrict others from doing anything the license permits.
The JEECAR Journal is committed to the editorial principles of all aspects of publication ethics and publication malpractice as assigned by the Committee on Public Ethics.
