What Drives Luxury Hotel Guest Satisfaction? Evidence from Online Reviews Using Text Mining
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.63808/iod.v2i3.475Keywords:
Hotel management, Service quality, Digital operations, Guest experience, Industry optimizationAbstract
Online reviews have become a strategic data asset for hotel operations, yet which attributes actually drive guest satisfaction in the luxury segment remains insufficiently quantified. This study examines the drivers of luxury hotel guest satisfaction through text mining of 30,442 English-language TripAdvisor reviews covering 55 upscale and luxury hotels in Shanghai. Latent Dirichlet Allocation identified seven interpretable satisfaction themes, sentiment analysis quantified the affective tone of each review, and an ordinary least squares regression linked theme salience and sentiment to the star rating, with the model explaining 53.1% of the variance in ratings. Personalized, loyalty-oriented service emerges as the strongest positive correlate of the overall evaluation, followed by iconic views and overall service excellence, a ranking that diverges from what topic prevalence alone would suggest. Physical facilities contribute more modestly, and the front-desk encounter constitutes the clearest satisfaction shortfall among substantive service attributes. The findings connect data-driven themes to established service-quality dimensions, support a two-factor reading of luxury attributes, and direct managerial investment toward the informational infrastructure of personalization and the digital redesign of the arrival touchpoint. The study offers a replicable, review-based instrument for locating where luxury guest satisfaction is won and lost.
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