Data-Driven Insights from 10,000 Reviews: Fostering Sustainability through Rapid Adaptation to Guest Feedback

Within the expansive global economy, the hospitality industry stands out prominently, with luxury hotels serving as the focal point of outstanding service and operational excellence. The crux of the issue in this domain is accurately comprehending what appeals to buyers and what repels them [1]. This is not mere idle curiosity, it is actually crucial for the profitability of high-end hotels, affecting their earnings and even their reputation in the luxury hospitality industry [2]. Understanding the subtle preferences of luxury hotel guests is vital for maintaining a competitive advantage and ensuring guest satisfaction, which can directly influence how certain hotels rank in the wider market [3]. Building on already existing quantitative research on luxury hotels in other parts of the world [4], which was focused on customized guest experiences, our study explores creative ways to extract meaningful information and improve responsiveness in the long run, ultimately contributing to a more nuanced understanding of online feedback. We delve into the intricacies of visitor happiness and discontent, with the goal of uncovering if and how these elements have a lasting impact on a hotel’s well-being. As the digital era has greatly increased the visibility of client comments and opinions, there is compelling data out there indicating that internet comments may significantly influence potential visitors, affecting their perceptions and decision-making when choosing a place for their business trips or holidays [5]. Modern technology, with its advanced algorithms and data analysis tools, allows us to extract valuable insights from guest evaluations [6]. Studies have shown the impact of customer experience on brand love and customer citizenship behavior, highlighting the importance of managing customer experiences to foster brand commitment and loyalty, which are crucial for a luxury hotel’s success [7]. While online hotel reviews (OHRs) offer invaluable insights for consumers and service providers, their sheer volume, ever-growing nature (velocity), and potential for bias (veracity) often pose great challenges for effective implementation by management [8]. However, there is a catch—the internet review industry is a very controversial topic. Some believe that receiving several positive evaluations will lead to increased sales, while others are perplexed, indicating a more complex situation [9]. Current studies indicate that there is a significant discussion about whether negative feedback is more impactful than positive feedback, with this debate being rooted in various psychological theories and empirical studies [10]. This puzzle increases the level of mystery in the intricate interaction between consumer feedback and its influence on the hotel industry, as many high-end hotels also integrate IOT technologies that can enable swift and personalized service adjustments for each and every person [11]. The three-factor theory of customer satisfaction, which examines the asymmetric effects of customer satisfaction determinants, supports the notion that negative aspects may have a greater impact on overall satisfaction than positive aspects, highlighting the complexity of managing customer feedback in the hospitality industry [12]. Previous studies focused on reviews show that 62% of customers consider negative reviews to be extremely important when making a decision (in the service industry), indicating clearly that more often than not negative reviews carry significant weight in the decision-making process for customers [13]. Although existing studies suggest that analyzing guest satisfaction at the macro-level can mask crucial differences between guest segments, offering misleading conclusions when targeting specific guest groups [14], it is crucial to have an objective image of guest satisfaction as a whole before moving to micro-targeting specific guest segments. While there are several studies on text mining and sentiment analysis to understand customer feedback [15,16], there is a lack of research that connects these insights with financial performance in the long term. Our paper addresses three significant questions: what are the key factors influencing guest satisfaction and dissatisfaction; can guest experiences in the long term influence revenues in a luxury hotel; and how do the most positive and most negative words that occur in reviews fluctuate over time? Our findings reveal a complex relationship between visitor satisfaction and hotel profitability, with times when this correlation may become uncertain or hard to predict [17]. Engaging customers by creating a tailored guest experience can be crucial for achieving sustainable, long-term growth, but there are studies indicating that having a lot of managerial presence in the online environment can lead to negative outcomes [18]. The present paper is not just an academic incursion; it provides a new way of understanding large quantities of customer feedback, presenting a strategy and an analysis flow that might impact not only top hotel executives but also any service industry leader seeking to navigate consumer feedback challenges and extract meaningful knowledge out of it [19]. Although a luxury hotel is the main focus of the study, this research has far-reaching implications and provides valuable insights for professionals in almost any service industry, business experts, and inquisitive individuals [20,21].