The analysis of the criteria affecting the hotel preferences according to the hotel reviews on travel blog site Tripadvisor

Following the large-scale developments in information technologies, social networking sites which have a wide range of usage across the world and blogs, where information sharing is the most intense in terms of such social networking sites, have become very important in the tourism sector as well as in every other field. The tourism sector has become the fastest developing sector under the influence of the world economy in parallel to these developments and one of the most affected sectors accordingly. Majority of extraneous income is obtained from this sector, which makes tourism sector highly important for Turkey, along with its popularity. Furthermore, the change in customer preferences in the tourism sector has been driven by the transfer of changing marketing strategies through digital channels to social media, the impact of comments, opinions and suggestions on social networking sites and blogs. A number of studies have been conducted in recent years on the impact of online customer comments on purchasing behavior and it has been claimed that these comments play a crucial role in the consumers' purchasing decision process. In this study, the effects of the criteria obtained by the content analysis on the star ratings given to the hotels on TripAdvisor – an advanced travel blog site in this field – are examined with "Panel Data Analysis" method. In this context, the hotels in Mediterranean Region, Aegean Region, Istanbul and Cappadocia, which all have an important place in the Turkish tourism sector, are examined; and 100 hotels in total, with maximum 25 comments for each region in TripAdvisor site, are selected and then the subject of the study is analyzed with 48,000 comments belonging to these hotels. As a result of the content analysis performed, the criteria of architectural structure of hotels, general cleaning services, food and beverage facilities within the concept, staff and service quality, entertainment and animation services, location and transportation facilities and the level of being recommended by other users are determined. In addition, it has been determined that each criterion has different significance levels for these four regions and it has been concluded that these criteria have a significant impact on star ratings given to hotels. Keywords: Social Networking Sites, Blogs, TripAdvisor, Content Analysis, Panel Data Analysis