To be similar or to be different? The effect of hotel managers’ rote response on subsequent reviews

Hotel managers increasingly compose rote responses (e.g., similar responses repeated from prior responses) to reviews when dealing with customers' opinions while improving efficiency and saving cost. However, such responses may be ineffective because they are unspecific and add little information to reviewers' comments. To address this dilemma, we examine the degree of managers' rote responses to identify the similarity of managers' response texts. Basing on panel data of 334,671 reviews and 169,794 manager responses from 868 hotels in TripAdvisor, we find that customers leave fewer reviews and lower review valence during the subsequent month, when the level of roteness of managers’ responses is higher. However, rote responses only decrease the volume of subsequent positive reviews but have no influence on the volume of negative reviews. Moreover, such effects are weaker for chain hotels than for independent ones. Therefore, managers should differentiate their responses to online reviews, particularly for independent hotels.