DOI: 10.5176/2251-3426_THoR17.2
Authors: Amy Suen
Abstract: The use of websites for the promotion of tourism and hospitality services has increasingly gained importance since the 1980s, and yet scarce research has been undertaken to explore the language of evaluation on hotel homepages. This paper examines the ways in which Hong Kong luxury hotels evaluate their products and services, and construct interpersonal relationships with readers in the introductory texts of their homepages. By drawing upon Appraisal Theory within a Systemic Functional Linguistics (SFL) approach, textual analysis shows that the hotel homepages examined tend to present one-way communication from the hotels’ perspective rather than a two-way exchange which engages readers with the online luxury experience. The study suggests that hotels could involve viewers by employing a greater variety and the amount of linguistic resources of Appreciation of Reaction of Impact, Affect, Judgment and Engagement on their websites in to enhance viewers’ online experience and hence the promotional effectiveness of hotels.
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