The beginning of the 21st century witnesses a trend for business and leisure travelers to make accommodation decisions by referring to online reviews of hotel accommodation services and the hotel management’s responses to such reviews. The responses, termed review response genre in this study, have since attracted considerable research attention. The purpose of this article is twofold. First, it aims to identify the moves present in the review response genre; second, it aims to explore how the hotel management attempts to (...) achieve service recovery with the moves of the genre. A total of three obligatory moves are identified: Acknowledging Problem, Expressing Feeling and Thanking Reviewer. The findings will have significant implications for the hospitality and wider service industry practitioners responsible for handling negative online reviews. (shrink)

The present study explores the discursive practice of the hospitality industry in addressing competence-based, benevolence-based, and integrity-based accusations of trust violation made by dissatisfied customers on TripAdvisor. Authentic negative online reviews written by dissatisfied customers and the corresponding responses by hotel management downloaded directly from TripAdvisor are analyzed qualitatively with Nvivo10. Results show that hotel management has the strongest preference for apology, followed by implicit denial and then explicit denial when dealing with the three different types of accusations of trust (...) violation. The findings will enhance our understanding of trust and its repair, and benefit hospitality practitioners responsible for handling online criticisms and complaints. (shrink)