E-Customer Satisfaction in Digital Travel Intermediaries and a Content Analysis Intended for E-Complaints

Abstract

With the spread of the internet in all areas of our lives, travel agents have turned their activities into digital travel agents by moving their activities to the internet. Even though digital travel agents do not have a physical office, they continue their economic activities and contribute to the turning of the wheels of the tourism industry. However, since digital travel agents are in essence a commercial enterprise, they must pursue profit, ensure customer retention and achieve this with customer satisfaction. In this study, it was aimed to examine how customer e-complaints, which play a key role in ensuring customer satisfaction and are an important source of information, are evaluated by digital travel agents. For this purpose, complaints submitted to sikayetvar.com for services offered regarding 20 digital travel agents on the website sikayetvar.com were examined. As a result, it has been observed that the most complained issues about digital travel agents are the cancellation of the reservation and the refund of the canceled reservation. While only 18.44% of complaints are resolved within the first week, the rate of complaints resolved within 15 days is 24%, and the rate of complaints resolved within 15 days to 1 month is 21.78%. Only 15.31% of all complaints were resolved.