The Effects of Social Media and Webcare Strategies on Hotel Attitude and Booking Intentions

In order to minimize the effects of NWOM, companies have begun to make their presence known in social media by searching for and responding to comments about their brand in consumer posts through ‘webcare’. The purpose of this paper is to determine if the presence of accommodative or defensive webcare is considered appropriate across two different types of social media - a social networking site and a travel review site. The empirical study is applied to the tourism and hospitality industry. A 2x3 (type of social media x type of managerial response) experimental design is conducted in the context of online hotel reviews. The results suggest that it is better for managers to respond to complaints online, but the type of response varies depending on the social media type.