Digital reservation ecosystems and online marketing: transforming tourism and hospitality accommodation operations

Purpose This research addresses a critical gap in hospitality and tourism literature by examining how property characteristics and online reservation marketing strategies interact to influence accommodation success. Drawing on resource-based view (RBV) theory, this study aims to investigate how property characteristics individually and collectively influence tourist accommodation success; how online reservation marketing strategies moderate the property–performance relationship; and how strategic integration creates synergistic effects exceeding additive impacts. Design/methodology/approach The authors use multiple regression analysis, hierarchical modeling and moderated regression to analyze 700 legally registered vacation rental properties from major European tourism destinations listed on Booking.com, Airbnb and TripAdvisor. Findings Property characteristics substantially predict customer satisfaction, with district quality emerging as the strongest predictor, followed by property size and amenity count. Adding marketing variables significantly enhances explanatory power, with visual presentation quality demonstrating the strongest marketing effect. Strategic alignment between property characteristics and marketing positioning – luxury properties with premium pricing, budget properties with value messaging – produces significantly higher satisfaction outcomes than misaligned configurations. Luxury travelers prioritize experiential features, while budget travelers emphasize functional attributes and location convenience. Originality/value This research makes three novel contributions: (1) empirically demonstrates that competitive advantage emerges from strategic integration of tangible property resources with dynamic digital marketing capabilities; (2) identifies expectation management as a crucial mediating mechanism, demonstrating satisfaction arises from expectation-experience congruence rather than absolute quality; and (3) extends RBV theory by proving resource value is context-dependent and segment-specific in digitally mediated hospitality markets.