Room Semantics and Terms in Hotel Chains Communication

Hotel rooms offer a range of amenities as part of a hotel’s product offering and these can impact a guests’ booking decisions. The paper provides a better understanding of hotel room facilities and attributes through exploration of room offerings by hotel chains. We examined some of the rooms of 155 top global hotel chains websites in order to determine the facilities and services offered; and the terms used in describing the room features. The goal was to investigate successful hotels’ communication of room characteristics for the promotion of efficacy and efficiency of planning, promotional and commercialization activities. To categorize important hotel room attributes, a literature review of recent trends and likely future scenarios was realized. Our findings show that among the room attributes and amenities emphasized in terms of descriptions in hotel websites include beds, bathroom amenities, room size, views, Internet services and entertainment services. The paper contributes to hotel websites communication by providing a comprehensive set of recommendations to hotel chains highlighting opportunities related to improving descriptions of hotel room attributes.