TrustYou, the inventor of the Meta-Review™ and global online reputation management leader, and Donna Quadri-Felitti, Director of the School of Hospitality Management at Pennsylvania State University, have released the results of a study to understand which hotel attributes have the biggest impact on travelers’ booking decisions. The study used heat-mapping technology to understand which attributes prompted hotel bookings in eight different travel contexts (business travel, family vacation, etc.).
Findings show the complexity of the booking process. To be within a traveler’s consideration set, hotels must provide basics like cleanliness and comfort, which are the self-reported most important factors in determining where to stay. However, when presented review “snippets” or excerpts within a booking scenario, travelers often choose a hotel based on other factors relevant to the context in which they are traveling, such as great WiFi for business trips or wonderful rooms when planning a romantic getaway.
“Hotels must understand what travelers want and need in a hotel when making their booking decisions,” says Quadri-Felitti. “These self-reported important attributes like cleanliness and comfort are required for a hotel to be a part of a traveler’s consideration set. Once a hotel becomes part of the traveler’s consideration set by delivering on the “must haves,” it can then focus on attributes that actually trigger a traveler to book.”
Valuable findings include:
- The nine most important hotel attributes broken out for leisure travelers and business travelers (i.e., service, amenities, food, etc.)
Click to download the study: TrustYou
Click to read full article: Hotel Online
