This presentation explores the impact of sort and filter functions on consumers’ online hotel booking behavior. Specifically, it explores its mediating impact on the relationship between a hotel’s placement on the initial search results booking page and the likelihood of being booked. It does so by means of a storytelling approach, making the complex academic paper more accessible to the general public. The work received a best research paper award at the REMAPS conference for Revenue Management, Paris, 17 and 18 December 2015. The findings indicate show that by the use of sort and filter functions, a more equal distribution of choices can be achieved, but that visitors will also pay more attention to the aspects that are subject to sorting and filtering instead of the first entries on the search result page. If the sort and filter functions are applied to price, visitors are more likely to choose cheaper rooms, whereas applied to customer ratings, visitors are more likely to choose rooms with better ratings. So the functions impact the search agenda. As a consequence, the economic value of placement in top positions goes down, but this may be compensated by improving the value of all placements. In addition, sorting and filtering increases the competitiveness of the search engine because it encourages visitors to apply other choice criteria than placement on the page.

1. GerART
Loosschilder, Van der Rest, Schwartz and Cordella present:
Sorting and Filtering Behavior
on Online Booking Sites
Implications for hotel revenue management
Starring:
Charlotte
Interaction designer
Astrid
Business traveler
Oscar
Revenue manager GerART

2. GerART2
Meet
Astrid
Princess and
Business Traveler

3. GerART3
We also know Astrid as the former queen
of a small yet interesting multilingual country north of Paris.
Princess Queen Realm

4. GerART4
When she was young she was not just a princess
but she was also an ambitious young lady who desired to travel the world.

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However Because Astrid was a princess, she hardly got a chance
to escape from under the suffocating wings of her security detail.

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The Princess was specifically engaged with animal rights. Wherever she could and her
position allowed her, she would engage in activities to defend animals; endangered and
common species alike.

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So one day, she managed to get away. Because of her voluntary work for an animal rights defense
fund she was invited to be the keynote speaker at a conference in beautiful Istanbul.

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However, because Astrid was a princess, she was not at all used to booking trips.
She had staff doing that for her.

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Not this time. She was invested in booking the trip herself, and in doing so all alone.
So Astrid visited a booking site.

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Astrid panicked from the choices of hotels and their prices and specifications. It was
overwhelming. How could she choose a hotel if she had never done it or had never been in
Istanbul?

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How could she know about the meaning of ratings if her servants usually made the bed and did
other chores in her household? What did quality of service, staff or facilities mean to her? She
lived in a castle with her own facilities and staff. If she did not like them she would simply fire
them.

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So Astrid went by the structure of the website page of search results
and she choose the top option.

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A few days later she went on her business trip to Istanbul.
She was so excited!

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The hotel room was bad.
It was clear to Astrid that the hotel chain had invested in something else than the room.

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So, she was not satisfied at all, but she learned a lot from this trip. She now understood the
relevance of ratings and she vowed that she would pay more attention to the hotels on the
website next time, instead of going by the order of entries on the website.

16. GerART16
Meet
Oscar
Revenue manager
at the booking site

17. GerART17
The website operations is under the authority of Oscar; revenue manager for the booking site.
Oscar’s task is to maximize proceedings and profit; his main tool is the commissioning fee that
the booking site charges for bookings. The fee structure is such that the site charges most for
the top placements, and progressively less for the lower placements.

18. GerART18
That’s because Oscar knows that beyond a certain position, the site loses virtually all its traction.
The actual position varies by the source, but usually it says that after position 5 and page 1 it is
done. Oscar does not mind; he is primarily interested in the performance of the top positions and
squeezes the advertisers in those positions relentlessly.

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This strategy works well for Oscar. He is a cherished revenue manager, meeting and
overshooting his targets year after year, being a true asset to the booking site.

20. GerART20
Meet
Charlotte
Interface Designer
at the booking site
One day, Charlotte joined the booking site team.
Charlotte was an interaction designer by training.

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She was happy to work at the booking site.
That’s because it is her ambition to share her passion of travelling with others.

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When Charlotte looked at the booking site is struck her that the UI design was bare. It hardly
included any element that would facilitate the visitor’s search. No functions at all that would
structure the visitor’s choice any differently from the original order on the search results page.

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So Charlotte suggested some minimal and simple UI design changes to the booking site:
sort and filter functions to start with.

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With the Sort function, visitors could reorder the entries on the result page according to a
criterion that was relevant to them, e.g., room prices or ratings of the quality of staff, service,
or facilities. Thereby they could put constraints for the aspects that they would accept and the
set of acceptable solutions.

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With the filter function, visitors could set top and bottom limits to search criteria, such as the
maximum price they would want to pay or the minimum hotel rating they would accept.

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Charlotte took her UI design suggestions to Oscar and explained her intentions. She wanted to
help visitors navigate and search more easily through the options, and by that, ensure that they
ended up with a “better” choice – a choice that would be more satisfying and made sure that they
came back.

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Oscar scolded at her because he saw it as a disruption of his business model: driving
choices to the top positions, and by that, charge high commission fees for those positions.

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Oscar and Charlotte served different interests; Charlotte was looking for visitor satisfaction and
recurring sales in the long run; and Oscar for instant revenue maximization. To demonstrate that
these interests are actually not in conflict and because in the end, both Charlotte and Oscar are
business professionals and not street fighters, they decided to do an experiment.

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They put up both versions of the booking site in an experiment
to see which version performed best.

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Back to
Astrid
Princess and
Business Traveler

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Astrid had learned from her trip to Istanbul not to be satisfied with the first entry on the
search results page. So when a next trip to Istanbul for the animal rights fund came up, she
decided to do it different.

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After typing in the details of her trip; the start and return date and the destination, the booking
site offered her a selection of 50 results across various scrollable pages. It was a challenge. But
different from last time, Astrid was happy to learn that the search engine also had changed. It
now also offered the opportunity to sort and filter the results.

33. GerART
Call to action
Hotel Chain, Type
& Style
Distance to city
center
Placement of
hotel on the page
At the bottom of the page there
was a none option, allowing the
respondent not to choose any of
the 50 rooms
The gallery page contained 50 hotel rooms
and their specifications. The respondent had
to browse down to get to lower-positioned
rooms.
Filter functions
on price and ratings
Sort functions on
price and rating Review Score on
cleanliness, staff and
facilities; result in a mean
score and a label
Including room price per
night

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So Astrid filtered the results first by setting a maximum price – which was still high
because in the end, she was still a spoiled little Princess.

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She also set a minimum rating, because why would she keep up with conditions that she
would not accept at home in her palace?

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Now that the choice set was more manageable, Astrid could pay more attention to hotels
themselves: choosing a hotel close to the city center.

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As well as choosing the right chain and brand of hotel that would meet her requirements.

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Which was not easy. Would she choose for boutique or for luxury?

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Astrid took the trip and her hotel was great. In fact, when she did her review on Tripadvisor she
mentioned how she had found the hotel and that it was a true improvement over last time.

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Back to Charlotte and Oscar and their experiment

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The two versions of the website and their experiment had been up for a couple of weeks.
Oscar and Charlotte met to see the effect on visitor booking behavior.
Both collected ammunition to convince the other of their correctness.

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Point for Charlotte: the use of the functions by a portion of the visitors resulted in a better
distribution of choices. So the real estate value of the site went up because now not only the top
positions performed well but all positions did. Although the effect only applied to those using the
functions, overall value was still better because many of visitors used the functions.

43. GerART43
Point for Oscar: not everybody used the sort and filter functions, so Charlotte may have done a
bad UI design job. That’s of course a cheap punch, but that’s what you can expect of a business
goon. Those who did not use the functions defaulted even more strongly to the top positions. So
if Charlotte designed a better user interface, results would be more evenly distributed.
% of visitors
using the
function
Users could
sort on price
or rating
Users could
sort on price
or rating
Users could
sort on price
or rating
Users could
filter on
price and
rating

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Point for Charlotte: task satisfaction was higher after the introduction of the functions
and the consistency of choices went up. It means that the longer-term value of the site
may have gone up because of the likelihood of repeat business due to happier visitors.
Users who
have the filter
and sort
filters
available are
more
satisfied.
Users who
use the sort
filter on
rating are the
most more
satisfied.

45. GerART45
Point for Oscar: those who did use the filter option, used nothing more often, which
represents lost business. We see this inclination to revert to the absence of a choice in
other metrics too.
… than those who did not have or use the filter.
Users using the filter, more often choose nothing …

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In addition, those who did use the functions chose rooms at lower room prices.
There goes Oscar’s commission. Charlotte seems to have ruined Oscar’s proceedings
from the commission fee by driving the choice for cheaper rooms.
… than those who did not have or use the filter.
Users using sort and filter functions chose cheaper rooms …
The average prices of rooms chosen

47. GerART
Famous last words
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48. GerART48
So the jury is still out. The short term results are actually negative because there are fewer
visitors who choose a room and those who do and use a sort and filter function, choose a cheaper
room. So it is a leap of faith if we should advise to keep using the sort and filter function, or any
other UI design measure to steer consumer choices away from the top positions, because it may
have adverse effects.

49. GerART49
This round, we declare Oscar the winner from a proceedings point of view.

50. GerART
Thank you!
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gerard.loosschilder@gmail.com gerardloosschilder.com
+31 6 2266 5218 (GWT+1) @Gloosschilder