Hotel online reviews: different languages, different opinions

Nuno Antonio (), Ana Almeida (), Luis Nunes (), Fernando Batista () and Ricardo Ribeiro ()
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Nuno Antonio: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)
Ana Almeida: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)
Luis Nunes: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)
Fernando Batista: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)
Ricardo Ribeiro: Instituto Universitário de Lisboa (ISCTE-IUL)

Information Technology & Tourism, 2018, vol. 18, issue 1, No 9, 157-185

Abstract: Abstract Online reviews are one of the main influencers of hotel purchase decisions. This study performs an analysis of reviews extracted from well-known online review sources in combination with hotel sales data and concludes that ratings differ according to the language of reviews. Data science tools have been applied to English, Spanish, and Portuguese reviews, revealing that reviews written in English achieve higher ratings when compared with Spanish or Portuguese reviews. A new visualization method is proposed to quickly depict the sentiment of main topics mentioned in reviews, clearly revealing that not all customers are influenced by reviews in the same way or look for the same things in a hotel. This study has great implications for online reviews research and for hotel management as it clearly shows that language can be used to identify preferences of guests from different origins and because it gives hoteliers more information on how to provide a better service according to guests’ cultural background.

Keywords: Data science; Hospitality industry; Language; Natural language processing; Online reviews (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

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DOI: 10.1007/s40558-018-0107-x

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