Recovering hotel room sales during the COVID-19 pandemic: lessons from OTA information using the quantile regression approach

This study aims to explore the relationship between online travel agency (OTA) information and hotel room sales in the pandemic context (e.g. COVID-19), thereby promoting the recovery of hotel room sales. A total of 29,915 hotels from 15 major cities in China are used as samples. To accommodate the long tail distributional characteristics of hotel room sales, quantile regression (QR) is used to conduct the research. Overall findings suggest that the room sales of hotels with shorter operating years, higher quality amenities and services, and better brand image recovered faster during the pandemic. Moreover, the comparison between different types of cities suggests that hotels in tourism-oriented cities recovered faster than those in commerce-oriented ones, and the impacts of review rating of cleanliness and operating years have changed. The major contribution of this study is that the new determinants of room sales are examined, and the quantitative evidence (OTA information) and a novel quantitative method (QR) are introduced into the hotel crisis management framework.