The effects of marketing communication on the tourist's hotel reservation process

The paper analyses the tourist's first stay booking decision and the factors (such as advertising, word-of-mouth, and travel agency recommendation) that most significantly influence it. Three research hypotheses have been considered and a logistic regression model has been specified. The factors "advertising" and "word-of-mouth" have significant power to explain direct-contact booking. Hence, there is not only a strong association between first stay booking and the Web, but also a very strong association between the booking and the recommendation of someone close to the tourist who has previously stayed at the hotel. This means that these are two important sources of information for inducing the tourist's decision in this respect. The research contributes to both the understanding of the first stay booking decision-making process and the management of the hotel marketing communication media plan.