Hotel's Responses Toward on Line Complaints

The purpose of this study was to explore the reactions of hotels towards on line complaining behavior of unsatisfied customers. The rational of this study was based on the fact that the majority of research within the service failure and service recovery fields has been in the context of off line service encounter rather than on line platform. In fact, in the era of e-commerce, customers increasingly involve information and technology in their product and service consumptions. Indeed, from searching information, deciding, purchasing, consuming, spreading information about their experience using on line media. As such, business firms need to understand the on line behavior of their customers and how to response. Using a qualitative approach toward 81 online complaints about hotel services in Indonesia, it was found that not many hotels engaged in the on line conversation. Such efforts were made dominantly by higher star rated hotels. The most frequent type of reaction was apology. Some hotels include explanation with regard to the case, however merely apologized. Only a few hotels offered discounted room rate or voucher for next visit. Interestingly, the amount of discount seems to be adequate as customers perceived a discount of less than 10% to be considered not meaningful. Managerial implications and directions for future research are presented.