Electronic word of mouth management in lodging industry: The case of hotels in Manavgat

Service industry is intensively effected from today's tough competitive environment. Lodging sector can be defined as a sector in which customer oriented approaches become prominent mostly. As in every sector in lodging sector issues like customer feedbacks, narrating customer experiences to other potential customers, providing high customer satisfaction and transmitting the data about that customer satisfaction to other potential customers has had more critical importance. From this point of view, this thesis investigates the electronic word of mouth marketing management of hotels in Manavgat region. The aim of this research is to determine how hotel businesses manage electronic word of mouth communication and marketing processes. In this direction, qualitative research design was adopted and in-depth interviews were conducted. Interviews were held with the general manager or public relations managers of a total of 21 hotel businesses operating in the Manavgat region. The questions are asked in the semi-structured interview form adopted from the literature review to eWOM management tourism industry The results of the research has revealed that hotel managements carefully manage the electronic word-of-mouth communication processes, usually an employee of the hotel business controls online communication channels by general director and carries out the necessary activities. Hotel businesses state that consumer reviews on social media platforms affect the number of customers and room prices of hotels. Hotel businesses offer various incentives to customers who evaluate hotels on social media platforms. In case of negative reviews about hotels, hotel businesses stated that they follow various compensation policies such as discounts and gifts. It is important for hotel businesses to carefully monitor and manage customer interactions on social media platforms and choose the way of getting services from professional businesses for various media sharing on social media platforms. However, to aim of solving the problems shared by the customers in their social media posts is an important element in terms of service quality.