To respond or to wait? The effect of customer review differentiation on hotel response priority

Hotels typically pay close attention to customer reviews, which serve as a crucial channel for customers to voice their opinions on online travel platforms. However, hotels’ information processing capabilities are usually limited. Among numerous customer reviews, which voices prompt hotels to respond immediately and which they choose to wait on remains unclear. To answer this question, we examine the effects of customer review differentiation on hotel response priority using data scraped from TripAdvisor. Our findings indicate that reviews with content more different from others are more likely to elicit proactive hotel responses, and this effect is amplified when they also convey strong negative emotions. However, reviews with positive emotions stronger than others are less likely to be addressed. Such effects are stronger in premium than budget hotels. We also conduct additional analysis to explore whether hotels should adjust their response priority. Our study makes important contributions to hotel management response.