LAUSR

This study assesses the moderating effect of hotel class on managerial responses’ influence on hotel performance through the lens of data analytics. A panel data model was applied to analyze 7,979 managerial responses and 51,801 online reviews on TripAdvisor, which were matched with the financial performance data (revenue per available room [RevPAR]) for 2,652 hotels in 427 cities in Texas over 26 consecutive quarters from 2005 to 2011. The results suggest that even though all hotels will be able to observe an increase of RevPAR as they post more managerial responses to online reviews, above-average and luxury hotels in particular benefit from managerial responses in longer length and provided by frontline managers, whereas full-service, mid-market economy, and budget traveler hotels benefit from executives’ responses. In addition, the speed of responses is important for full-service and above-average hotels, and conciseness of responses is critical to budget traveler hotels. This study provided important yet specific implications on how hotels can benefit from different types of managerial response strategies according to their product characteristics (hotel class). It also adds to hospitality and online review literature with new theoretical perspectives on the varying effect of managerial responses on business performance specific to the lodging industry context.