Sentiment analysis of reviews of spa hotels in Serbia

Jelena Tepavčević; Ivana Blešić; Danijel Vučenović

doi:10.46793/ICEMIT23.059T

Authors

Jelena Tepavčević University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Science, Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, Serbia
Ivana Blešić University of Novi Sad, Faculty of Science, Department of Geography, Tourism and Hotel Management, Serbia
Danijel Vučenović Bože Peričića 4, 23000 Zadar, Croatia

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.46793/ICEMIT23.059T

Keywords:

sentiment analysis, spa, hotels, reviews

Abstract

An important but underutilized new resource for gathering input on customer experience for the hospitality industry is consumer reviews posted on Internet travel portals. These data are frequently large and unstructured, which makes analysis difficult for conventional techniques because they were made for well-structured, quantitative data. Data obtained from customers can be used to assess satisfaction and dissatisfaction, with the aim of improving hotel services. Spa hotels offer an exclusive experience for their guests by offering plenty of additional services such as pools, saunas, massages, and various treatments. This research focused on examining textual online reviews of spa hotels in Serbia. A total of 20 hotels were included in the research, with 319 online reviews to be processed. Word frequency analysis, sentiment analysis, and analysis of the distribution of helpful votes were performed. Considering that spa hotels offer their guests specific services, by analyzing the frequency of words, key words that describe the services and experience in spa hotels were singled out. Sentiment analysis showed that there are no extremely negative sentiment values, which indicates a lower presence of negative feelings, but the highest sentiment value does not indicate the presence of extremely positive feelings either. By performing an analysis of helpful votes in reviews, it was found that the majority of reviews are not classified as helpful.

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