An Exploratory Study of Travelers' Use of Online Reviews and Recommendations

Abstract

Travelers are increasingly turning to online reviews and recommendations to plan trips. This article investigates the sources and types of online travel reviews and recommendations, and examines the heuristics used by subjects when making travel decisions. The results of this study indicated that those reviews and recommendations come from peer travelers, third parties, or travel companies; they can be categorized into text-based recommendations, symbolic recommendation, numerical ratings, or narrative reviews. Also, the results indicated that the subjects used several heuristics to make their decisions.