5. Conclusions
This study demonstrates that hotel customers report systematically lower (0.162, or approximately 4%) overall satisfaction with the services they receive if they travel for business rather than for leisure.
5.1. Practical implications of the main effect of business travel
This difference has some important practical consequences. It implies that, without any intervention on the part of the infomediation platforms, hotels that primarily serve the business market segment are expected to have a somewhat lower average rating score than their matching leisure-oriented counterparts. Given the role of average ratings in the ordering of search results and hotel selection, such a bias may have serious negative consequences for the competitiveness of business-oriented properties. It seems, however, that the major services have recognized this bias, as they have implemented technical solutions that take travel purpose into account when presenting customers with search results. For instance, TripAdvisor allows customers to filter properties by “style,” and, within the properties, to filter reviews by traveler type, with business being present as an option in each filter. Similarly, Booking.com prompts customers to declare their travel purpose before providing the list of results, and, moreover, allows them to sort the properties based on the average rating assigned for the specific type of travel (with business being one of these), rather than on overall average rating. The rationale for the implementation of these options and filtering tools is perfectly clear in light of the findings of this study, and customers should not ignore them but, rather, should use them wisely to boost their experience.
