Estimation of the parameter of satisfaction with services in tourism: content analysis of online customer reviews

Abstract

To increase the competitiveness the hotels have to satisfy their guests’ requirements, anticipate their wishes and offer new services; this is quite problematic for the hotel business. The paper considers the opportunities of employing online guest reviews to reveal the hotel ratings and attributes, significant for guests. The implementation of this research method is specified by the quality of information obtained via the internet; it is published on a voluntary basis, statements are initiated by users; moreover, consumers estimate the services and offers, having certain emotional importance for them; it allows segmenting the factors according to the level of their emotional significance. This segmentation is of utmost importance since the principal aim of the researches devoted to the assessment of the level of consumers’ satisfaction is to reveal the indicators of company activities from the position of customers’ priorities and emotional evaluations. The content analysis discovers the indicators, significant for the beach hotels customers. 90 hotels were grouped according to 16 categories. The results display that the guests responses can be used for investigating the importance of hotel attributes and determining the peculiarities of various hotel customers groups. The obtained results can be used for service package improvement and for hotel description in advertisement and reservation systems.