Abstract:
Modern tourism is focused in developing and encompassing a growing number
of new destinations. These factors have made tourism as one of the key drivers
in socio-economic progress. Normally consumers don’t like to perceive more
risks which associated with purchasing tourism services because they cannot
easily evaluate tourism destinations and services before they make the
consumption due to intangibility and heterogeneity of tourism services. But
with the development of web 2.0 applications, consumer-generated media has
increased transforming word-of-mouth communications into different types of
electronic communities allowing tourists to gain information on different
destinations and hotels easier. But when it comes to Sri Lankan context, there
is lack of information on how tourists use these indicators of online customer
reviews to make their purchase decisions. Having recognized this knowledge
gap, this study was designed to investigate the influence of consumer online
reviews on hotel booking intention of Sri Lanka tour packages. Online reviews,
the independent variable divide into five dimensions and examined the
influence of the consumer online reviews on dependent variable, with
reference to Sri Lanka tour packages. Primary data collected through a well structured questionnaire. Researcher selected 100 respondents (both male and
female) who have booked tour packages in Sri Lanka depending on or not
online consumer reviews. Regression analysis used to examine impacts of
these attributes upon travelers’ online booking intention. Five features of
online reviews contents were identified namely Valence, Usefulness,
Timeliness, Comprehensiveness and Volume. Regression analysis results
testified positive relationship between Valence, Timeliness and respondents’
online booking intention. A negative relationship was identified between
Volume, Usefulness, Comprehensiveness and online booking intention.
Comprehensiveness in examining features of review content is a major
theoretical contribution of this study. This study also generated areas worthy
of more research efforts for practitioners and researchers.
