COM110 Project – Wiame El Mallahi

Many people nowadays are making hotel reservations online. Doing so provides many benefits, including planning in advance, comparing prices, and choosing from multiple options based on location and budget.

One of the important things that people look at when making these reservations is the ratings and feedback from previous customers. According to an experimental study conducted by Ivar E. Vermeulen and Daphne Seegers, seeing an online hotel review makes people more likely to consider booking that hotel. Even negative reviews can help because they make more people aware that the hotel exists (2009, p. 126). This illustrates that online feedback on services plays a major role in consumer decision-making. 

For centuries, companies have spent large amounts of money on marketing and advertising to promote their products and services. However, in today’s digital age, online reviews can be even more convincing to consumers. 

In a study comparing how consumers perceive advertisements and online reviews, it was found that: “online reviews were perceived to be more credible and lead to stronger attitude towards brand and purchase intention in comparison to advertisement. Even though the information contained in the review and advertisement was same, online review was found to be more persuasive than advertisement” (Dwesar, Rao, 2014, p.30). This suggests that consumers often place greater trust in the experiences of other customers than in information provided directly by a company. 

Because online reviews can influence booking decisions, reservation platforms take measures to ensure that their reviews are legitimate. For example, according to Booking.com’s review guidelines, the platform takes several steps to make its reviews more trustworthy, including only allowing people who booked through the platform to review a property, using automated systems and specialized teams to detect and remove fake reviews, and investigating suspicious reviews reported by users. 

Expedia has similar content guidelines and states that both positive and negative reviews are published as long as they meet its requirements. If a review is found to violate these guidelines, it may be removed, and appropriate action may be taken. 

These measures are important because they help reassure consumers that the reviews they read are based on genuine customer experiences. Knowing that platforms such as Booking.com and Expedia take steps to detect and remove suspicious reviews can give consumers greater confidence when using these sites. 

However, such measures may not always be enough, which makes it important for consumers to be digitally literate and careful about the information they trust online. It is still important to read reviews closely and go through them as thoroughly as possible instead of assuming that every review is completely reliable. 

Consumers should also compare information across different sources rather than relying on a single review or platform. Looking at multiple sources can provide a more complete picture and reduce the chances of making decisions based on misleading information. 

Another factor that consumers can consider when evaluating hotel reviews is the information available about the reviewer. According to Xie, Miao, Kuo, and Lee:

“The presence of PII affects consumers’ hotel booking intention. When the online review is ambivalent, the presence of PII may decrease the booking intention for consumers with a neutral or negative pre-decisional disposition, but may increase the booking intention among consumers with a positive pre-decisional disposition. In other words, the presence of PII affects hotel booking intention through the perceived credibility of the online reviews” (2011, p. 180). 

This suggests that PII can influence consumer’s hotel booking decisions by affecting how credible they perceive a review to be. When identifying information is available, consumers may perceive the review as more credible and therefore give it greater consideration when deciding whether to book the hotel. This applies whether the information in the review encourages or discourages them from making the reservation. Therefore, information about the reviewer can serve as an important credibility cue when consumers evaluate hotel reviews. 

Consumers should also look for suspicious patterns in reviews, such as many reviews being posted around the same time, reviewers with little previous activity, and reviews that lack useful details (Perling, 2024). These signs do not automatically mean a review is fake, but they can indicate that a review deserves a closer look. 

In addition, referring to a guide on evaluating online reviews published by organizations such as the Federal Trade Commission can help consumers learn how to identify fake or misleading reviews. 

Many platforms now offer AI assistants or AI-generated summaries, and while it might be easier to rely on these tools instead of reading through hundreds of reviews, that may not always be a wise thing to do when making a hotel reservation. 

According to an article by Marissa Matozzo, TripAdvisor’s AI features were accused of downplaying negative reviews, with some summaries highlighting positive things even though the hotels had serious negative reviews. The author states: “Another AI-generated summary praised a resort in Turkey for its ‘friendly’ service despite guest reviews alleging repeated sexual harassment by male staff” (Matozzo, 2026). 

This example shows why manually checking reviews instead of relying only on AI-generated summaries can be important. While AI tools can save time, they may sometimes overlook important details or fail to represent reviews accurately. There is also a risk that important context can be lost when hundreds of reviews are condensed into just a few sentences. A summary may highlight certain points while leaving out details that could significantly affect a consumer’s decision. For that reason, consumers should read reviews for themselves rather than depending solely on an AI-generated summary when making a hotel reservation. 

Ultimately, whether consumers are looking at AI-generated summaries or individual reviews, they should not accept the information without question. Making a hotel reservation requires more than simply trusting what appears on the screen. Consumers should think critically about the information they encounter online, compare multiple sources, look for signs of credibility, and look for evidence that supports the claims being made. While technology can make information easier to access and organize, it is still the consumer’s responsibility to evaluate how reliable that information is before making a decision.

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