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Travelers increasingly consider electronic word of mouth (e-WOM) from online review platforms when making their accommodation decisions. Theory predicts that e-WOM increases sales, but little is known regarding the role that branding plays in the relation between e-WOM and hotels’ financial performance. This study relied on financial data (including Revenue per Available Room—RevPAR—and sales profitability) and 34,164 online customer reviews gathered from TripAdvisor (as a proxy for e-WOM) based on panel data from 221 hotels, including not-branded and branded chain hotels in France from 2005 to 2013. The results show that the volume of reviews has no effect on RevPAR growth for branded chain hotels and a positive effect on RevPAR growth for not-branded chain hotels. In addition, the direct effect of the valence of online reviews and its interaction effect with the yearly and cumulative volume of …