Stars, diamonds, and other shiny things: The use of expert and consumer feedback in the hotel industry

Over the past few years, researchers have studied the topic of online consumer feedback. Most of these studies focus on consumer decision making, and managing a hotel's image. Consequently, more research could explore consumer-generated feedback from the viewpoint of hotel operations and service quality improvement. The present research explored the ways in which hotel General Managers use feedback from consumers (namely online), experts, and internal sources to improve service quality. A combination of a quantitative survey and qualitative interviews were utilized. The study targeted General Managers of upscale hotels. Quantitative data was analyzed using multiple and simple regression analysis, correlations, and ANOVA. Results demonstrate that General Managers pay unequal amounts of time and effort to evaluating the various types of feedback. Furthermore, there were also significant differences in the perceived reliability of each source. The present research discovered a strong link between customer satisfaction survey scores and online reviews, as reported by General Managers. The reviews of consumers and experts also displayed significant relationships.