Exploring the key attributes of lifestyle hotels: A content analysis of user-created content on instagram

Abstract

This study aims to investigate the key attributes of lifestyle hotels by analyzing user-created content on Instagram, an image-based social network service. In an era of uncertainty in the tourism and hospitality industry, it is inevitable that hotels must create a competitive identity. However, even with the significant growth of the lifestyle hotel segment, the concept of a lifestyle hotel is still vague. Therefore, to explore how to define, perceive, and interpret lifestyle hotels and to suggest their crucial attributes, this paper examines user-created content on Instagram. The data from 20,886 Instagram posts related to lifestyle hotels, including 2,209 locations, 43,586 hashtags, and 20,866 images, were analyzed using Vision AI, a social network analysis method and computer vision technology. The results of this study demonstrated that lifestyle hotels are perceived as design-focused branded hotels that represent the urban lifestyle and share both vacation and urban activities. Furthermore, the results reflected one of the latest hospitality trends-a holiday in an urban setting in addition to the primary purpose of traveling. Finally, this research suggests broader uses of big data and deep learning for analyzing how a place is consumed in a geospatial context.