The determinants of online hotel reservation

Abstract

In this paper, we identify the determinant of online hotel reservation using data from one of the biggest online hotel booking website. We find that online customer rating significantly affects the hotel reservation while the star rating does not increase popularity of the hotels. Furthermore, increase in prices leads to decrease in sales as we expected. Regression result allows us to quantify the relationship between these variables and online reservation as well. The managerial implication of these results is that hotels should strive to please customer as their future revenue depends on the satisfaction of past users. This study also guides hotel management to forecast their sales based on online rating and other features of hotel.