Average scores integration in official star rating scheme

Abstract

Purpose

Evidence suggests that electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) plays a highly influential role in decision-making when booking hotel rooms. The number of online sources where consumers can obtain information on hotel ratings provided has grown exponentially. Hence, a number of companies have developed average scores to summarize this information and to make it more easily available to consumers. Furthermore, official star rating schemes are starting to provide these commercially developed average scores to complement the information their schemes offer. The purpose of this paper is to examine the robustness of these systems.

Design/methodology/approach

Average scores from different systems, and the scores provided by one rating site were collected for 200 hotels and compared.

Findings

Findings suggested important differences in the ratings and assigned descriptive word across websites.

Research limitations/implications

The results imply that the application of average scores by official organizations is not legitimate and identifies a research gap in the area of consumer and star rating standardization.

Originality/value

The paper is of value to the industry and academia related to the examination of rating scales adopted by major online review tourism providers. Evidence of malpractice has been identified and the adoption of this type of scales by official star rating schemes is questioned.

研究目的

事实证明线上口碑效应（eWOM）在酒店房间预定决策中占有重要位置。消费者能够获取的酒店评定的在线资源已经显著增长。因此, 一些公司已经研发出一套均值评定技术来整合这些信息, 为消费者提供更容易掌握的信息资源。此外, 官方星级评级策略已经开始通过这些商家开发的均值整合技术来完善其星级评定结果。这也就导向了对这些评定系统的科学性提出疑问, 本论文旨在解决这方面的研究。

研究设计/方法/途径

研究样本包括200家酒店的不同系统均值信息和同一评定网站的评定信息。本论文对其两种来源的评定信息进行了对比。

研究结果

研究发现不同网站的评级和给与的描述语言差别很大。

研究理论限制/意义

研究结果表明采用官方机构指定的均值整合系统并不是合理的, 并指出了消费者和星级评定标准方面的研究有着很大的理论缺口。

研究原创性/价值

本论文对于行业和学术界在大型在线旅游评价网站提供的评定信息方面有很重要的价值。研究事实表明行业错误规范真正存在, 对于采用官方星级评定系统的这种评价存在质疑。

关键词

关键词 eWOM、酒店、均值评定、星级评定系统、在线评论

Citation

Mellinas, J.P. and Reino, S. (2019), "Average scores integration in official star rating scheme", Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, Vol. 10 No. 3, pp. 339-350. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTT-07-2017-0050