Research On Antecedents Of Hotel Online Sales

With the development of internet，more and more hotels begin to sale rooms in onlineplatform and ordering online has become a new consumption mode which is popular amongconsumers. The existing researches on antecedents of online sales mainly concentrate in acertain direction. For example, some western scholars have studied the effect ofWord-of-Mouth (WOM) on sales online. However, there are varieties of factors they willrefer to make a purchase decision from consumers’ points of view. Among these factors，price and consumers’ ratings are of great importance. On the basis of the existing researches,we have collected some common information, such as price, discount, rating and number ofrating, to get a multiple regression to better explain the influential factors for sales online.On the basis of existing literatures, this paper put forward some hypothesis about howprice, discount and rating of Word-of-Mouth affect online sales. Using data collected from302hotels in the Pearl River Delta, the results of multiple regressions get some conclusionsas follows.Firstly, a multiple regression about hotel sales online and its factors is available. Price,discount, rating are proved to be antecedents of hotel online sales. Low price and heavydiscount can encourage consumers to reserve rooms online.Secondly, the results show that class of hotels has a moderating effect on therelationship between discount and room online sales. A heavy discount of four or five starshotels is more attractive for consumers than the same discount of two or three star hotelssales. So it is more possible that purchase upgrades take place in online platforms. Becauseonline platforms offer more heavy discount rooms of each star of hotel than offline.Consumers tend to reserve a higher class hotel when four or five star hotels offer a heavydiscount.Thirdly, the results about the relationship between Word-of-Mouth and room onlinesales are different from prior researches. The data shows that a quadratic relationship ismore suitable to fit the relationship between rating and sales online than a linear regression. This means Word-of-Mouth is not always a stimulant factor for online sales but also asuppressant factor when rating is higher than a certain value. We empirically find out thisvalue in Agoda. This conclusion is different from that of western countries most of whichbelieve Word-of-Mouth is a stimulant factor for online sales. On the other hand, the effectof variance of rating on sales online is not significant, which means that consumers in Chinaare not sensitive to the consistency of WOM.The main contributions of this paper are to find the widely explained multipleregression of hotel online sales of the Pearl River Delta and give hotel operators somesuggestions based on Chinese market. Room sales online could be judged based on thehotel’s room price, discount, rating and star. The manager of the hotel could adjust theirsales strategies to increase sales according to the conclusions. Secondly, the study havefound that the effect of discount on room online sales is more influential for four or fivestars hotels and consumers tend to order more advanced hotel faced heavy discount. Thisconclusion is helpful for hotel operators to make different marketing tactics for different starof hotels. Thirdly, the study have found the two sides effect of WOM on sales online andcalculate the turning point of different effect of rating, which complements the existingresearches. The diverted U-shape effect of rating reflects that consumers question the scoreshigher than their expectation and tell hotel managers to get rid of the blind pursuit of highscores.