The moderating effects e-WOM on the relationship between E-service quality and online hotel booking intention

Abstract

Growing competitiveness in the marketplace pushes the hoteliers to fully take advantage of their website as marketing tools. The internet are playing an increasing important role as information sources for travellers and online reviews reconstruct the decision making process. The main objective of this research is to investigate the relationship between e-service quality model (website design, usability, information, trust and empathy) towards online hotel booking intention which in this case, Hotel A as the target hotel. Besides, this study also tested the moderating effect of online reviews (eWOM) on the relationship between e-service quality and online hotel booking intention. A total of 120 questionnaires were distributed to the UTM students as the target respondents of this research. Referring to the nature of this research which is the experimental design research, the respondents has been divided into three group, 40 respondents answered without any influence of eWOM, 40 respondents with the influence of positive eWOM and another 40 respondents with negative eWOM. Correlation, regression and hierarchical regression were used to analyze the data. The finding showed that the overall ESQ model influence the intention of the customers to book the hotel through online while the negative review has stronger effect on the intention compared to positive review. To improve consumer online hotel booking intention, the hoteliers should provide service with high service quality and also giving attention and taking action on how to solve the blooming of the online reviews that in this era, influencing customer’s booking intention the most. This study provides valuable insight on the impact of ESQ model towards online hotel booking intention and the contribution of eWOM on customer’s intention.