Cross-country analysis of perception and emphasis of hotel attributes

Abstract This study attempts to investigate the effect of cross-country differences on online hotel reviews. More specifically, it attempts to investigate whether there are differences in the way Italians, Americans, and Chinese travelers perceive and emphasize several hotel attributes, even when including hotel star ratings and travelers’ profiles in the analysis. Based on a random sample of 9000 online reviews, the study adopted text link analysis to extrapolate the frequencies of predefined hotel attributes on which the multivariate analyses and tests were performed. Answers are provided to two research questions: Do travelers from different countries place different emphasis on hotel attributes? Do travelers from different countries perceive hotel attributes differently? The results suggest that the differences in perceptions and emphasis are significant. The adopted text-mining method could help hotel business managers to hear the voices of consumers and include them in performance evaluation and service design processes.

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