Sentiment Analysis

Sentiment analysis is defined as the process of identifying and categorizing opinions expressed in a piece of text, especially in order to determine whether the writer’s attitude towards a particular topic is positive, negative, or neutral. In the case of a hotel, it’s the way a guest feels about the experience at your property. In 2020, it’s more critical than ever to determine what aspects of your property travelers like best and what things you could improve upon. That’s why Travel Media Group includes sentiment analysis in our reputation management solution suite. 

Below is an example of Travel Media Group’s multi-property sentiment analysis report. Let me explain how it works. When an online review is posted for one of Travel Media Group’s Respond & Resolve™ partners, our team of vetted, professional writers combs through that review looking for keywords and components of the traveler’s stay. From there, our team assigns whether that portion of feedback was considered positive, neutral, or negative. We analyze this data for our management group partners and give them an overview of the most positive aspects of a property as well as areas of concern. Let’s take a look at this in a real-world situation and how this report can be utilized.

Time Investment Decisions

Let’s take three hotels owned and operated by a management group. Leaders at the corporate level are looking at where best to spend their time for each of the three properties. Prior to this report, it would be one strategy implemented portfolio-wide based on little to no data. But now, by leveraging this multi-property sentiment report, decision-makers are able to diagnose specific areas of concern and come up with a tailor-made strategy for each property. 

• Hotel A – The front desk was one most positive parts of the traveler experience. Hotel A could use their time to share positive stories and reviews on their social media outlets. On the negative sentiment side, cleanliness looks to be a major problem at the property. They could spend time and effort on retraining their housekeeping staff on cleaning procedures, focusing on proper implementation of COVID-19 policies.
• Hotel B – This property should seek local partnerships with businesses since location is a huge draw for their guests. Instead of focusing attention on their housekeeping staff, Hotel B needs to get with their maintenance and engineering team which seems to be dropping the ball according to guest feedback. 
• Hotel C – Breakfast looks to be one of the most popular aspects of the guest experience for them. This property could spend some of its time promoting and marketing its breakfast on Social Media while doing a quality check and audit of its hotel mattresses since sleep quality is subpar according to its guests.

Capital Investment Decisions

Time investment is one thing: major monetary decisions is another matter entirely. How can we leverage this report to make those important capital investments?

• Hotel A – Due to the popularity of its location, this hotel could invest in a promotional social media giveaway to help grow its social audience and increase online popularity. Otherwise, they could think about renovating the hotel’s bathrooms due to negative sentiment expressed by its guests. 
• Hotel B – They could invest in a social media ad campaign as well, focusing around its ideal location and local attractions. To alleviate noise issues, the front desk could start providing guests with complimentary earplugs, which is not a huge capital investment like renovations. However, it is something that could have a major impact on its online reviews and revenue overall.
  
• Hotel C – With the popularity of its breakfast, the property could look into expanding its food and beverage options to take advantage of other revenue-generating opportunities while planning for the future to replace and upgrade its air conditioners.
  

So as you can see, with this report the guessing is eliminated for management groups and the decisions they make. We know that issues within a group of hotels do not have one-size-fits-all solutions. This report is a tool for leaders in those groups to make decisions backed by data and driven directly by real feedback from guests. Contact us for more information about scaling our solutions to your portfolio’s unique needs.