Perceptions versus performance in hotel sustainability: Evidence from Expedia and Booking.com

This study investigates whether consumer ratings of hotel eco-friendliness reflect actual sustainability performance. Using data from 6,696 hotels in the world’s 100 leading destinations, we compared Expedia’s post-travel, customer-submitted eco-friendliness ratings with sustainability information reported on Booking.com, including both self-reported practices and third-party certifications. Support Vector Machine regression analysis shows that eco-friendliness ratings are explained almost entirely by overall guest satisfaction, with sustainability indicators contributing little explanatory power. This suggests that ratings conflate general service impressions with perceptions of environmental responsibility, limiting their value as measures of sustainability performance. While plausible explanations such as response biases and the limited salience of many certified practices warrant further research, our findings provide robust evidence that single survey items on eco-friendliness should be interpreted with caution. For platforms and policymakers, the results highlight the need to make sustainability cues more visible and directly tied to the consumer experience if ratings are to support informed choice.