Luxury Hotel Review Analysis

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The economic principle I’m exploring is: Because of scarcity, people choose.
All choices have an opportunity cost.

My research question to help me study the economic principle is: What design choices do hotels (or inns) in the Chicagoland area make in order to attract the most people? The research paper published in International Journal of Advanced in Management, Technology and Engineering Sciences by Ajith K. Thomas and Varun Santhosh titled “Satisfiers & Dis-satisfiers in Online Reviews: An Analysis of a Luxury Hotel” demonstrates the economic principle that because of scarcity, people choose. All choices have an opportunity cost because it argues that the exterior appeal of a hotel is the most significant factor that goes into the final decision of a consumer on where to spend the night.

First, we can see that there are many factors that Ajith K. Thomas and Varun Santhosh looked into. Whether or not a certain hotel had a swimming pool, gym, a full spa, or a free breakfast were just a few of the factors that they considered.

Second, we probably all know that, from personal experience, the cheapest hotel is not necessarily the best choice for the night. This is the reason why this study was done on one chain of hotels, and not competitors. That way, price can be eliminated as a deciding factor in a consumer's final choice.

Third, from the data, Ajith K. Thomas and Varun Santhosh found that most of the people they received notice back from were people traveling for pleasure, something that they found consistently throughout all the different countries that their respondents said they were from. It make sense that these people would be staying at nicer hotels because if they are traveling from a very long distance for a vacation, then they wouldn’t want that leisure trip to be ruined by a bad hotel.

In my next blog post I will research: How do lower-rated hotels stay in business even though they are rated so poorly?