Abstract

Successful operation of hotels and their development depends on satisfying customer needs. The Internet has brought significant changes in everyday life. It creates new opportunities and challenges in a world that is constantly changing but also for companies that operate in it. The Internet has also significantly changed the operating environment of the hotel industry. The objective of this article is to determine the link between online customer reviews expressing the quality of hotels and the willingness of customers to recommend the accommodation, based on the research conducted within the Visegrad Group. In view of the existing research gap on factors affecting customer satisfaction in accommodation facilities, the article helps to broaden the theoretical basis of the issue and helps hotel and accommodation establishments to establish marketing strategies that will lead to a better understanding of indicators affecting their customers’ satisfaction. Research is based on customer reviews of hotel services published by Expedia.com, which focus on rating hotels in the Visegrad countries. Within the selected hotel ratings, we used automatic data collection for monitored variables (ratings). 345175 ratings have been analysed for 1500 hotels. The focus was on the percentage of guests recommending hotels in relation to selected variables. Data collection took place in the first half of 2017. The outputs of our research point to the fact that in the Visegrad Group countries there is a significant impact of specific variables expressing the quality of the hotel on the percentage of customers recommending the accommodation. Hotels that have a marketing philosophy primarily or secondarily built for achieving a good reputation should not neglect activities that have a positive effect on Room cleanliness, Service and staff, Room comfort or Hotel condition as they reflect the increasing value of the recommendation in the theoretical but especially practical, and thus a steadily increasing competitive advantage.

Keywords: tourism, reputation, marketing communication, hotels, Visegrad Group.

JEL Classification: M30, M34.

Cite as: Bacik, R., Kmeco, L., Richard, F., Olearova, M., & Rigelsky, M. (2019). Marketing instrument of improving hotel management service: evidence of Visegrad group countries. Marketing and Management of Innovations, 1, 208-220. https://doi.org/10.21272/mmi.2019.1-17

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License

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