This article is about the study "How Travelers Use Online and Social Media Channels to Make Hotel-Choice Decision",released by the Cornell Center for Hospitality research. It is a very interesting study, made by Laura McCarthy, Debra Stock and Rohit Verma.
These article and study explain that many travelers use internet to prepare their trips, to choose their hotels. In this sense, today, when we prepare our travel, we will gather some information from internet search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, ...); social media sites (such as Facebook, Twitter,...); meta-search websites (such as Expedia, Priceline...). It is important to keep in mind that there are other sources of information such as recommendations from friends, family, colleagues...
In regard to this study, based on responses of 2830 recent travelers, it exists some differences in travelers' hotel search process depending on the type of the travel (business or leisure). Indeed, the differences between leisure and business travel are considerable.
In this sense, according to this article and the study, a leisure traveler uses many more sources for hotel information (recommendations from his friends and family, internet search engines, travel related websites, meta-search websites, social media channels, social networks...) than do a business traveler (his company's recommendations or his colleagues' recommendations and, eventually, some research on internet search engines).
Usually, when I prepare a trip, I speak first of all with my friends and family to gather their recommendations (I can do this with facebook, twitter, or in another way), and, then, I make many reseach on Internet (hotel reviews on TripAdvisor ; travel guides; websites as booking.com ; blogs ; ...). I use more and more internet when I prepare a trip.
And you, how do you prepare your stay? Do you use internet to make your hotel choice decision?
It is true that people today tend to do their research and gather as much information as possible before choosing and booking a hotel.
RépondreSupprimerI have booked once a hotel without checking any reviews on the internet, when I arrived to there I was really disappointed with the service. People at the reception were not welcoming, almost rude.
After this bad experience I prefer to consult better twice the reviews on websites such as trip advisor, and also to follow friends and family recommendations before taking any decision of booking a hotel.