Introduction
Because of the widespread use of Web 2.0 technology in a wide range of fields, Web-based platforms may generate user-generated content (UGC) (Brochado et al., 2019). In addition, third-party agents, such as online reviews on Booking.com and Expedia (Arasli et al., 2021) and specific review portals such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, can generate UGC (Sulu et al., 2022). Consumers and decision-makers have benefited much from UGC analysis (Nilashi et al., 2021). Decision-makers can uncover previously unknown patterns regarding customers and marketplaces by using UGC methodologies (Siering et al., 2018).
Due to the proliferation of UGC material on the internet and electronic word of mouth (e-WOM), hotels have felt the effects more than any other industry. In general, UGC accounts for a large portion of the hotel industry’s global online business as it provides insight into how customers see the hotel’s products and services (Nilashi et al., 2021; Teichert et al., 2021). Thus UGC is increasingly getting attention as a key measure of a company’s performance (Sulu et al., 2022). In addition, UGC has a huge impact on service providers’ income, brand image and service innovation because of the widespread use of new technologies (Chakraborty and Bhat, 2018). Moreover, UGC has had a significant impact on customers, allowing them to share their views and experiences with others and, as a result, influencing their purchasing decisions (Ahani et al., 2019; Nilashi et al., 2022). Because of this, it is critical to use suitable analytical approaches to extract useful data about customer satisfaction from UGC (Luo et al., 2021).
When the COVID-19 pandemic spread globally, it had a significant impact on the tourist and hotel industries (Jafari et al., 2021; Allaberganov et al., 2021; Karatepe et al., 2021). The pandemic’s ramifications, including travel bans, border closures and quarantine directives, have forced numerous enterprises in the tourist and hospitality industries to scale back or shut operations (Sulu et al., 2022; Jafari et al., 2020). The sector has lost millions of dollars in income as a result of the enormous efforts to combat the pandemic; 75 million jobs and US$2.1tn in sales are believed to be at stake (WTTC, 2020; Zenker and Kock, 2020). Among the industries impacted, hotels are subject to severe restrictions and “new normal” standards. Hotel management is determining how to deliver services securely, and with the crisis continuing, there is uncertainty about how these situations will evolve (Nilashi et al., 2022). As a result, it is critical to ascertain the satisfaction dimensions from online customer evaluations to ascertain their preferences for hotel services (Arasli et al., 2021). As highlighted above, guest’s reviews are an invaluable resource for identifying the travellers’ voice during a pandemic (Sulu et al., 2022). Indeed, through online customer evaluations, the primary worries of guests may be easily discovered, as well as their degree of satisfaction. In parallel with afore-mentioned information, Nilashi et al. (2021) analyzed UGC data using “text mining” approach and advocated for the inclusion of this sort of data in more research, particularly during the time of pandemic. The authors suggested that developing new data analysis tools and procedures for collecting and analyzing data from online customer reviews would be a more effective means of data collection than conducting surveys, especially in the time of COVID-19. Numerous research in the fields of tourism and hospitality have been undertaken since COVID-19 became a pandemic. The majority of them are tied to the tourist industry’s broader social and economic implications (Hao et al., 2020). To our knowledge, there has been no large-scale study focusing on the service perception of hotel tourists, investigated using content analysis, on hotels, especially in the time of pandemic. Tourist UGC toward hotels is crucial during a pandemic because it is the first opportunity for hoteliers to analyze their service quality and make necessary adjustments in compliance with COVID-19 procedures. To address the aforesaid research lacuna in the research, the purpose of this study is to explore tourists’ narratives and identify important concepts and themes of their ‘lived experience’ of hotel experiences and find out different patterns in tourist experiences (TE) across satisfaction levels in the time of COVID-19 pandemic. The study is the first to present an in-depth examination of consumers’ experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic. The two main objectives of this research include: to explore a comprehensive and realistic view of tourists’ experiences by analyzing the online UGC collected from a widespread travel review website (i.e. TripAdvisor) and to find out which themes were associated with “higher” and “lower” guest satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. Overall, the contributions of our work are as follows:
A text mining study was done to elicit information about tourists’ experiences during COVID-19. Leximancer was used because it is well-known for producing reliable and valid results (Arasli et al., 2021). Leximancer has been extensively used in rigorous text mining research because it enables researchers to build a concept map that visually depicts the structure of text components and themes, as opposed to a quantitative method that raises concerns about biased results (Chow, 2015). In the context of tourism, various research has studied tourists’ service perception by establishing innovative approaches based on consumer online reviews. However, this issue has received scant attention in the aftermath of a calamity such as the COVID-19 pandemic.
Second, our paper sought to identify factors known as satisfiers and dissatisfiers among tourists as access to reviews platforms are streamlined to actual tourist/visitors of the hotels, comments extracted for this study are reflections of the direct experiences of the tourists – a form of valuable tourist feedback and quality appraisal indicator. Hence, the findings of the study are important indicators of areas of strength and weakness in the actual implementation of hotel management especially during the pandemic.
Literature review
Service quality in the hotel industry
Previously, researchers have paid enormous attention to the concept of service quality because of its vital effect on performance, customer satisfaction, retention and profitability (Kimeto, 2021; Sulu et al., 2022). Although the research was conducted on service quality, it endured as a mysterious concept due to differentiating features of services such as intangibility or inseparability (Brady and Cronin, 2001).
Recent investigations have concentrated on the association between service quality, customer satisfaction and loyalty in the hospitality sector (Nunkoo et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2016; Arasli et al., 2020b). The extant literature demonstrates several studies, which have examined the preceding role of “service quality” in relation to customer satisfaction in the hotel sector (Malik et al., 2020). The higher the perceived service quality, the more satisfied tourists are (Amin et al., 2013). The results established in the previous literature also propose that hotel tourists’ satisfaction is an essential driver of behavioral intentions among tourists (Liu and Lee, 2016). Considering the lodging sector, “tourist satisfaction” is critical in determining the “quality of services” and increases the likelihood that travellers will continue to associate with service providers (Malik et al., 2020). This might manifest itself in the form of repurchase proclivity as well as favorable “WOM” (Berezina et al., 2012). Additionally, scholars have demonstrated that hotel service quality is directly related to tourist loyalty and traveler preference (Nunkoo et al., 2020; Lee et al., 2016). When hotel guests are happy, they are more likely to repurchase the hotel’s services, which results in increased brand loyalty and a decrease in the number of complaints (Malik et al., 2020).
Tourist experience
Despite much attention from tourism academics, there is still no agreement on what constitutes TE. Shaw and Williams (2002) suggested that TE is composed of sensory experiences through the five senses and the rational experience of knowledge, whereas Zhang et al. (2018) defined TE as “…the comprehensive psychological responses of perceptual and rational experience in tourism” (p. 3). Indeed, visitors may travel for a variety of reasons (Xu et al., 2018). Thus, TE is contingent upon the tourist’s “center,” which represents his or her world perspective (Cohen, 1979). Xu et al. (2018) propose that TE is a type of mental and psychological satisfaction experienced by tourists as a result of their involvement in tourism activities and that it is the essence of tourism. Tourists seek unique and meaningful experiences to produce “unforgettable images, awaken senses, touch hearts, and excite brains” (Song et al., 2015). In general, TE is the first hurdle for marketers, and they should leverage it to influence visitors’ behavioral intentions (Liu et al., 2018).
Hotel guest (dis)satisfaction
Identifying satisfied and dissatisfied consumers has long been a focus of research for researchers across a range of disciplines, including “engineering,” “management,” “marketing” and “hospitality” (Chow and Zhang, 2008; Pizam and Ellis, 1999; Chiu et al., 2017). Customer satisfaction is defined as “… the pleasurable fulfilment level during the consumption of a product or service” (Oliver, 1996, p. 145). On the other hand, Buskirk and Rothe (1970) defined dissatisfaction as “…the sense of frustration and bitterness on part of customers who have been promised more but have received less” (p. 62). Marketing and consumer behavior experts have conducted an extensive study on the topic of tourist satisfaction and dissatisfaction. These postpurchase behaviors are recognized as critical to businesses because of their impact on repeat purchases and WOM referrals. In a nutshell, pleasure fosters favorable opinions toward the brand and increases the possibility of repeat purchases. On the other hand, dissatisfaction might result in bad brand sentiments and a decreased probability of purchasing the same brand in the future (Berezina et al., 2016). Social media and travel-related UGC platforms have emerged and proliferated, allowing researchers to collect a wealth of unstructured data to better understand visitors’ perspectives, actions and expectations (Brochado et al., 2019).
Most UGC websites get unsolicited travel reviews, which are posted by other website visitors. There is much evidence to suggest that internet travel reviews are a cost-effective and nonbiased way to learn about visitor satisfaction (Alrawadieh and Law, 2019). Extant literature shows the results of numerous research that used data from UGC platforms to try to figure out what aspects lead to travellers (dis)satisfaction. For instance, Li et al. (2013) used “text mining” and “content analysis” on UGC posted about hotels in a Chinese city. Cited authors found that the hotel’s accommodation, transit convenience, proximity to tourist attractions and overall value are triggering satisfaction. Kim et al. (2016) focused on tourists’ UGC as well as compare factors known as “satisfiers” and “dissatisfiers.” The results showed that “staff and their attitude,” “room cleanliness/dirtiness,” “bed,” “bathroom” as well as “room size,” were revealed as common satisfiers and dissatisfiers in limited-service hotels. The study conducted by Li et al. (2020) used UGC to examine how hotel features such as basic, excitement and performance alter according to the hotel’s star grade and the specific client demographic to whom it is targeted. The study found that guests’ expectations of hotel performance differed depending on where they came from (domestic or international), as well as the star ratings of the hotels under consideration, thereby moderating the asymmetric impact of hotel attributes on customer satisfaction that would otherwise be present. Another study done by Alrawadieh and Law (2019) found that the “quality” and “size of rooms,” “attitude of staff,” mainly boost hotel guest satisfaction. Guest remarks submitted on the websites of lodging centers in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, were the focus of a study by Khoo-Lattimore and Ekiz (2014). An examination of 220 qualitative scripts reveals the kind of compliments that were delivered in this study. According to the findings, the top five themes that customers praise are “rooms,” “staff,” “food,” “services” and “location.”
Online hotel reviews in the hotel industry
Typically, traditional media outlets use professional specialists to conduct product or service reviews (Vermeulen and Seegers, 2009). Prior research has proven that professionals are more convincing than nonexperts in general (Petty et al., 1981). Numerous evaluations on the internet are posted by consumers. e-WOM study on the influence of reviewer skill has produced inconsistent findings (Bickart and Schindler, 2001). Earlier research found that customers place a higher premium on recommendations from their peers than on suggestions from professional reviewers. Consumers view online reviews to be less biased and more trustworthy (Vermeulen and Seegers, 2009).
Fang et al. (2016) defined online reviews as “numerical ratings and descriptive comments provided by current and past customers which are used to express satisfaction or dissatisfaction, often submitted with opinions or recommendations, revolving around an experience with a product or service.” Mauri and Minazzi (2015) confirm the importance of online reviews valence in their study of the Italian hotel industry. Their research provides evidence confirming the impact of the online review on the purchase decisions of potential hotel tourists. Filieri et al. (2018) found substantial impact of extreme reviews on hotel booking retention – both positive and negative – remarking how larger hotels were more greatly affected.
Moreover, the rise of the internet and online reviews shared from different platforms supply greater chance for a qualitative approach to service quality (Brochado et al., 2019). The technology that is stated as the second-generation internet (Web 2.0) is one that generally contains advancements that lead individuals to cooperate and share information online (Berezina et al., 2016). Novel research conducted by Statista has showcased that 65% of tourists (18–29 years) consider online reviews very essential when selecting a hotel (Lock, 2018). Likewise, 58% of middle-aged (30–59 years) tourists confirmed that online reviews are vital while selecting their hotels (Lock, 2018). It is widely accepted that both positive and negative online reviews have a significant effect on customers’ preferences. In addition, people are more likely to post an online review for retaliation when they are disappointed by service quality (Yi et al., 2018). It has been shown that negative reviews have more influence than positive reviews, and they directly affect consumers’ preferences (Gretzel and Yoo, 2008).
Park et al. (2019) demonstrated that negative and positive online reviews have a powerful impact on the change of tourists’ opinions. Research also revealed that more than 80% of prospective tourists read at least 6–12 reviews to select the best hotel before making choice and they generally focus on recent ones (PhocusWire, 2014).
Several studies, as identified in Table 1, use online reviews in the domain of the hotel industry. In our study, TripAdvisor was used as the data source to understand tourists’ concerns expressed through UGC during the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, this research covers a research void in the prior literature by integrating machine learning approaches to conducting a qualitative content analysis of UGC in the aftermath of COVID-19.
Method
Antalya as a research context
Turkey is one of the top ten global tourism destinations, accounting for 40% of international visits (UNWTO, 2019). Antalya is one of the country’s most popular tourist attractions. However, because the majority of hotels were closed during the COVID-19 pandemic (Karatepe et al., 2021), we chose to gather data from an online travel portal. It is well recognized that outbreaks have resulted in a decline in Turkeys’ tourism income and that the tourism sector will take time to recover (Bucak and Yigit, 2021). The Turkish hotel business suffered significantly throughout the year 2020 as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. According to current estimates, Turkey’s hotel industry would lose up to $15.2bn by 2020 (Günay et al., 2020). Due to the onset of COVID-19, hotel occupancy rates in Antalya, one of Turkey’s most visited provinces, have fallen. In Antalya, the hotel occupancy rate decreased from 78.4% in March 2019 to 29% in March 2020 (Euronews, 2020). In our research, the Antalya region was favored for two reasons. First, Antalya has beautiful weather, a long coastline, a rich historical and cultural heritage and top-notch tourism amenities which make this destination a top choice for tourists (Woosnam et al., 2017). Second, Antalya welcomed nearly 15 million tourists in 2019 (Hotel Association of Turkey, 2019). The city of Antalya in Turkey is the second most visited destination after Istanbul (Karatepe et al., 2021), hence justifying the research scope.
Data collection
The utilization of conventional pen and pencil surveys to investigate TE has been accepted to have limitations for instance high fieldwork expenses, poor response rates as well as self-report bias (Chow, 2015). Because the common use of Web 2.0 online platforms is now prevalent, travellers can now trust UGC written by travellers who decide to share their experiences. This therefore helps with traveller selection, as online reviews are generally shared by travellers with no commercial benefits which makes them reliable sources (Filieri et al., 2020).
Our study focused on analyzing social media platform shared experiences on TripAdvisor. This choice is motivated by two factors. To begin, TripAdvisor.com is one of the world’s largest social networking site devoted exclusively to travel. It has over 300 million users and 500 million reviews of hotels, restaurants and other travel-related companies worldwide, which makes it simple to collect large amounts of online review data (Filieri et al., 2020; Öztüren et al., 2021). Second, TripAdvisor.com has adopted several procedures to verify the quality of each online customer review to ensure that review material is of a reasonably high standard. It examines the online review writer’s IP and email addresses and looks for unusual patterns and vulgar or abusive language before the review is published on the website. Additionally, it enables users to submit suspect information, which is then evaluated by a team of quality assurance professionals. This helps to confirm the legitimacy of online traveller reviews (Li et al., 2018).
According to TripAdvisor.com, at the time of the data collection, there were 40 five-star hotels listed among Antalya's “popular hotels” (those with the highest ratings from TripAdvisor users). The hotels we chose among 40 hotels were based on two key criteria. Our study’s purpose was to analyze hotel guests’ experiences with the COVID-19 pandemic. As a result, hotels that had no reviews for terms like “COVID-19,” “pandemic” or “virus” in their search terms were removed from consideration. Second, we only included hotels that had gotten “Travel Safe”-certified security measures. TripAdvisor has developed a new set of “Travel Safe” tools to assist customers in finding, filtering for, and validating health and safety information so they can feel more confident in their future travel decisions inside the city and throughout the globe (TripAdvisor, 2021). More than 13,850 properties have already made use of TripAdvisor’s Travel Safe features, which are available in all 49 regions where the company is active. So, hotels that did not have “Properties taking safety measures,” were not taken into consideration. In choosing reviews, only those in English were taken into consideration and hotels that had few or limited reviews were excluded. In all cases, longer reviews were preferred (Sulu et al., 2022). After all evaluations and eligibility of hotels, our sample comprised 1,030 reviews of 15 five-star hotels from the city of Antalya, Turkey.
Purposive sampling was used in this study to allow the authors to acquire COVID-19 specific review data. Leximancer software has been applied in tourism and hospitality research (Tseng et al., 2015). For example, Sulu et al. (2022) analyzed 498 UGC of passengers, Brochado (2019) used 722 UGC from tree hotel visitors, Stoleriu et al. (2019) gathered 226 reviews from tourists visiting UNESCO monasteries in Northeast Romania, and Arasli et al. (2020b) collected 2,000 UGC from cruisers.
According to the data gathered, 480 reviews were written by females (46.6%) and 550 by males (53.4%; see Table 2). Around a third or 63.1% of the reviews were posted by UK countries, 17.5% by travellers from Middle Eastern countries, 11.7% by tourists from Europe and 7.7% by tourists from the Asia region. The data gathered, transferred to an Excel file containing the following columns: data from review, the title of review, review and guests rating. A total of 1,030 Web reviews were collected.
The data gathered was kept in an Excel spreadsheet containing the data such as “hotel name,” “review title,” “review,” “traveller type,” “nationality,” “gender” and “overall satisfaction rating.” The scores contained the classifications of “1 (‘Terrible’), 2 (‘Poor’), 3 (‘Average’), 4 (‘Very good’) and 5 (‘Excellent’).” Based on our objectives, we paid attention to collecting reviews during the COVID-19 period. As with previous study (Arasli et al., 2020a), we gathered only English reviews to enable analysis. The total number of assessments correlates to past research on specific locations (Sulu et al., 2022).
Data analysis through Leximancer
The data gathered from TripAdvisor were processed by Leximancer, which is suitable for content analysis and is gradually being used in the field of tourism and hospitality-related research (Brochado et al., 2019). Leximancer is a text analytics software that processes the content of text in electronic format and discovers the mined data statistically and provides a conceptual map where concepts and maps are demonstrated (Arasli et al., 2021; Dambo et al., 2020). Leximancer is different from other content analysis software. Unlike NVivo and ATLAS.ti, Leximancer does not apply word frequency, or coding of terms (Arasli et al., 2020a, b). Leximancer is used for gauging the meanings within ways of text by mining the key concepts and philosophies.
In addition, Leximancer uses “Bayesian theory” to identify concepts in the textual data by analyzing their consistent utilization as a collective phrase and frequency of concurrence (Dambo et al., 2021; Arasli et al., 2020b). The research harnessed the possibilities of Leximancer software to find out the dominant “themes” and “concepts” in tourists’ comments. Several steps were followed to derive the “concept map.” First, “the Excel file containing data collected from TripAdvisor was uploaded into the system.” Next, “we derived concept seeds at step two and they reflect the beginning of the concept definition” (Öztüren et al., 2021). Here, some words make up keywords that distinguish one concept from another. The next phase is “thesaurus derivation which relates to each seed” (Arasli et al., 2020a, 2020b). Using Leximancer analysis, it is possible to examine the relationships between words, concepts and themes to generate a concept map. In Leximancer analysis, Figure 1 illustrates the fundamental process of semantic pattern extraction and the relationship between “words,” concepts” and “themes” (Chiu et al., 2017).
The second analysis included all of the reviews and Leximancer-tags were seeded for “positive sentiment” as well as “negative sentiment.” These tags enabled the exploration of Hotel tourists’ satisfaction degree toward hotel’ service perception. Tags are crucial for comparing distinct documents based on their conceptual content, for example, different speakers in transcript papers, or for a comparison between different text sources. The tags can then be shown alongside the relevant topics on the map. This is advantageous for undertaking semantic document clustering or conducting a discriminant analysis between two groups (Leximancer User Guide, 2021). This analysis resulted in Figure 4.
There are a number of tasks Leximancer can perform. First, the software can effectively process large sizes of content. Second, Leximancer can rapidly classify the “concepts” and “themes” in an exploratory way. Third, it can process the data without preexisting assumptions concerning the meaning of the words, and hence, it decreases the probable bias from the scholar (Dambo et al., 2021; Chiu et al., 2017). Fourth, because of the least manual interference from the scholar, the results from the software might, thus, give a different view which scholars cannot find out in a manual coding style (Sotiriadou et al., 2014). As mentioned above, Leximancer software can be an alternative remedy for the analysis where subjective coding, uncertain intercoder consistency and uncertain interpretations stand as a big barrier.
Generally, Leximancer follows a process flow that advances text “from words to meaning to insight.” The Leximancer analysis is in theory carried out in an unsupervised way, and the approach can be acknowledged as a form of text mining (Sulu et al., 2022). In addition, Leximancer software assists scholars to be able to get effective and efficient results by using individuals’ natural language (e.g. “interviews,” “reviews” and “focus group transcript”). In essence, the software uses a quantitative way to conduct qualitative analysis. Initially, it recognizes a ranked list of concepts using semantic and relational extraction from the data text by scheming the frequency and the co-concurrence of phrases. Second, the software uses these concepts to spread a thesaurus of words that are strictly linked to the concepts and thus creating semantic and relational content about the concept. Third, Leximancer clusters the concepts into theme levels based on how frequently they arise together in the block of text (Sotiriadou et al., 2014; Chiu et al., 2017). The concept map generated in the study explains the study’s use of colors. They are color coded based on relevancy, with red and orange indicating the most relevant concepts, and blue and green, the least relevant. The intensity of a concept’s label corresponds to the frequency with which it appears in the body of the text. There are additional codes in the text for a notion with a brighter label (Arasli et al., 2021).
Results
This research targeted to ascertain the main themes shared in online reviews by tourists in relation to service perception during the COVID-19 pandemic and also identify which of these themes were associated with higher and lower satisfaction. The study used content analyses (i.e. quantitative) to examine 1,030 reviews of 15 hotels in Antalya, Turkey shared by guests on TripAdvisor. The analysis demonstrated the existence of eight themes in hotel tourists’ online descriptions of hotel experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic (Figure 2): “staff,” “hotel,” “restaurant,” “COVID-19,” “room,” “pool,” “entertainment” and “family.”
Staff
As shown in Figure 3, the theme of staff includes the concepts of “staff” (count = 1,864; relevance = 100%), “friendly” (220, 72%), “masks” (315, 58%), “precautions” (47, 28%), “disinfectant” (16, 50%), “cleanliness” (52, 48%), “guests” (111, 42%), “people” (112, 44%), “fantastic” (108, 49%) and “waiting” (32, 67%).
A typical review reads, “the staff are fantastic and nothing is too much. They are very aware of what they need to do to ensure everyone’s safety during this time without spoiling the experience” (Female tourist). Another guest shared, “I would say that the hotel is very COVID-19 aware and controlled. All staff wear face masks and there is hand disinfectant everywhere and plenty of signage to remind you of social distancing. We felt safe which was the main thing. All of the staff were very professional and friendly also took all the precautions.” A third tourist added, “Leo animation team was lovely, friendly approachable, helpful. All staff wearing masks and following COVID-19 guidance.” One guest added, “COVID-19 measures in place are very good with staff regularly disinfecting sun loungers, cleaning up the rubbish.”
Hotel
The theme of hotel includes the concepts of “hotel” (count = 1,477, relevance = 75%), “social distancing” (403, 17%), “hygiene” (204, 12%), “disappointed” (98, 11%) and “cases” (76, 09%). A tourist shared online: “Hotel itself, was extremely clean and prepped to COVID-19 standards (hand sanitizer, limited number in lifts, mask etc.). Hotel is huge and the grounds are quite spread out.” A review reads, “The hotel, service, cleanliness, pool and entertainment is all fabulous and as many safety measures as possible were in place to combat covid-19 and to reassure guests. Definitely recommended this hotel.” One reviewer added that “COVID-19 measures taken by the hotel were sufficient, but the guests do not pay attention to social distance and masks.” Another tourist shared, “The measures taken for hygiene in the hotel are applied at a high level and without compromise. Common areas are designed with the social distance principle. You can feel cleanliness everywhere.”
Restaurant
The theme of restaurant includes the concepts of “restaurant” (count = 812, relevance = 41%), “food” (645, 31%), “service” (550, 21%), “lovely” (198, 10%) and “beach” (170, 10%). One tourist wrote, “I visited the Asian and Italian a la Carte restaurants which were unreal especially the Italian as the food was gorgeous” (male tourist). Another tourist added, “The main buffet restaurant was nice and big, all staff wearing masks and so were the guests. The food was okay.” One review reads, “Despite Covid-19 restrictions the restaurant could arrange the birthday dinner for 9 of us in a decent manner and the waiter Bulent serving our party did his job perfectly. The place is highly recommended” (female tourist).
COVID-19
The theme of COVID-19 comprises the concepts of “COVID-19” (count = 410, relevance = 31%), “safe” (274, 15%), “gloves” (232, 14%), “pandemic” (171, 11%), “measures” (136, 11%) and “lift” (51, 09%), “holiday” (120, 08%) and “cancelled” (51, 07%). A typical opinion given regarding the COVID-19 is, “We booked this hotel last minute as our original holiday to Jamaica was cancelled due to COVID-19. We booked for 10 nights all-inclusive. I cannot fault the hotel itself one bit.” One tourist shared a review stating, “The new COVID-19 measures are everywhere and pretty much everyone abides by them. We are already looking to come back next year!” One tourist added, “The entertainment is on the next level – not your usual cheesy hotel stuff. It is really amazing – theatre shows/live singers – parties. All done so tastefully taking COVID-19 measures seriously! So I will start from the beginning – check-in was easy and quick.” Another tourist shared, “If you are concerned about COVID-19 measures, we felt that the hotel management takes it very seriously and does all they could to prevent coronavirus outbreak. We felt very safe at all times. Cleaning constantly, even after every equipment use at the gym!”
Room
The theme of the room includes the concepts of “room” (450, 22%), “clean” (254, 13%), “bathroom” (70, 12%), “disinfectant” (32, 10%) and “bed” (120, 09). A typical review reads, “We stayed in the superior double room with sea view. The room is very nice and spacious, with a big space for clothing and storage, the bathroom is large with a waterfall shower and steam setting. Room was cleaned every day after we left and the fridge was also filled.” Another review shared, “The housekeeping at this hotel leaves much to be desired. When we checked in we were told that the room would only be cleaned every five days due to COVID-19. But when we arrived in our room it was patently clear that it had not been cleaned at all.” One tourist added, “Have to say it was amazing room/stay. The hotel was always clean and tidy! friendly welcoming atmosphere. They are self-serving food and drinks due to the COVID-19, and cutlery is put in packets with disinfectant wipes.”
Pool
The theme of pool includes the concepts of “pool” (264, 21%), “bar” (280, 14%), “buffet” (152, 12%), “recommend” (170, 12%), “towels” (82, 10%) and “attentive” (40, 08). An example of reviews given about the pool is, “The pool was ok, but in the afternoon you can see that the water is dirty, as many disquieting things are floating in the water. No lifeguard in the pool, I have seen only one in the aqua park but he has not been very interested of what is happening in the water.” Another tourist posted, “Towels for pool/beach are cleanly wrapped and always well-stocked for you to help yourself by the pool and beach.”
Entertainment
The theme of entertainment contains the concepts of “entertainment” (205, 11%), “quality” (48, 9%) and “environment” (32, 8%). A tourist included: “The entertainment was really good, especially the million dreams show and Miss miracle was a laugh, and the entertainment staff were lovely.” One tourist added, “The entertainment team is not as big as it usually is, no lunchtime games. COVID-19 again.” Another review reads, “Entertainment wasn’t up to much, not sure if limited as hotel not at full capacity and due to COVID-19 restrictions.”
Family
The theme of entertainment contains the concepts of “entertainment” (205, 11%), “quality” (48, 9%) and “environment” (32, 8%). A tourist included: “The hotel is very family-oriented and staff will do everything to make your stay as comfortable as possible with kids.” One review added, “l will return in May with girlfriend and July with family this hotel is suitable for families couples and singles xxx best holiday ever.” One tourist posted, “We went as a couple but it was also great for families with small children as they have an indoor kids club that children can attend, they also have a shaded pool to protect little ones from the heat during the day.”
Results of satisfaction versus dissatisfaction analysis
The second objective of our study examines how tourists with different satisfaction levels are linked to the themes of the hotel experiences. Two satisfaction levels, as described on TripAdvisor (i.e. excellent or very good vs poor or terrible), were selected as mapping concepts for further integration into the Leximancer analysis during the COVID-19 pandemic.
The group who rated their experience as high (i.e. excellent or very good) is associated most with the “staff” theme and the “hotel” theme. An assessment of the concept relationships for this group appeared that their highest-connected concepts are as follows: staff (91% likelihood of co-occurrence), COVID-19 (86%), measures (78%), restaurant (76%), masks (68%), room (67%), safe (63%), holiday (62%), entrance (61%), fantastic (60%), pandemic (59%), regulations (58%), cleanliness (58%), food (58%), entertainment (56%), disinfectant (55%), areas (55%) and family (55%). In general, they were the group who used the most expressive terms for their visit. When it comes to the theme of “COVID-19,” there were some negative reviews, but the majority of tourists left positive reviews about it. It is clear from this result that the hotel’s COVID-19 measures pleased the vast majority of tourists. Typical comments from this group include the following:
One satisfied tourist shared, “With COVID-19, the hotel was very safe, plenty hand sanitizer and social distancing. Would defiantly go back.” One tourist added, “Hotel did not disappoint even during the COVID-19 pandemic. The staff all wore masks and adhered to social distance. We even had our temperature taken every evening before dinner. We had a great time and have booked our 12th visit next year.” Another tourist shared a review, “The food at this hotel is exceptional no matter which restaurant you eat in the buffet is so well organized and safe, well done to all the chefs and servers. To the waiters, you also do a great job keeping everyone safe at their tables well done. There was so much choice in the buffet and very well presented.”
In contrast, the group who rated their hotel experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic as low (i.e. 1 or 2 out of 5 points), respectively, were clustered quite closely in Figure 4. An evaluation of the concepts associated with this group’s narratives revealed that the most frequently mentioned concepts are queue (37%), lift (35%), waiting (30%), guidelines (24%), social distancing (24%), restrictions (23%), hygiene (22%), cancelled (22%) and people (26%). A tourist from the UK expressed his views by stating that, “I would also note that the hotel is full despite COVID-19. The situation in the restaurant is horrible and there are many people in groups waiting in line for food and none of them had a mask because the hotel does not require wearing the same.”
One dissatisfied tourist shared, “The queue for the showers were ridiculous as all guests had the same idea but only 2 showers were available, again not COVID-19 friendly. Overall it was a fantastic holiday, but the COVID-19 measures need to be stricter.” Another tourist shared, “The buffet restaurant has no social distancing procedures in place they make you wear a mask but it is so busy in the restaurant and no one social distances. There are never any free tables in the buffet restaurant we have had to walk around the restaurant to find a table for so long sometimes we walked out and just didn’t eat.” A further unhappy tourist wrote, “lots of trips cancelled due to COVID-19 pandemic but we cannot believe this is the case. We believe the hotel is running at 60% occupancy and so there are cost saving measures in place and it’s easy to simply blame COVID-19.”
Conclusion and discussion
Conclusion
This study sought to answer a predefined research objective: to explore a comprehensive and realistic view of tourists’ experiences by analyzing the online UGC collected from a widespread travel review website (i.e. TripAdvisor) and to find out which themes were associated with “higher” and “lower” guest satisfaction during the COVID-19 pandemic. The content analyses demonstrated the existence of eight dominant themes in hotel tourists’ online descriptions of hotel experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic, namely, “staff,” “hotel,” “restaurant,” “COVID-19,” “room,” “pool,” “entertainment” and “family.” Furthermore, the results highlight concepts like “staff,” “hotel,” “restaurant,” “entertainment,” “room” and “area” belong to the high-satisfaction group (excellent/very good), whereas “queue,” “lift,” “waiting,” “guidelines,” “social distancing,” “restrictions,” “hygiene” and “cancellation” belong to the low-satisfaction group (poor/terrible). The results offer potentially valuable theoretical contributions and have managerial implications.
Discussion
The analyses demonstrated the presence of eight themes in hotel tourists’ online descriptions of hotel experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic: “staff,” “hotel,” “restaurant,” “COVID-19,” “room,” “pool,” “entertainment” and “family.” The level of customer service provided by the employees was of paramount importance. Our text analysis revealed that tourists pay attention to staff’ attitude and hygiene when serving and greeting guests. Hotel tourists use terms such as “friendly” and “helpful” to describe staff attitude. Also, personal protective equipment (i.e. gloves, face masks/coverings) and staff concepts have been mentioned together in a positive tone in the narratives. Service quality was explained in terms of promptness, friendliness and courteousness (Kim, 2013). This finding confirmed that service quality plays a key role in customers’ selection of a hotel (Nunkoo et al., 2020). In addition, the friendliness of the personnel is especially important in the eyes of intercontinental travelers, many of whom are only in the country for a short period of time (Wu et al., 2017). The helpful, courteous, skilled and efficient personnel was mentioned by nearly all of the visitors (998 out of 1,030). They only encountered rude employees on rare occasions. According to research conducted at Antalya’s top-tier hotels, good service is critical for international tourists visiting Turkey, particularly because good service may transform customer satisfaction into customer loyalty (Malik et al., 2020). These findings are also in line with research on the critical role that successful co-creation plays a big role in creating the greatest tourist interactions (Wu et al., 2017).
Another dominant theme that appeared in our study was the theme of hotel. The theme of hotel is frequently used with the concepts of social distancing, hygiene and areas. The COVID-19 pandemic has created a high level of fear among travellers, resulting in a significant drop in the number of trips taken and the number of miles travelled (Hidalgo et al., 2022). Accommodation facility providers are expected to take particular activities, such as providing hand sanitizers and disinfecting rooms and other commonly available equipment, as well as adhering to social distance limitations like mask usage, so that guests’ safety may be ensured while they are there. Another prominent theme found in this research was COVID-19. The tourists frequently shared narratives regarding COVID-19 in their online reviews. The theme of COVID-19 is commonly combined with the concepts of safe(ty), pandemic and measures which is in accordance with previous study done by Sulu et al. (2022) on airplane passengers emphasizing COVID-19 pandemic discussed along with concepts such as safety and restrictions both in negative and positive tone. Hotels all across the world are feeling the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. The tourist and hospitality industries, in particular, are prone to such outbreaks (Hidalgo et al., 2022) and implementing crisis and risk management methods relevant to the industry (Ritchie and Jiang, 2019). According to the findings of the study, tourists are more concerned about the health dangers they may face when visiting a specific location. According to our findings, travellers pay attention to the standard operating procedures at the hotels they stay at, which is in agreement with Nilashi et al. (2021) study. In addition, “Room,” “pool,” “entertainment” and “family” were other prevalent themes in our research. These findings corroborate major attributes highlighted in previous research (Arasli et al., 2021; Wu et al., 2017; Arasli et al., 2020b).
The study’s second objective was to examine the underpinnings of satisfied versus dissatisfied hotel customers as expressed in the online reviews at the time of the COVID-19 pandemic. The theme staff, hotel, room, restaurant and cleanliness are an important dimension in the hotel tourists’ narratives analyzed in the present study. This observation departs from past studies that allude to room and staff as having the role of both basic and performance factors. For example, Kim et al. (2016) found that staff and their “attitude,” “room cleanliness/dirtiness,” “bed,” “bathroom” and “room size” were identified as common satisfiers and dissatisfiers. While the work of Alrawadieh and Dincer (2019) study found that the most often hotel e-complaints included service quality, hotel facility efficiency, and cleanliness and hygiene, Arasli et al. (2021) found that guests who score their hotel experiences as high satisfaction share narratives such as cleanliness, food, staff, hotel, restaurants, room and entertainment. Similarly, Arasli et al. (2020b) researched cruise tourism. Their study demonstrated themes such as “ship,” “staff,” “food,” “entertainment,” “room” and “area” as belonging to the high-satisfaction group (excellent/very good), while “embarkation,” “disembarkation,” “excursion” and “port” belong to the low-satisfaction group (poor/terrible).
Business revenues, operations and management practices are all affected by the COVID-19 pandemic (Fotiadis et al., 2021). The tourist and hospitality industries, in particular, are predominantly vulnerable to such outbreaks and should implement crisis and risk management processes as needed to protect themselves (Sulu et al., 2022). Hence, it is important to explore dimensions of satisfaction from the UGC to reveal their preference for the hotels’ services during the COVID-19 outbreak (Nilashi et al., 2021). According to our findings, the theme of “COVID-19” was one of the dominant theme, and while some travellers had unfavorable remarks to say about it, the vast majority of tourists shared positive narratives regarding COVID-19. This result shows that the hotel's COVID-19 measures pleased the great majority of visitors. This finding corroborates the recent work of Nilashi et al. (2022) in which they concluded that service quality provided during COVID-19 has an impact on hotel performance and consequently boost customers’ satisfaction.
In addition, the current study suggests that to drive positive e-WOM, hotel staff should provide quality service to guests. The hotel staff play an important role in customer satisfaction and hearten tourists to post positive online reviews (Berezina et al., 2016). It can be stated that tourists’ fulfillment might significantly depend on the performance of hotel employees’ performance especially during the COVID-19 pandemic where hotel tourists’ expectations have already changed due to the pandemic. The measure aspects of hotels are discussed more repeatedly in positive tones. However, tourists shared negative narratives about other tourists who some of them did not follow COVID-19 instructions during their vacation. This may be due to the hotel's management mechanism lacking in terms of reminding tourists for being more cautious toward measures taken by hotel management. For this reason, the hotel management should take measures against the COVID-19 pandemic, and actively implement these measures. In addition, tourists shared negative comments about the concept of the elevator. This was because during the pandemic the restrictions to be used for elevators were not followed by some of the tourists. Tourists made comments stating their sensitivity on this issue and repeated in their comments that the virus could easily be transmitted to them since elevators restrictions were not taken seriously by some tourists. Another theme where hotel tourists frequently shared in the negative reviews was the queue. Safe distances have been set for guests waiting in queue during the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some tourists were dissatisfied because of long waiting hours, so this circumstance created dissatisfaction among tourists during their stay.
Implications for theory
Theoretically, this study adds to the existing literature on hotel customer experience by studying current hotel online reviews in Turkey’s most touristic region, Antalya and identifying the impact of the most frequently mentioned attributes on the overall review. This analysis extends the current literature since past research either uses scales from different domains or incomplete data from less direct sources (Thomsen and Jeong, 2021). In other words, the sample size or the instrument's inconsistent indications might be used as examples of this (Chow, 2015). The survey respondent may answer questions at random, which introduces inconsistences into the results (Wan and Gao, 2015). Distinct from earlier research that do not identify “staff” as the most dominant theme (Ahani et al., 2019), this study finds “staff” as the most commonly mentioned theme; “food” is not shown as important as “staff” in the current study, different from the findings from Li et al.’s (2013) study. In addition, our findings highlight the relevance of e-WOM as hotel tourists’ positive and negative experiences are directly articulated, predicting customers’ psychological and attitudinal actions. The sentiment analysis presents empirical evidence to the “positivity bias debate” under hotel’s non-anonymous communicating norms (Bridges and Vasquez, 2018) via a list of positive and negative features. Methodologically, developing visual representations of massive data consistently, this work extends the analytical tools in hotel online review studies (Thomsen and Jeong, 2021). The implementation of big data analytics lowers subjective judgment from academics and reflects hotel travellers’ true perceptions. By adopting this strategy, this study emphasizes the relevance of machine learning in social science investigations. This quantitatively qualitative technique gives a theoretical framework for subsequent survey or experimental investigations in the accommodation sector. Researchers have been debating on the superiority of quantitative or qualitative research paradigm, whereas this study highlights the importance of sentiment analysis which transforms qualitative data into quantitative and interprets quantitative data qualitatively (Thomsen and Jeong, 2021). Considering the nature of large data, standard research techniques or tools are not adequate to properly evaluate the data, therefore visualization of data using Leximancer would contribute to the development of the research paradigm in hospitality (Sulu et al., 2022).
Managerial implications
This study’s findings provide practical examples and guidance to assist managers to recover from the pandemic's negative consequences. First, there is now an even greater need for intelligent services because of the COVID-19 pandemic (Chen et al., 2021). Transformation in customer demand is what propels digital transformation forward. According to the present environment, clients are increasingly preferring contactless service, which is backed by digital platforms and sophisticated technology. It's a win-win situation for hotels and their customers since the new digital and intelligent technologies will reduce human error, improve service efficiency, and maintain high quality while also enhancing customer satisfaction. Artificial intelligence applications for hotels have piqued the interest of industry giants such as, “Alibaba,” “Xiaomi,” “Baidu” and “iFlytek.” Alibaba-owned FlyZoo Hotel, for example, is widely regarded as China’s most innovative smart hotel. FlyZoo has implemented smart technologies based on the Internet of Things, such as self-check-in and checkout, room service and food delivery robots, kiosks, facial recognition, voice apps and mobile payment (e.g. access, lights, speakers, curtain, air conditioner and TV). The digital, intelligent and contactless service increases travellers’ trust in the service environment by reducing interpersonal interaction and the possibility of cross-infection (Hao et al., 2020).
Second, another recommendation is to create and execute basic guidelines to guarantee that hygienic precautions, processes and instructions for preventing virus contamination from entering or spreading are followed. From elevator buttons to doorknobs, and coffee makers to other tiny equipment and utensils that customers come into touch with, all should be well cleaned and disinfected. Disposables and dishwashing materials should both use this method as well (e.g. tablecloths and napkins). For example, at the reception, the floor should be marked to indicate where guests should stand while waiting, and all essential hygiene items (e.g. disinfection gel) should be present at the entrances to hotel services (Atadil and Lu, 2021). Apart from that, hotel management should adhere to certain cleaning and disinfection procedures in every room where a case of the virus has been detected. A procedure should be developed by every tourist lodging business to ensure the health and safety of their visitors and colleagues in accordance with legislative regulations. As part of this process, the hotel must design a management action plan to contain the spread of the virus amongst employees and other clients (Pavlatos et al., 2021).
Third, distinguishing customer–personnel and customer–customer social distance is critical in today's business climate. This can be accomplished by creating a “health ambassador” who can answer questions from customers regarding health and safety procedures or requests for medical attention. Customers might be provided with the resources and information they need, such as assistance for individuals experiencing respiratory system symptoms until medical help comes and protocols for the availability of antiseptics and personal protective equipment. Periodic briefings between employees and management on all preventive measures should be conducted to enable employees to notice suspicious symptoms and implement additional internal processes against COVID-19 to proceed in this direction. Other options for stays include giving youngsters, who may have a harder time adhering to social separation procedures, more attention. Hotels, for example, might provide family-friendly outdoor activities and individual sports for youngsters and their parents (Bonfanti et al., 2021).
Lastly, the COVID-19 period creates an opportunity to construct a safe hotel image, according to the results of research done by Atadil and Lu (2021). Cited authors suggested a checklist of 27 criteria that may be used to improve the hotel’s safety and security system and reduce the danger of infectious illness among potential tourists. In addition, the authors also suggested that hotels should communicate their infection control and prevention procedures and reestablish their “safe hotel image” effectively to speed up the business recovery.
Limitations and scope for future study
In addition to making the contributions detailed above, this study has a number of limitations. To begin, this study comprised fifteen hotels and 1,030 reviews. Additional research might contribute to a more complete knowledge of the major storylines in hotel travelers’ online evaluations by contrasting other types of lodging centers with five-star hotels (e.g. Airbnb rental houses) and comprising more in samples. Second, the current study only concentrated on one social media platform. Future research could compare online reviews content from different booking channels (e.g. Booking.com or Yelp) to measure similarity with this study results. Another subject that merits more research is to assess whether the main themes of tourists’ overall experiences differ in terms of tourists’ demographic variables (e.g. sex, race or luxury vs family class). This might provide more understandings about market segmentation in the hotel industry for postpandemic strategies.
The corresponding author warmly thanks Professor Chris Ryan and the four anonymous reviewers of TRC for their insightful and constructive comments on revising and realizing the final form of this paper.
Funding: This research received no external funding.
Conflicts of interest: The authors declare no conflict of interest.
Basic model of semantic configuration extraction in Leximancer
General description of tourists’ hotel experiences during the COVID-19 pandemic
Staff as a most important theme
Different satisfaction groups’ evaluation of hotel experience
Summary of the selected past and recent studies using online reviews in the hotel industry
| Author (year) | Online platform | Data analysis | City | Findings |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Ahani et al. (2019) | TripAdvisor |
MCDM | Canary Islands | The authors discovered that segmenting visitors' preferences and levels of satisfaction is a critical step in analyzing travellers' behaviour to enhance the quality of hotels' products and services |
| Arasli et al. (2021) | Booking.com | Leximancer | International | Qualitative (narratives) analysis showcased nine key themes, namely, “hotel,” “staff,” “food,” “room,” “location,” “pool,” “facilities,” “cleanliness” and “Wi-Fi.” |
| Berezina et al. (2016) | TripAdvisor | PASW Modeler | Florida | The study’s findings show that pleased guests who are likely to recommend a hotel to others frequently refer to intangible parts of their stay, such as hotel staff. On the other side, unsatisfied guests usually discuss the physical features of their hotel stay, such as the furnishings and price |
| Dincer and Alrawadieh (2017) | TripAdvisor | Inductive (thematic) and conductive content analysis approaches | Amman | The study discovered that the most often lodged e-complaints included service quality, hotel facility efficiency, and cleanliness and hygiene. The analysis discovered that the majority of e-complaints were lodged by British, American, and Emirati visitors |
| Kim et al. (2016) | TripAdvisor | In-depth manual review method | New York | The results indicate that, with the exception of two common service-related criteria, “personnel and their attitude” and “service,” satisfiers and dissatisfiers in full-service hotels were dissimilar. In limited-service hotels, on the other hand, “staff and their attitude” and four room facility-related criteria, “room cleanliness/dirtiness”, “bed”, “bathroom”, and “room size”, were identified as common satisfiers and dissatisfiers |
| Li et al. (2013) | TripAdvisor | Hierarchy cluster analysis and SPSS | Beijing | The study discovered that transportation ease, food and beverage management, proximity to tourist attractions, and value for money are all wonderful criteria that consumers booking both luxury and budget hotels value highly and for which the performance is very satisfied. Customers were more concerned with, but less happy with, the bed, reception services, and the size and decorating of their rooms |
| Li et al. (2018) | TripAdvisor | Content analysis | Study found that green activities, such as reflective roofing, storm water management, and guest education, as genuine attempts by hotels to be environmentally friendly, and they compliment them. However, some hotel visitors stated that temperature control, low water pressure, and biodegradable utensils, are not viewed favourably | |
| Sann and Lai (2020) | TripAdvisor | IBM SPSS 22 |
Bangkok | The authors identified the ten service factors that have the greatest influence on tourist satisfaction. These characteristics were then categorized into three main themes: intangible service, physical service, and staying experience. Additionally, the findings of the word frequency analysis assist in determining which characteristics attract the attention of tourists from diverse backgrounds |
| Stringam and Gerdes (2010) | Expedia.com | DBPM analysis | 100 largest U.S. cities | The results showed that narratives regarding staff, cleanliness, bed and price attractions appear more often when travellers assigned a higher rating than a lower rating |
| Wu et al. (2017) | Agoda.com | Leximancer | Shanghai | In general, international tourists were extremely delighted with Shanghai's top hotels. This study emphasized the continued necessity of attentive and professional “staff,” physical qualities of the “hotel,” room comfort, “location,” closeness to a “shopping” area, and opportunities for co-creation to give some “beautiful” experiences |
| Xiang et al. (2015) | Expedia.com | Correspondence analysis | California, Florida, New York and Washington | The findings show that there were different types of hotels with unique, salient traits that satisfied their customers, while those who failed to do so mostly had issues related to cleanliness and maintenance-related factors |
| Xu et al. (2019) | TripAdvisor | Structural topic model | New York | Complaints about high-end hotels are mainly related to service and pricing issues |
Reviewers’ demographic profile
| Variable | Category | Reviews no. | (%) |
|---|---|---|---|
| Gender | Female | 480 | 46.6 |
| Male | 550 | 53.4 | |
| Total | 1,030 | 100 | |
| Region | Europe | 120 | 11.7 |
| Middle East | 180 | 17.5 | |
| Asia | 80 | 7.7 | |
| UK | 650 | 63.1 | |
| Total | 1,030 | 100 | |
© Mehmet Bahri Saydam, Victor Oluwafemi Olorunsola, Turgay Avci, Tamar Haruna Dambo and Kadir Beyar. This work is published under http://creativecommons.org/licences/by/4.0/legalcode (the “License”). Notwithstanding the ProQuest Terms and Conditions, you may use this content in accordance with the terms of the License.