Negative eWOM Management: How Do Hotels Turn Challenges into Opportunities?

In this digital age, the Internet provides angry consumers an easy means to vent their dissatisfaction. Negative communications shared among consumers exert a strong and destructive influence on hospitality business. The aim of this empirical study is to explore how upscale and luxury hotels in Hong Kong manage negative electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) and turn the challenges into opportunities. Findings reveal that hotel managers perceived eWOM not only affects hotel reputation and business revenue, but also makes the management of customer expectation difficult. When developing a personalized management response to address customer feedback, hotel managers face the challenges of limited information about the incident and the complainer. Records of daily operations and documented incidents become good sources of internal information that facilitate effective investigation by hotel managers and fair judgments. Hotel managers also examine the demographic information, travel experiences, and records of the reviews the customers published on eWOM sites to ascertain the kind of customers involved and why these customers experience dissatisfaction. Positive eWOM motivates the management and the team to keep up their good work, whereas negative eWOM is customer-driven learning that drives hotels to identify the problems and make continuous improvement. Practical recommendations are made for eWOM management.