Hotel guests’ demanding level and importance of attribute satisfaction ratings: an application of MUltiplecriteria Satisfaction Analysis on TripAdvisor’s hotel guests ratings

ABSTRACT

The current study demonstrates how MUltiplecriteria Satisfaction Analysis (MUSA) can turn online hotel guests’ satisfaction ratings from TripAdvisor into a valuable source of information for hotel managers and other hotel industry stakeholders. This information relates to customers’ demanding level and the contribution of customer ratings on four important aspects of their hotel stay (location, cleanliness, service, and value for money) to overall guests satisfaction. This study looked at 137.268 ratings from 564 hotels located on the island of Crete, Greece. The findings revealed that hotel guests in Crete are non-demanding customers suggesting that they are satisfied even if a small portion of their expectations is fulfilled. Moreover, cleanliness is the most important contributor to hotel customers’ overall satisfaction, followed by service. These findings can help decision makers in the hotel sector prioritize areas for service quality -and consequently customer satisfaction- improvements and allocate their limited resources more effectively.

KEYWORDS:

• Customer satisfaction
• tripadvisor
• multiplecriteria satisfaction analysis (MUSA)
• hotels
• decision making

Acknowledgments

The authors would like to thank the editor and the anonymous reviewers for their valuable feedback in improving the paper.

Disclosure statement

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