Aafreen Ali, Vinay Chittiprolu, Sourya Rongala and Raja Shekhar Bellamkonda
Although extant studies found the determinants of customer complaints in luxury hotels, comparison of complaint severity using reviewer characteristics (nationality, reviewer type…
Abstract
Purpose
Although extant studies found the determinants of customer complaints in luxury hotels, comparison of complaint severity using reviewer characteristics (nationality, reviewer type and expertise) is limited. This study aims to identify the variation in customers’ complaint attributes among different customer categories.
Design/methodology/approach
This study tried to address this gap by using structural topic modelling and text mining techniques to find the sentiment score, word count, complaints attributes and severity score. The research sample covers luxury hotels in India, and online review text and their associated data has been collected and analysed.
Findings
The authors found that leisure customers wrote lengthier reviews and complained about the facility-related aspects (valet parking, entertainment and amenities) and food-related aspects (food variety, service and menu) while the business customers’ complaint severity score is more on salient aspects (room size, bathroom and staff related services). The international customers wrote lengthier reviews and complained more about the facility-related aspects (amenities, pick-up and entertainment) and core service offerings (stay experience, bathroom, dirtiness and complaint resolution). Whereas domestic customers complained more about stay-related aspects (food variety, quality, services, staff behaviour and stay experience). Also, this study used correlation analysis to find the dependencies between topics and uncovered underlying patterns, trends and associations, aiding in a deeper understanding and interpretation of the complaints. This study can help service providers tailor their services based on customer attributes to ensure maximum customer satisfaction.
Originality/value
The findings of this study can enable hotel service providers to customise their services based on customer attributes to reduce dissatisfaction among customers and promote customer loyalty. The findings of this study can also be used to devise differential promotional strategies for different types of customers.
Details
Keywords
Vinay Chittiprolu, Nagaraj Samala and Raja Shekhar Bellamkonda
In business, online reviews have an economic impact on firm performance. Customers’ data in the form of online reviews was used to understand the appreciation and service…
Abstract
Purpose
In business, online reviews have an economic impact on firm performance. Customers’ data in the form of online reviews was used to understand the appreciation and service complaints written by previous customers. The study is an analysis of the online reviews written by the customers about Indian heritage hotels. This study aims to understand the dimensions of service appreciation and service complaints by comparing positive- and negative-rated reviews and find the patterns in the determinants of the satisfaction and dissatisfaction of the customers.
Design/methodology/approach
A total of 23,643 online reviews about heritage hotels were collected from the TripAdvisor website by using a Web crawler developed in Python. A total of 1000 reviews were randomly selected for further analysis to eliminate the bandwagon effect. Unsupervised text mining techniques were used to analyze reviews and find out the interesting patterns in text data.
Findings
Based on Herzberg two-factor theory, this study found satisfied and dissatisfied determinants separately. The study revealed some common categories discussed by satisfied and dissatisfied customers. The factors which satisfy the customers may also dissatisfy the customers if not delivered properly. Satisfied customers mentioned about tangible features of the hotel stay, which includes physical signifiers, traditional services, staff behavior and professionalism and core products (rooms, food). However, most of the customers complained about intangible service problems, such as staff attitude, services failure, issues with reservation and food, value for money and room condition. The results are contradicting with commercial hotels-based studies owing to the unique services provided by heritage hotels.
Practical implications
The dimensions for satisfaction and dissatisfaction among customer of heritage hotels provide marketers to understand the real emotion and perception of the customers. As these dimensions were extracted through text mining of the reviews written by the customer of heritage hotels, the results would certainly give better insights to the hotel marketers.
Originality/value
The study is a rare attempt to study online reviews of customers on heritage hotels through a text mining approach and find the patterns in the behavior and the determinants of satisfaction and dissatisfaction of customers.