“Most Americans like their privacy.” Exploring privacy concerns through US guests’ reviews

David D’Acunto,Raffaele Filieri,Serena Volo

doi:10.1108/ijchm-11-2020-1329

Abstract

PurposeThis study aims to explore US hotel guests’ privacy concerns with a twofold aim as follows: to investigate the privacy categories, themes and attributes most commonly discussed by guests in their reviews and to examine the influence of cultural proximity on privacy concerns.Design/methodology/approachThis study combined automated text analytics with content analysis. The database consisted of 68,000 hotel reviews written by US guests lodged in different types of hotels in five European cities. Linguistic Inquiry Word Count, Leximancer and SPSS software were used for data analysis. Automated text analytics and a validated privacy dictionary were used to investigate the reviews by exploring the categories, themes and attributes of privacy concerns. Content analysis was used to analyze the narratives and select representative snippets.FindingsThe findings revealed various categories, themes and concepts related to privacy concerns. The two most commonly discussed categories were privacy restriction and outcome state. The main themes discussed in association with privacy were “room,” “hotel,” “breakfast” and several concepts within each of these themes were identified. Furthermore, US guests showed the lowest levels of privacy concerns when staying at American hotel chains as opposed to non-American chains or independent hotels, highlighting the role of cultural proximity in privacy concerns.Practical implicationsHotel managers can benefit from the results by improving their understanding of hotel and service attributes mostly associated with privacy concerns. Specific suggestions are provided to hoteliers on how to increase guests’ privacy and on how to manage issues related to cultural distance with guests.Originality/valueThis study contributes to the hospitality literature by investigating a neglected issue: on-site hotel guests’ privacy concerns. Using an unobtrusive method of data collection and text analytics, this study offers valuable insights into the categories of privacy, the most recurrent themes in hotel guests’ reviews and the potential relationship between cultural proximity and privacy concerns.

Highlights

Would a different perspective on privacy issues influence hotel guests’ experiences? In one online review comment, a guest warned others as follows: If this is the first trip to Europe, be prepared for less privacy than we are used to in the US relationships, interactions and exchanges – whether personal or professional – require a certain level of privacy, which often entails a balancing act
The authors acknowledge that American passport holders can belong to other language groups, but this operational choice allowed for linear use of the privacy dictionary and considered that English is a mostly international language used by many firstgeneration and second-generation Americans during travel
Conclusions The present study was a response to the call for research on hotel guests’ privacy concerns regarding their physical environments (Tussyadiah et al, 2019)

Summary

Introduction

Would a different perspective on privacy issues influence hotel guests’ experiences? In one online review comment, a guest warned others as follows: If this is the first trip to Europe, be prepared for less privacy than we are used to in the US relationships, interactions and exchanges – whether personal or professional – require a certain level of privacy, which often entails a balancing act. Recent studies have acknowledged the scarcity of investigations into hotel guests’ physical privacy concerns and have, called for more research to assess this relevant aspect of guests’ experiences (Hall and Ram, 2019; Ioannou et al, 2020; Tussyadiah et al, 2019). In this vein, the present study sought to explore the privacy concerns of hotel guests and their evolution over time. This study used the concept of cultural proximity to explore the effect of culture on privacy concerns

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