There are some limitations in this study. These limitations relate to both methodology and data, which deserve more future research introduce the proxy for hotel online sales, we efforts.
For instance assume that customers have a constant probability of posting a review on a travel agent website.
Though the validity of this proxy was supported by empirical data, this assumption is still too strict from a theoretical perspective.
Future studies can be carried out to investigate the possibility of loosing this assumption and re-test the validity of the proxy.
As well, although this study shows that user-generated reviews have a significant impact on business performance,
we cannot be sure whether all reviews have the same impact. Also, the authenticates of reviews are not considered either It would thus be useful to analyze the different influence or perceived usefulness of different reviews.
Furthermore,the effect of the content of reviews on the performance of hotels merits investigation using web-mining technologies to further understand the impacts of online reviews. Findings of this study were based on the data collected from a website in China.
Therefore, the research find ings may not be generalized. Still, this suggests directions for further research.
Finally, the cross sectional analysis did not reveal time var iance characteristics, a panel data analysis in the future would be beneficial to gain more insight into this topic