An eye-tracking study of hotel search behaviour has revealed the attributes at the heart of decision making by leisure and busienss travellers.
The research was carried out by online reputation management provider TrustYou in conjunction with the school of hospitality management at Pennsylvania State University.
Respondents were asked to view a snippet of a hotel review on various websites and then select a property they would be most likely to buy based on the following factors:
- Room
- Breakfast
- Service
- Wellness
- Wifi
- Food
- Cleanliness
- Amenities
- Comfort
Against those factors, leisure travellers were analysed on the following trip scenarios:
- Romantic beach vacation
- Romantic mountain vacation
- Romantic city vacation
- Casino vacation with friends
- Family beach vacation
- Family city vacation
...with corporate travellers on:
- Business travel in a luxury hotel
- Business travel in a budget hotel
Based on how their browsing behaviour was recorded during the test, the report found out the following...
Leisure travellers are mainly looking for indications of cleanliness and comfort in reviews, with participants rating them 61% and 43% respectively as "extremely important".
Inevitably the results alter when elements such as frequency of travel are taken into consideration.
For example, wifi and wellness facilities are more important to travellers who have taken four or more leisure trips in the past 12 months.
But interestingly, TrustYou found that once placed in the booking cycle, respondents chose hotels based on different attributes.
Other findings include:
- Family travellers focus on the room, with comfort also scoring high.
- Romantic getaway searchers also opted for the room.
- Food scored the highest for travellers in a party.
What about the corporate travellers?
Observations of this group included:
- No significant differences between male and female travellers.
- Comfort and amenities more important to frequent trippers.
Donna Quadri-Felitti, director of the Penn State school, says:
"Hotels must understand what travelers want and need in a hotel when making their booking decisions.
"These self-reported important attributes like cleanliness and comfort are required for a hotel to be a part of a traveler’s consideration set. Once a hotel becomes part of the traveler’s consideration set by delivering on the 'must haves', it can then focus on attributes that actually trigger a traveler to book."
NB:Hotel selfie image via Shutterstock.