It is essential for hotel marketers to better understand how human images—found in website photographs—are perceived by customers, and how such perceptions can affect customers’ website experience and behavioral intentions. Given the lack of empirical studies related to the effects of human images and hotel website photographs, this study first assesses the influence of physical and social attraction evaluations—related to human images in hotel website photographs—on perceived social presence, in order to further examine the relationships between social presence, sociability, and booking intentions. Moreover, the moderating effects of background homophily, on the relationships between physical and social attraction and social presence, are also examined. This study, which adopts structural equation modeling and analyzes data collected from a sample of 417 U.S. travelers who have recently booked a hotel room directly through a hotel website, confirms all of the aforementioned relationships.

对于酒店营销人员而言，至关重要的是，必须更好地了解客户如何感知网站照片中的人像，以及这种感知如何影响客户的网站体验和行为意图。鉴于缺乏与人类图像和酒店网站照片的影响有关的实证研究，本研究首先评估与酒店网站照片中的人类图像有关的身体和社会吸引力评估对感知的社会存在的影响，以便进一步研究社交存在，社交能力和预订意愿之间的关系。此外，还研究了背景同质性对身体和社会吸引力与社会存在之间关系的调节作用。这项研究，