Online Reviews : Problem Solving And Engagement At Hotel, By Sun Young Park And Jonathan P. Allen

The article, “Responding to Online Reviews: Problem Solving and Engagement in Hotels”, by Sun-Young Park and Jonathan P. Allen addresses hotel responses to Internet comments and how such reaction affect customer perceptions. It demonstrated that responses to reviews varied significantly by hotel, but by responding positively, hotels build customer relations. I selected this topic and article because I have a passion for the hotel industry and research shows that hotel response to online comments affect revenues (Vermeulen and Seegers, 2009, p. 123), thus this would help me make informed business decisions in the future. Out of the many articles on the topic, I chose this one because it included four case studies each with a slightly different philosophy, is peer reviewed, was published within the last five years, and referenced multiple other peer reviewed sources, therefore I felt that it was the most balanced, accurate, and well vested of the articles I have seen. Through a literature review of peer-reviewed research on consumer’s perspectives of hotel responses, or lack of responses, to comments and the value of addressing comments, along with interviews and a comparative case study research model, the journal compared two hotels that actively responded to online comments with two that did not. It found that hotels varied in how they valued comments. Some saw them as only representative of extreme ideas, which is why these hotels rarely to never responded to comments,