DETERMINING HOTEL PERFORMANCE THROUGH CONSUMER GENERATED TRAVEL 2.0 REVIEWS: A CASE OF KYRGYZSTAN

Abstract Hotels are one of the inevitable part of the tourism product and consumer generated reviews of hotels based on travel 2.0 technologies are a new phenomenon that effects consumer purchasing process. In this online-era, travel 2.0 user reviews are extremely important in order to increase awareness on accommodation enterprises and destinations. Depending on the content, online reviews may have positive or negative effect on potential customers while choosing a hotel or a destination. Despite of its huge potential, Kyrgyzstan is still an unpopular destination in the world tourism market. In this study, consumer reviews based on real experiences, on accommodation enterprises throughout Kyrgyzstan between the years 2012-2016 benefiting from Tripadvisor.com, analyzed to understand the performance of accommodations. According to findings, the overall performance of the accommodations were found to be nearly very good (four out of five), country was preferred the most by the business travelers, and the country gets visitors mostly winter and summer seasons. Also, it was found that the service quality in accommodation enterprises needs to be improved.