The role of the electronic word-of-mouth in the hotel industry

In the digital age, electronic word-of-mouth plays a role extremely important for the hospitality industry. Due to the intangibility of the tourism product, travelers need to seek information in order to reduce the perceived risk. They usually compare different options and search for accurate and reliable information to make choices, such as user-generated contents. Moreover, tourists pay much more attention to digital platforms that foster interaction and information exchange between users. This study aims to investigate, through an online questionnaire, the managerial behavior of 103 hotels of the province of Rimini towards the electronic word-of-mouth phenomenon. The findings highlight the proactive attitude of hotels towards the phenomenon, to increase the booking and to improve the service quality. The study conducted provides hints of originality because it filled some gaps emerging in the literature regarding the dealing with responses, the stimulation of generating comments, and the impact of online reviews on hotel performance.