Automated topic modeling of tourist reviews: Does the Anna Karenina principle apply?

Automated content analysis of online travel reviews allows identification of topics of travelers' satisfaction, yet its domain is not well researched. We suggest that the Anna Karenina principle positing a greater variability of the factors leading to business failure as opposed to those leading to success can be applied to the domain of visitors’ reviews of historic and cultural attractions. The larger variability of issues in reviews of dissatisfied visitors is likely to result in limitations for automated topic modeling. We confirm our proposition using TripAdvisor reviews of the Terracotta Army museum in China, and validate the outcome with two additional sites. The study strongly suggests that application of unsupervised topic mining algorithms to negative reviews may be problematic and the results should be treated with caution. The main themes of dissatisfaction of visitors to all three sites are reported and practical implications for management of the attractions are discussed.     

Vicious advice: Analyzing the impact of TripAdvisor on the quality of restaurants as part of the cultural heritage of Venice

Venice is one of the most popular tourist destinations in the world. In Venice, as in other middle-sized heritage European cities, strong tourism pressure is trapping the city in a vicious circle that is eroding the quality of its tourism attractions. This development is related to the growing numbers of excursionists who lack the time to make informed decisions about the quality of goods. Consequently, suppliers reduce the quality of their offerings and instead focus on market share. Consumer-generated media (CGM) may help resist this development by providing excursionists with aggregated, up-to-date information on the quality of tourism offerings as perceived by customers. In this paper, we investigate the efficiency of TripAdvisor in helping tourists to make informed decisions and in increasing the popularity of restaurants offering a higher expected quality. Our findings suggest that, although TripAdvisor's algorithm is designed to reward quality, it does not adequately meet these goals.     

Fine-dining in prisons: Online TripAdvisor reviews of The Clink training restaurants

This study evaluated customer reviews about The Clink restaurants to understand how they are rated and what experience is gained by fine dining in a prison. The Clink Charity runs training restaurants in four U.K. prisons and aims to change attitudes and transform lives through prisoner rehabilitation. This research used an interpretive case study of the Clink restaurants to evaluate online customer reviews posted on TripAdvisor. In total, 3951 reviews were analysed using Leximancer 5.0. The most prominent themes were Food: ‘fine-dining in prisons’, Visit: ‘The Clink ambassadors’, and Prison: ‘the inside and outside divide’. Despite the prison location, customers reported having exceptional, professional and memorable dining experiences delivered by highly trained chefs, and that the front of house staff would rival those in many fine-dining restaurants. Further research is required to confirm how dining at a Clink restaurant may have potentially begun to change the public perceptions of prisoners.     

Unethical use of wildlife in tourism: what's the problem,who is responsible,and what can be done?

Wildlife tourism is a huge global market, the revenue from which can promote local livelihoods and tourist education, enact conservation, and improve animal welfare. Such benefits arise if wildlife tourist attractions (WTAs) prioritise ethical deliverables above financial profit, but recent work has shown that the majority of WTAs have substantial negative animal welfare and conservation impacts. In the absence of global regulatory authorities, tourist revenue has become the ultimate arbiter of what constitutes acceptable use of animals in WTAs. Tourists, however, are not adequate assessors of WTAs’ animal welfare and conservation impacts: they lack the specialist knowledge required and are subject to a number of psychological biases that obscure the ethical dimensions of decisions to attend particular WTAs. This inadequacy is evidenced, and compounded, by overwhelmingly positive reviews on TripAdvisor (the industry-leading review site), even for WTAs with objectively poor ethical standards. Our suggested solution is to empower tourists by presenting unequivocal assessments of WTAs' animal welfare and conservation impacts, hosted in the fora that tourists already use to make their travel decisions. We would thereby promote a subjective norm that tourists should consider and limit their individual negative impacts when choosing which WTAs to visit.     

Hotel attribute performance,eWOM motivations,and media choice

The objectives of this study are to match the motivations for posting about hotel experiences with the online media chosen and to identify the electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) motivations that are affected by hotel attribute performance. The results show that altruism and platform assistance motivations were positively correlated with consumer opinion sites. Extraversion, social benefits, and dissonance reduction were positively correlated with social network sites. Economic incentives did not improve the likelihood of posting eWOM on consumer opinion sites but reduced the likelihood of posting on social network sites. Finally, hotel attribute performance had a significant effect only on extraversion and dissonance reduction motivations.     

Analyzing online reviews in hospitality: data-driven opportunities for predicting the sharing of negative emotional content

Hospitality is one of the sectors that are nowadays most heavily characterized by consumers’ tendency to share online reviews on dedicated digital platforms. While most past work has focused on understanding the effect of online reviews and ratings on consumers’ evaluation and purchase decisions, this research tackles the issue of what drives the sharing of certain types of online content. Specifically, we investigate the sharing of user-generated content characterized by negative emotional valence, and study the effect of two factors on the extent to which user-generated content contains negative emotions. One such factor is reviewer's expertise, while the other is hotel quality. Our analysis of 1200 TripAdvisor reviews on Italian hotels located in three major Italian cities confirm our hypothesis that expert reviewers might share reviews containing less intense negative emotional content compared to less expert reviewers especially when the hotel is of high quality. To support our hypothesis, we build on the research on psychological antecedents of word-of-mouth behaviour suggesting that expert consumers are particularly reluctant to share negative word-of-mouth to avoid projecting a negative image of themselves in social contexts, thus possibly damaging their reputation.     

Investigating cross-national heterogeneity in the adoption of online hotel reviews

Increasing reliance of potential guests on online hotel reviews has given rise to trepidation among some hospitality managers recently, thus necessitating a better understanding of its adoption. Literature on multicultural studies have suggested that behavioral models do not universally hold across cultures. In view of the limited generalizability and applicability of extant cross-cultural studies to this context, this study generates cross-national insights into the antecedents of travelers’ intention to use online hotel reviews to better understand the use of consumer-generated reviews across cultures. Generally, the predictive power of the model derived from the Motivation Theory and TAM holds true for both the United States and Singapore. Nonetheless, tests for structural invariance reveals some noteworthy differences between the two countries. The results highlight the complex cognitive mechanisms determining the acceptance of online hotel reviews in each country as moderated by national culture orientations. Findings hold implications for practitioners and researchers as they navigate through social media in different cultural contexts.     

Hotel guests’ perceptions of environmental friendly practices in social media

Despite hotels’ managers spend substantial time and money on environmental initiatives; they are not sure whether their guests perceive their green efforts appropriately. The purpose of this study is to analyze guests’ perceptions of hotels’ environmental practices expressed through social media. Main results suggest that even though customers perceive green efforts regarding six items: Energy, Water, Purchasing, Waste, Site and Education & Innovation, they do not discern hotels' level of environmental commitment. Moreover, guests' perceptions of hotel efforts in environmentally friendly practices do not significantly differ by the mode of travel nor by the reviewer's experience in travel platforms. A relevant implication is that the communication about environmentally friendly practices needs to be redesigned and intensified by hotel managers in order to take advantage of these efforts.     

The effects of eWOM characteristics on consumer ratings: evidence from TripAdvisor.com

Abstract

Given the rise of online review communities, the management of consumer ratings has gained much attention in the recent years. In this study, we use data from Tripadvisor.com and examine the number of stars that a review receives. Specifically, we address how a star rating is determined by the components in the focal review as well as the preceding reviews of other consumers. Our qualitative and quantitative analyses provide interesting findings as follows. A star rating has a positive relationship with the focal review’s valence. That is, the more positive a review is, the greater number of stars a review receives. The reviews of other consumers also play a role in determining a star rating of the focal review suggesting social influence among consumers. Interestingly, a review with lengthy content leads to a lower star rating only when using smartphones. We conclude with theoretical and managerial implications.     

Understanding service attributes of robot hotels: A sentiment analysis of customer online reviews

Robots and artificial intelligence are essential to the future of the hospitality industry, and they are receiving increasing interest from hotel managers and researchers. However, the adoption of robotic services in hotel operations is a challenging task owing to the current level of technology and lack of understanding on the relationship between various aspects of robotic services and customer satisfaction. Moreover, no prior study has examined the service attributes of robots in hotels. To fill these gaps, this study analyzes customers’ sentiments on major hotels employing robotic services expressed through online reviews. A list of robot quality and operational area attributes is first constructed, through which underperforming robot service areas are identified. Sentiments on robotic services have a positive correlation with hotel service satisfaction, which plays an important role in determining the overall satisfaction of customers. The analysis and findings are valuable to researchers and managers for future research and adoption of robotic services in hotels.