Customer Satisfaction in Portuguese Hotels: Evidence for Different Regions and Hotel Segments

Abstract

Electronic word of mouth (eWOM) has gained importance with the emergence of new online tools, and the hospitality sector is at the core of this trend. We employ a secondary data set of hotel guest reviews from a popular online travel platform, with reviews for hotels located in the four main Portuguese tourism regions. We analyze the reviews in terms of overall satisfaction and for six specific attributes. Employing statistical tests and regression analysis we find that the "rooms," "service," and "cost–benefit" attributes show a greater correlation with overall satisfaction than other criteria, and those attributes are common across hotel segments and regions. The "location" and "cleanliness" attributes only appear as significant for some regions and hotel segments. For instance, the significance of "cleanliness" in lower segment hotels should merit the attention of hotel managers to allocate more resources to this. In relation to "rooms," personal preferences and expectations may make it difficult to optimally upgrade rooms in order to satisfy a diverse clientele, whereas in regard to "service," hotel managers across all hotel segments should prioritize staff training and service quality assessment tools in order to guarantee consistent levels of service.