Browsing by Author "Wang, Dan"

Now showing 1 - 7 of 7
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    Daily online review sentiment and hotel performance
    Nicolau, Juan Luis; Xiang, Zheng; Wang, Dan (Emerald, 2023-05-10)
    Purpose: This paper aims to investigate the links between daily review sentiment and the hotel performance measures of occupancy rate (OR), average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR). Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted review sentiment analyses in three moments (−1, −7 and −14 days) before arrival time using a data set of budget hotel performance and online reviews. The aim was to identify the effect of review sentiment in the budget hotel market on the three performance metrics. Findings: Daily sentiment positively affects ADR and negatively affects OR and RevPAR, but only up to a certain threshold, after which the trend reverses. Prices increase with the level of sentiment, and high prices lead to low OR and RevPAR only when the sentiment scores are low. When they are high, they are associated with low rates, which lead to high OR and RevPAR. Research limitations/implications: Daily review sentiment can be viewed as a valuable “barometer” indicating a hotel’s daily operational effectiveness. Daily sentiment can thus allow hotel managers to adjust their dynamic pricing strategies more accurately. Originality/value: This study identifies daily sentiment as an alternative predictor of hotel performance. In addition to the roles of valence and volume in the decision-making process, the authors found that daily review sentiment can be an “in-the-moment” factor with a high impact, encouraging consumers to complete their transactions. This study suggests that aggregated measures such as the total number of reviews and overall ratings of the hotel should not be the sole consideration in reputation management.
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    The effectiveness of tryvertising in hotels
    Lei, Sut Ieng; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Xiao, Qu; Wang, Dan (Elsevier, 2020-02-01)
    Advertising has been a common practice to promote products and services in the tourism and hospitality industry. Although ample research has investigated customers’ perceptions of and reactions to advertising visuals, direct experience advertising strategies, such as tryvertising have been ignored. As an emerging direct experience approach, tryvertising has been increasingly used in tourism and hospitality businesses especially in hotels. This study explores the effectiveness of tryvertising practices on customer purchase behaviors in hotel settings. Two real data sets that combine 6858 records of customers’ hotel stays and guestroom products purchase transactions were obtained from a hotel management company that uses tryvertising strategies in China. The results from a Heckit model analysis determine the potential factors that affect hotel guests’ likelihood to buy and the amount of money spent on products promoted through tryvertising. This study fills this void in the current literature that focuses on traditional mass advertisements and behavioral intentions rather than actual purchase behaviors. It contributes to the literature with empirical evidence of the impact of tryvertising strategies on consumer behaviors in a hotel context. Managerial implications are suggested for practitioners to customize their tryvertising strategies.
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    Imbrications of IT and Hospitality Organizations
    Wang, Dan; Wang, Jigang; Xiang, Zheng (2021-10-01)
    The impact of information technology (IT) on the hospitality and tourismindustry has been extensively documented in the last two decades. However, what happens during the adoption process and to the organization over time due to changes in IT is unclear. This study applies the lens of “imbrication,” stemming from Giddens' theory of structuration, to examine the interactions between a casino resort in Macau, China and the use of customer relations management systems over 20 years (1997–2017). The processes of imbrications of IT and people reveal the social construction of reality. This paper expands our scope of knowledge on organizations' integration of IT by offering a window into the complex, recurrent nature of IT adoption in hospitality and tourism industry.
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    The impact of distribution channels on budget hotel performance
    Lei, Soey Sut Ieng; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Wang, Dan (Elsevier, 2019-08-01)
    While distribution channels substantially influence revenue management for hotels, previous studies have rarely provided empirical evidence for the impact of different use of distribution channels on hotel performance. This study investigates the current practice of distribution management in the budget hotel industry in China. Using a data set from the operation of budget hotels in multiple cities in China and two-stage least square regression analysis, the results demonstrate the impact of different distribution channels and their combinations on RevPAR. This study provides insights for distribution management in budget hotel market.
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    Price determinants of sharing economy based accommodation rental: A study of listings from 33 cities on Airbnb.com [Summary]
    Wang, Dan; Nicolau, Juan Luis (Virginia Tech, 2017-04)
    The advent of the “sharing economy” challenges not only the business of hotel industry but also the theories and models based on the conventional hotel industry. A key dimension of the hospitality industry is pricing. The aim of this study is to identify the price determinants of sharing economy based accommodation offers in the digital marketplace.
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    Three Essays on Contextual Effects in Traveler's Use of Online Reviews
    Shin, Seunghun (Virginia Tech, 2021-05-28)
    Tourists' information processing is a dynamic process in that their information use depends on the surrounding context. From tourists' personal characteristics (e.g., age, gender, and travel experience), nature of tourism products (e.g., intangibility and variability), to the development of information technology (e.g., the prevalent usage of mobile devices for information search), a variety of contextual factors are involved when tourists process information for decision-making. Given the importance of online reviews in the hospitality and tourism field as information sources, this dissertation aims to understand the contextual effects of online reviews on tourists' decision-making. By selecting several contextual factors, three independent and interrelated essays examine how tourists' cognitive or behavioral responses to online reviews are affected by those factors. Considering that local search (e.g., looking for nearby restaurants by using "restaurants near me" as a search query) becomes an important context for using online reviews, both Study 1 and 2 focus on the local search context. Study 1 investigates the role of online reviews in the local search context; specifically, how online reviews are used as ranking factors by local search platforms (LSPs), is examined with an analytical approach. Study 2 investigates tourists' processing of online reviews in the local search context; specifically, how online reviews are differently processed in the local search context (e.g., searching for a restaurant that can be visited immediately) compared with the non-local context (e.g., searching for a restaurant that can be visited in a month), is examined by conducting an experiment. Building on Study 2, Study 3 investigates how tourists' processing of online reviews is affected by another contextual factor, the nature of tourism products; specifically, how the variability of tourism products (i.e., their change in quality over time) influences the way tourists process online reviews, is examined through social media analytics. Results of the three essays provide empirical support for the underlying argument of this dissertation: understanding tourists' responses to online reviews depends on factors that transcend their information characteristics. As a whole, the findings of this dissertation suggest the need for considering the surrounding context to further understand how online reviews affect tourists' decision-making. As practical implications, this dissertation discusses the importance of leveraging various types of information about tourists' context (e.g., location accessed from smartphones, and physiological condition accessed through smartwatches).
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    Videoconferencing continuance and business trip reduction in the post-pandemic age
    Wang, Dan; Nicolau, Juan Luis; Deng, Zhiming (Elsevier, 2024-04-01)
    Videoconferencing (VC) software was widely adopted by organizations during the COVID-19 pandemic to maintain business communication during the suspension of business travel. In the post-pandemic age, will organizations continue to use VC software, and how will VC continuance influence the number of business trips? We conceptualize business travel as a communication problem and conduct an empirical study to investigate the use of VC during the COVID-19 pandemic and its impact on future business travel. We identify the technology–organization–environment framework as a theoretical tool to guide our research design. Using a sample of business managers in Hong Kong and the United States and the seemingly unrelated regression methodology, we identify the relative advantage, top management, and competition intensity factors that support VC continuance and business trip reduction in the post-pandemic age. This study enhances research on information systems continuance and provides practical implications for business trip planning.