Customer expectations in the hotel industry during the COVID-19 pandemic: a global perspective using sentiment analysis

ABSTRACT

Hotel industry is the one which has confronted the unprecedented effect of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic to significant social and economic risks. The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged the tourism across the globe and impacted hospitality in hotel industry severely. This study aims to assess customer satisfaction by carrying sentiment analysis and topic modelling over customer reviews on the hospitality provided by hotels in different continents during January to September 2020, i.e. the COVID-19 pandemic. We formulate an improved new scale of metrics to categorize customer satisfaction assessed by sentiment analysis in an elaborate way. Topic modelling was deployed to understand various topics most often discussed by customers. We find that North America and Europe could perform up to customer expectation. In Asia, Sri Lanka did well, Indonesia could maintain its customer satisfaction, while India consistently improved the satisfaction level. We identified 12 most discussed topics, and main reasons of dissatisfaction appear in staff, service, room, cleanliness, slow booking, and pandemic response by hotel. Findings of this study will help senior managers of hotels of developed as well as developing countries in providing new and effective services that can satisfy customers and restore their confidence.

KEYWORDS:

• Hospitality
• hotel
• satisfaction
• sentiment analysis
• topic modelling
• COVID-19

Acknowledgements

We thank Ms. Chahat Raj of Delhi Technological University who supported in refining the programme codes of this study.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Mihir P. Mehta

Mihir P. Mehta is pursuing MBA at IIM Raipur after the completion of his Bachelor of Technology. He is interested in computer application in business and management.

Gopal Kumar

Gopal Kumar is an Assistant Professor of Operations Management at IIM Raipur. He received his PhD from IIT Kharagpur and postdoctoral fellowship at the Dublin City University, Ireland. His research articles have been published in International Journal Production Economics, Journal of Business and Industrial Marketing, Journal of Cleaner Production, Benchmarking: an international journal, IIMB Management Review, Measuring Business Excellence, International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management, and International Journal of Services and Operations Management. His primary research interests include supply chain collaboration, sustainable and green supply chain, and operations management.

M. Ramkumar

M. Ramkumar is currently working as an Assistant Professor in the Department of Operations Management at the Indian Institute of Management Raipur. He was a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Chair of Logistics Management at the Swiss Federal Institute of Technology Zurich, Switzerland. His research is interdisciplinary and lies on the interface between operations management and information systems, and encompasses supply chain technologies, supply chain sustainability, and humanitarian operations. His research has been published in international journals such as Service Science (INFORMS), International Journal of Production Economics, International Journal of Production Research, Production Planning & Control, Journal of Cleaner Production, Annals of Operations Research, Computers & Industrial Engineering, IEEE Systems Journal, and other peer-reviewed journals.