Hotel online pricing policy: A review and a regional case study

This paper provides a literature review on hotel online pricing policy. The review covers pricing strategies from three different perspectives: demand, supply and regional characteristics. From the demand side, the reviewed literature shows that electronic word-of-mouth (e-WOM) influences hotel room revenue and overall performance. Also, e-WOM represents key information for hotel managers to understand customers’ needs as well their degree of satisfaction and loyalty. Notably, reputation, built on online customers’ reviews, has an increasing role in online pricing policy. On the supply side, research is still scarce and mostly anchored to the standard competition framework. The review reveals that hotel pricing strategy requires more innovation within a rather volatile and dynamic online market. Besides, through a statistical analysis, this paper generalizes further the finding that hotel online pricing policy is highly influenced by overall accessibility to and mobility within a region.