Beyond visual appeal : the impact of multisensory experience of hotel marketing and review images on sales

Abstract

Images, with their direct content experience, have become essential in tourists’ narratives of accommodation sharing. Although visual content plays an important role in influencing user decisions, research on hotel images often neglects the significance of sensory elements. Sensory elements in visual content help shape tourists’ perceptions and evaluations of their accommodation experiences. This study explores how sensory elements in marketing and review images affect hotel sales from a sensory perspective. The research employs a combination of hybrid machine vision and econometric methods to examine how visual, tactile, auditory, and smell elements influence hotel sales. These results reveal the relationship among sensory elements in marketing and review images, their discrepancies, and hotel sales. The primary theoretical significance of this study is in analyzing how sensory elements in image content influence hotel sales, providing a unique sensory perspective for tourist decision-making and hotel marketing strategies.