Online Referrals Categorization and Performance of the Hospitality Industry: The Case of International Hotel Brands in Europe

When mentioning online referrals in tourism, the first associations for most are online reviews of guests, usually those on the most popular social media website in tourism – TripAdvisor. In fact, online referrals1 are a much broader concept which is presented through their categorization according to their affiliation to e-marketing domains. The goal of this paper is to research the use of online referrals in hospitality according to the suggested classification. A research featuring a selection of European branded hotel chains, ranging from luxury to budget, and their use of online referrals is presented. The results revealed that most hotels have an average performance in online referrals marketing as a whole, while hotels classified in the budget segment show the worst performance.