Mining online comments to understand customer satisfaction with hotel technologies: A comparison of hotels in Beijing and Washington, DC

For hotel customers, satisfaction with amenities has long been a key factor in the stay experience. Using content analysis from 2,100 TripAdvisor reviews of hotels in Washington, DC, USA and Beijing, China, this study evaluates how various categories of hotel technology influence the satisfaction of hotel customers. Of the five categories of hotel technology considered (ie basic in-room, entertainment, business, comfort and mobile technologies), the study finds that entertainment technology is the most important. The results also indicate that comfort technology is considerably more important for hotel customers in Washington, DC than for hotel customers in Beijing. In addition to providing a research framework, this study provides a practical application for hotel managers to analyse guest comments to address customer complaints and enhance customer satisfaction at a location-specific level. Hotel managers can easily adopt the methodology to analyse property-specific customer data without substantial difficulty. Such data can then be used to meet customer needs and enhance customer satisfaction through the provision of technology that guests genuinely value. It can also assist managers in developing better marketing strategies for their hotels.