The Internet has greatly increased the variety and availability of travel-information sources. In particular, the development of the new Web 2.0 applications has meant the online visual image of hotels is no longer exclusively controlled by hotels themselves. Tourists have increased opportunities to define hotels’ visual image by creating and uploading photos to describe their hotel experience on media-sharing websites. This study intends to explore the differences between the visual images of hotels as presented on hotel websites and as perceived by hotels guests with the aim of analysing the gap that exists between what users consider is important in certain features of hotels and the information that hotels provide to users through photos on their website. This study employs content analysis as its primary method to analyse 1,710 images selected from hotel websites and a media-sharing website (i.e., TripAdvisor). The results demonstrate that website photos from hotels and user-generated photos tend to focus on different hotel attributes. This has important implications for academic research as well for managerial applications.
Hotel Attributes and Visual Image: A Comparison Between Website and User-Generated Photos
VIGOLO, Vania
2015-01-01
Abstract
The Internet has greatly increased the variety and availability of travel-information sources. In particular, the development of the new Web 2.0 applications has meant the online visual image of hotels is no longer exclusively controlled by hotels themselves. Tourists have increased opportunities to define hotels’ visual image by creating and uploading photos to describe their hotel experience on media-sharing websites. This study intends to explore the differences between the visual images of hotels as presented on hotel websites and as perceived by hotels guests with the aim of analysing the gap that exists between what users consider is important in certain features of hotels and the information that hotels provide to users through photos on their website. This study employs content analysis as its primary method to analyse 1,710 images selected from hotel websites and a media-sharing website (i.e., TripAdvisor). The results demonstrate that website photos from hotels and user-generated photos tend to focus on different hotel attributes. This has important implications for academic research as well for managerial applications.
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