Reputation and Guest Experience in Bali’s Spa Hotels: A Big Data Perspective

Neila Aisha, Angellie Williady and Hak-Seon Kim ()
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Neila Aisha: Department of Global Business, Kyungsung University, Busan 48434, Republic of Korea
Angellie Williady: Department of Global Business, Kyungsung University, Busan 48434, Republic of Korea
Hak-Seon Kim: School of Hospitality & Tourism Management, Kyungsung University, Busan 48434, Republic of Korea

Tourism and Hospitality, 2025, vol. 6, issue 4, 1-15

Abstract: This study examines how psycholinguistic features of online reviews relate to guest satisfaction in Bali’s spa hotel market. Using LIWC-22 category rates from Google Maps reviews, a corpus of 15,560 quality-filtered reviews from ten leading spa hotels was analyzed. Exploratory factor analysis yielded four interpretable dimensions—Social, Health and Wellness, Emotional Tone, and Lifestyle. In regressions predicting review star ratings (satisfaction), Social ( β = 0.028) and Health and Wellness ( β = 0.023) showed small but statistically detectable positive associations, whereas Emotional Tone ( β = 0.006, t = 0.727) and Lifestyle ( β = 0.004, t = 0.476) were not significant. The model’s explained variance is negligible (R 2 = 0.001; F = 5.283, p < 0.05), reflecting the many influences on ratings beyond review language; findings are interpreted as directional associations rather than predictive effects. Practically, the results point to prioritizing interpersonal service cues and wellness/treatment assurances, with tone monitoring being used for service-recovery signals. The design favors interpretability (validated, word-based categories; full-history snapshot) over black-box complexity, and transferability is Bali-specific and conditional on comparable market features. Future work should add contextual covariates (e.g., price and location), apply explicit temporal segmentation, extend to multilingual corpora, and triangulate text analytics with brief questionnaires and qualitative inquiry to strengthen validity and explanatory power.

Keywords: big data; spa hotels; guest experience; reputation management; wellness tourism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: Z3 Z30 Z31 Z32 Z33 Z38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
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