Mining online comments to understand customer satisfaction with hotel technologies: A comparison of hotels in Beijing and Washington, DC
Abstract
For hotel customers, satisfaction with amenities has long been a key factor in the stay experience. Using content analysis from 2,100 TripAdvisor reviews of hotels in Washington, DC, USA and Beijing, China, this study evaluates how various categories of hotel technology influence the satisfaction of hotel customers. Of the five categories of hotel technology considered (ie basic in-room, entertainment, business, comfort and mobile technologies), the study finds that entertainment technology is the most important. The results also indicate that comfort technology is considerably more important for hotel customers in Washington, DC than for hotel customers in Beijing. In addition to providing a research framework, this study provides a practical application for hotel managers to analyse guest comments to address customer complaints and enhance customer satisfaction at a location-specific level. Hotel managers can easily adopt the methodology to analyse property-specific customer data without substantial difficulty. Such data can then be used to meet customer needs and enhance customer satisfaction through the provision of technology that guests genuinely value. It can also assist managers in developing better marketing strategies for their hotels.
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Author's Biography
Minyi Zheng is a guest service representative at Marriott Philadelphia Airport. She has a master’s degree in hospitality and tourism from Widener University and a bachelor’s degree in business administration from Guangdong University of Technology. Her career interests include marketing and revenue management.
Shiang-Lih Chen Mccain is an assistant professor of marketing at Colorado Mesa University. Her research interests include the consumer buying decision process, service quality, customer satisfaction, customer loyalty and service recovery. She received her PhD in hotel administration from University of Nevada-Las Vegas.
Jeffrey C. Lolli is an associate professor at Widener University, where he coordinates the Tourism and Hospitality Management programme. He has a doctorate in higher education leadership from Widener University, and specialises in teaching operations management and human capital. His research interests include tourism and hospitality operations management, and customer and organisational behaviour/dynamics. He also has more than 20 years’ experience working in the hospitality industry in various operational management positions.
Ping-Ho Ting is a professor in the Department of Hospitality Management and Department of Leisure Studies and Tourism Management at National Chi Nan University. Dr Ting’s major research interests include enterprise resource planning, data mining and user behaviour on the web. His current research activities involve intelligent systems and hospitality information systems. His work has been published in numerous peer-reviewed journals worldwide
Citation
Zheng, Minyi, Chen Mccain, Shiang-Lih, Lolli, Jeffrey C. and Ting, Ping-Ho (2019, May 9). Mining online comments to understand customer satisfaction with hotel technologies: A comparison of hotels in Beijing and Washington, DC. In the Applied Marketing Analytics: The Peer-Reviewed Journal, Volume 5, Issue 1. https://doi.org/10.69554/WVCW4357.
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