Exploring the comparative importance of online hotel reviews’ heuristic attributes in review helpfulness: a conjoint analysis approach

Online travel reviews have become increasingly important as a result of the intangible and heterogeneous characteristics of the tourism industry as well as the recent diffusion of social media. This exploratory case study intends to examine the comparative importance of the six heuristic attributes (reviewer location, reviewer level, reviewer helpful vote, review rating, review length, and review photo) with respect to review helpfulness in the online hotel review context. Moreover, the salience of the individual levels within each review attribute and the importance of the attributes in positive and negative review-rating groups are compared. In total, 1,158 reviews of a hotel on TripAdvisor were collected and analyzed through conjoint analyses. This study found that the review rating and reviewer helpful vote attributes are the two most important factors. Finally, three major propositions are suggested based on findings of the study, and several theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.