Exploring the effects of official-structured managerial responses on hotel online popularity

As a burgeoning mode of service management, online managerial response has become a critical aspect driving consumer online engagement and hotel performance improvement. Nevertheless, managerial response strategy, especially presentation style, is rarely studied. With a mixed method approach that includes the use of secondary data and experimental analyses, we investigate how the official-structured presentation style of managerial response affects the volume of online reviews and online ratings, which represent hotel online popularity, and the moderating effect of managerial response speed. Results indicate that 1) responding to consumers in the official-structured text increases the volume of online reviews, 2) responding to consumers in an official-structured style increases online ratings, and 3) response speed as an indicator of management effort enhances the effect of managerial response’s official-structured style on hotel popularity. Aside from expanding the literature on managerial response strategy and hospitality marketing, our findings also provide important implications for hospitality administrators and marketers.