Impact of Online Customer Reviews on Purchase Intention of Hotel Packages with Special Reference to Western Province Residence in Sri Lanka

Abstract

Normally consumers 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 the intangibility and heterogeneity of tourism services. In today's ever-dominant online society dominated by mobile device usage and search results, word of mouth has been replaced by social media and online review websites. Lack of bad reviews, good reviews, or critiques can make or break a business and it is essential to understand their impact. A lot of opinions on hotels, travel destinations and services are often provided in the form of online consumer reviews. But when it comes to the Sri Lankan context, there is a lack of information on how indicators of online customer reviews to make their purchase decisions. Having recognized this gap, this study was designed to investigate the influence of consumer online reviews on purchase intention hotel packages. For the study, independent variables were examined with their impact on purchasing intention. The four independent variables examined in the study are source reliability, timeliness, the validity of reviews, and the length of reviews. All alternative hypotheses were accepted and those variables were a significant positive impact on the purchase intention of hotel packages. To test the hypotheses, the correlation was calculated and regression analysis has been processed to determine the impact.