Analysis of Hotel Guest Satisfaction Ratings and Reviews: An Application in Singapore

The hotel industry in Singapore is an important part of the hospitality and tourism infrastructure and a strategic part of Singapore’s growth story. Hotels are primarily viewed as a service industry with intangible areas of guest experience and service levels. The research objective of this paper is to better understand the hotel guest satisfaction and the areas that hotel management can change, in order to get better results. For this purpose, an analysis of hotel guest satisfaction ratings based on attributes such as Location, Sleep quality, Rooms, Service quality, Value for money and Cleanliness was performed. Further, text analysis of customer reviews was also performed to better understand the positive and negative sentiments of hotel guests. We focused on identifying the attributes that differentiate one hotel from another, and then using these attribute insights to make recommendation to hotel management, on how they can improve their operations, guest satisfaction and generally differentiate themselves from their competition. Data from an online website, Trip Advisor, was used to analyse and compare customer ratings and reviews on five hotels. Statistical data analysis techniques were used to identify the key attributes that are most important in choosing hotels and are critical to focus on in order to ensure guest satisfaction expectations are met. Based on text analytics, the key results from this study indicated that hotel guests look for a good room and a hotel with a pool and good service. Based on the ratings analysis, the most important attributes for guest satisfaction turned out to be Rooms, Value for money and Location.