Visual content has been an essential marketing approach to exerting enjoyable virtual experiences and inducing consumer engagement. However, despite the widespread acknowledgment of the importance of visual content, how would the exerted aesthetic perception affect consumer engagement is still unexplored. Adopting a deep convolutional neural network model, this study quantifies the aesthetics of thumbnail images and managerial photos of hotels and thereby explores the impact of hotel photo aesthetics on consumer engagement. Aesthetically enjoyable photos are shown effective not only to encourage more consumers to engage in word-of-mouth discussions but also to promote consumer ratings. Such impact is also significantly moderated by hotel price. This study illustrates a viable approach to probing the perceived aesthetics of visual content in the hospitality field, and the uncovered significant role of aesthetics highlights the necessity of further attention to the cognitive perceptions of visual marketing content in both theoretical research and practical management.

视觉内容一直是​​发挥令人愉快的虚拟体验和吸引消费者参与的重要营销方法。然而，尽管人们普遍承认视觉内容的重要性，但所施加的审美感知将如何影响消费者参与度仍是未知数。本研究采用深度卷积神经网络模型，量化了酒店缩略图和管理照片的美感，从而探讨了酒店照片美感对消费者参与度的影响。美观的照片不仅可以有效地鼓励更多的消费者参与口碑讨论，还可以提高消费者的评分。酒店价格也显着缓和了这种影响。