Enhancing the interaction between guests and hotel managers: The value of guest-generated titles

Abstract

Online travel platforms not only help guests make booking decisions by providing online reviews but also serve as interaction channels between them and hotel managers. However, excessive reviews lead to information overload, thus challenging hotel managers in identifying valuable reviews and crafting personalized responses, ultimately preventing them from effectively interacting with guests. Using 384,562 reviews for 2510 hotels on Booking.com, we find that guests exerting additional posting effort tend to upload a guest-generated title, but hotel managers do not prioritize those reviews with guest-generated titles. By measuring these reviews’ title–content similarity and the personalization of managerial responses using a trained support vector machines model, we find that content-related guest-generated titles can help hotel managers craft personalized responses, especially for negative reviews. This research contributes to the literature on guest-generated titles in online travel platforms and provides theoretical and managerial implications for hotel managers and online travel platforms.