Karen Pei-Sze Tan

This Managerial Perspective considers the use of ChatGPT by hotels as a tool for replying to their property’s online consumer-generated media postings. As readers would certainly know, ChatGPT is a free artificial intelligence software program designed to assist users with tasks requiring intelligence to perform. In this brief study, test participants were provided actual posted online TripAdvisor review comments along with the responses to these that had been posted by hotel management as well as a second response created by ChatGPT, with the request that the participant indicate which response was real and which was produced by the computer. A second request asked the participant to indicate which they felt was “better.” The results suggest that ChatGPT does a relatively effective job of mimicking authentic responses. These findings, and the discussion of relevant theory, will be useful for hospitality industry managers and academics as they consider the future use of artificial intelligence software for performing this important albeit often tedious task.

This study investigates the efficacy of emotion regulation (ER) strategies used by tourists to manage negative emotions elicited by their on-site destination experiences. Specifically, suppression and reappraisal ER strategies were examined for their moderating impacts on the relationship between negative emotions (anger and fear) and tourists’ behavioral intention (negative word-of-mouth and revisitation). Through two pre-tests and three experiments involving video and text stimuli, findings are first revealed within a destination crowding context and replicated using tourist harassment. Empirical results in both contexts consistently demonstrate the superiority of reappraisal in down-regulating tourists’ experience of anger and fear and in alleviating negative word-of-mouth intention. In contrast, suppression significantly up-regulates the anger and fear felt and, as such, aggravates negative word-of-mouth intention. Findings also suggest that ER does not significantly moderate the effect of fear on revisit intention. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.