What Types of Hotels Make Their Guests (Un)Happy? Text Analytics of Customer Experiences in Online Reviews

A hotel is a complex, experience-based product and thus, finding out what leads to guest satisfaction is a practically important question. In this study, we explored the usefulness of applying guest experience dimensions previously identified based upon authentic online customer reviews to understand what types of hotels make their guests (un)happy. Hotels were grouped by experience dimensions and satisfaction ratings using cluster analysis. Then, these hotel clusters were examined in relation to words in customer reviews with correspondence analysis. The findings show that there were different types of hotels with unique, salient traits that satisfied their customers, while those who failed to do so mostly had issues related to cleanliness and maintenance-related factors. This study demonstrates that consumer generated content such as customer reviews can be useful data sources to generate new insights into the nature of the hotel product. It also points to a promising direction to employ authentic consumer experience data to support perceptual mapping and market segmentation for the hospitality and tourism industry.

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