Changing tourists’ preferences in the hotel industry amid COVID-19 pandemic

Abstract

Purpose

The paper aims to find the preferences of different tourist type. Since, COVID-19 pandemic has brought the international hospitality industry to a standstill, there are some early signs of recovery. For this industry’s long-term recovery, the tourists’ changing preferences need to be analyzed. Moreover, with different types of tourists, a more nuanced and in-depth study is required to analyze the preferences of each tourist type.

Design/methodology/approach

The research focuses on the changing preferences of the tourist by comparatively analyzing the pre-COVID-19 and current COVID-19 phase. The study extracted online data from TripAdvisor and identified themes by applying Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA).

Findings

The study’s findings confirmed the change in preferences of the different types of tourists during the COVID-19 pandemic by performing thematic analysis. New themes emerged in the pandemic phase, providing more insights into tourists’ changing preferences in the current COVID-19 phase. The study also found that specific dominant themes in the pre-COVID-19 phase were replaced by new themes in the current COVID-19 phase.

Originality/value

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to compare the pre-COVID-19 and current COVID-19 phase themes to decipher the new themes that managers of the hotels should consider to win back tourists’ confidence during the pandemic. The unraveling of changing preferences of the different tourist types in the current COVID-19 pandemic is the novel contribution of the study.

在 COVID-19 大流行期间改变游客对酒店业的偏好

研究目的

COVID-19 大流行使国际酒店业陷入停顿。虽然有一些复苏的早期迹象, 但对于这个行业的长期复苏, 还需要分析游客不断变化的偏好。此外, 针对不同类型的游客, 需要进行更细致和深入的研究来分析每种游客类型的偏好。

设计/方法/方法

该研究通过比较分析 COVID-19 之前和当前 COVID-19 阶段, 重点关注游客不断变化的偏好。该研究从 TripAdvisor 提取在线数据, 并通过应用隐含狄利克雷分布 (LDA) 确定主题。

研究结果

该研究的调查结果通过进行主题分析证实了不同类型游客在 COVID-19 大流行期间偏好的变化。大流行阶段出现了新主题, 为游客在当前 COVID-19 阶段不断变化的偏好提供了更多见解。该研究还发现, COVID-19之前阶段的特定主导主题被当前 COVID-19 阶段的新主题所取代。

研究原创性/价值

该研究首次比较了 COVID-19 之前和当前 COVID-19 阶段的主题, 从而为酒店管理者在大流行期间赢回游客的信心提供了应该考虑的新主题。研究发现在当前的 COVID-19 大流行中不同游客类型的偏好的变化是该研究的新贡献。

Citation

Ongsakul, V., Kajla, T., Raj, S., Khoa, T.T. and Ahmed, Z.U. (2022), "Changing tourists’ preferences in the hotel industry amid COVID-19 pandemic", Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Technology, Vol. 13 No. 2, pp. 295-313. https://doi.org/10.1108/JHTT-07-2020-0179