This study aims to examine whether customer ratings and online reviews affect hotel revenues, and if so, to quantify the effects. To achieve this objective, we articulate the mechanisms grounded on reputation theories whereby customer ratings exercise the influence on hotel performance through reputational and signaling effects. Using customer rating data from TripAdvisor and hotel revenue data from Texas, we estimate fixed effects regressions and adopt a regression discontinuity design to separate the signaling effect of customer ratings from reputational effect. We found that the signaling effect of a 1-star increase is an increase of 2.2–3.0% in hotel monthly revenues whereas the reputational effect of a 1-star increase is an increase of around 1.5–2.3% in hotel monthly revenues. Our findings are robust across alternative model specifications and provide insightful implications for hotels to manage their customer ratings.

本研究旨在检查客户评分和在线评论是否会影响酒店收入，如果是，则量化影响。为了实现这一目标，我们阐明了基于声誉理论的机制，即客户评级通过声誉和信号效应对酒店绩效产生影响。使用来自 TripAdvisor 的客户评分数据和来自德克萨斯州的酒店收入数据，我们估计固定效应回归并采用回归不连续性设计将客户评分的信号效应与声誉效应分开。我们发现，增加 1 星级的信号效应是酒店月收入增加 2.2-3.0%，而增加 1 星级的声誉效应是酒店月收入增加约 1.5-2.3%。