Determination Of Optimum Hotel With E-WOM Based Multi Criteria Decision Making Techniques and An Application

In the past years, consumers would refer to the opinions of people who had an experience about a product before they decided to purchase that product. This case, called Word of mouth marketing, was a marketing strategy which managements should not ignore while they were marketing their products. Along with the computer technologies providing people the opportunities of sharing unlimited information and comments in virtual environment, internet has been word of mouth marketing media. The internet has been one of the most important sources which consumers consult before purchasing decision. While virtual environment was enabling managements to promote and market their products and services to the large masses in an easy and cheap way previously, it gave a chance of commenting and sharing the experiences of consumers with other users during the ongoing process. Positive/negative comments about a destination, business or product have begun to be effective in preferences of consumers who get ready for making decision to purchase The sector, in which happy experiences kept alive to the customers, turns into the most important marketing channel. Blogs and tourism sites give the customers the opportunity of dialoguing among them and providing information. These sources which create interaction improve with the user reviews and scorings. The importance of it is increasing more and more for both tourism businesses and customers. These platforms present a marketing research which is free for customers. Also for the service providers, these platforms create resource of feedback for the improvements they need to do. On the other hand, it turns into a low budget marketing channel for small size facilities.Consumers, evaluating tourism consumption as an experience and starting from past experiences when they decide which experience to live, increasingly use online interactive resources which serves to the tourism sector. These platforms provide the customers the opportunity of dialoguing among them and providing information while they provide feedback for the improvements for the service providers to they need to do. This research is aimed at determining the most suitable hotel taking advantage of the electronic consumer reviews in websites. The data is obtained from TripAdvisor website and expert reviews. This data is evaluated with the TOPSIS method which is based on Analytical Hierarch Process (AHP). Then, the hotel which can adequately respond to customer’s requests and provide the highest satisfaction to the hotel customers (the most suitable hotel) is determined in Konya province. According to the study results, the hotel encoded as C is the most suitable hotel and Price/Profit criterion has the highest importance of customer satisfaction criteria in Konya province.