HKUST Business Review

And what did we find? Asking for reviews did indeed increase the total number of reviews a hotel received, but with significant hidden costs: Organic reviews fell substantially, ratings were inflated with less informative feedback, and reviews became vaguer and less helpful. Soliciting Reviews Boosts Volume and Ratings… But at What Cost? Specifically, we found that participating in TripAdvisor’s solicitation program led to a striking 34.3% increase in the total number of reviews a hotel received per month. The average review rating also increased by 0.151 out of 5 stars — a significant increase in an industry where the difference between a 4.0 and a 4.5 can make or break a business. We also found that this ratings boost was highest among smaller, cheaper, less popular, and lower-rated hotels. But beyond these top-line numbers, we discovered two critical hidden costs associated with soliciting reviews: Solicited Reviews Are Lower-Quality First, we found that the solicited reviews that drove the volume increase were, on average, 16.9% shorter than organic reviews. This is critical, as prior research has shown that consumers perceive shorter reviews as less helpful, informative, and trustworthy. We further verified this drop in quality by comparing the content in solicited and organic reviews with a sophisticated text analysis technique called a Structural Topic Model. Through this analysis, we found that organic reviews tended to be detailed, specific, and concrete, while solicited reviews were much more general and abstract. While organic reviews discussed details like room equipment, internet speed, breakfast options, parking, and the dining experience — valuable information that helps other customers make booking decisions — solicited reviews used vague terms like “recommendation and satisfaction,” “exceptional quality,” and “staff courtesy” to share largely positive but far less informative content. Review Solicitation Reduces Organic Reviewers’ Motivation Perhaps our most significant finding was the effect of solicitation on reviews that weren’t solicited: We discovered that after a hotel started asking for reviews, their volume of organic reviews fell by 15.5%. And while this could have been just the result of would-be organic reviewers using the convenient email link instead, we found that this was not the case. Instead, our data demonstrated that the very experience of being solicited undermined people’s intrinsic motivation to leave a review. When customers who otherwise would have written a 31 HKUST Business Review review saw that a hotel was proactively collecting reviews, their voluntary impulse to contribute to the community diminished. Because of this psychological effect, we found that after a hotel started soliciting reviews, the total number of reviews written by people whose first review had been organic decreased, and that people who had never written a solicited review reduced their contributions more than similar users who had previously written a solicited review. This suggests that when hotels asked people to leave reviews, it actually devalued the act of review-writing for their most authentic advocates. What was once a voluntary, public-spirited contribution to a community became, in their eyes, a transactional response to a corporate request. As a result, the practice of soliciting reviews silently corroded the value of the entire review ecosystem. After all, if a platform filled with solicited reviews becomes a place of pleasant but unsubstantiated praise, written by the customers whose input is least valuable while those whose reviews would be most helpful opt out, savvy consumers may quickly learn to discount it entirely. Balancing the Pros and Cons of Soliciting Reviews To be sure, we are not suggesting that companies should never solicit reviews. However, our research demonstrates that review solicitation comes with distinct tradeoffs. As such, there are several steps brands should take when determining whether or how to solicit reviews from their customers.