Cultural Traits in the Consumption of Luxury Hotel Services

Abstract

This study investigates luxury hotel guests' online reviews to explore how ratings, language and sentiment differ according to guests' culture of origin. The study considers three large cultural groups (Asian, North American, and European) examining hotel guests in their reviews to identify the most recurring themes in association with luxury tourism. The study uses automated text analysis to explore 16,415 hotel reviews from 22 luxury hotel brands belonging to nine global hotel chains located across six European cities over a period of 10 years. In particular, this exploratory study combines LIWC, Leximancer and SPSS analytic tools to shed light on: i) the extent luxury hotel guests' reviews vary in terms of rating, language metrics and sentiment according to reviewers' culture of origin; ii) the main themes of luxury hotel service discussed by guests, of different cultures of origin, in their reviews. The main findings reveal that Asians guests are particularly analytical when reviewing online and are the less satisfied about their stays in luxury hotels in Europe. North Americans are the most satisfied luxury hotel guests; however, their reviews show low level of sentiment descriptions. Instead, Europeans embed more sentiment when posting a review. The three cultures examined also tend to associate luxury to different attributes.