A Comparison of Hotel Guest Experience Before and During Pandemic: Evidence from Online Reviews

This paper compares the determinants of guest experience at luxury hotels in Mainland China before and during the pandemic—COVID-19. In particular, 740 Chinese reviews posted before the pandemic outbreak, and 1283 reviews posted during the pandemic were collected. Text analytics were applied to segment and count the frequency of words in these online reviews. The results show that the core dimensions of guest experiences at luxury hotels include services, room quality and settings, hotel facilities, dining, location, and environment. These core dimensions do not change regardless of the period before or during the pandemic. However, guests have higher expectations on hotel services such as late check-out and delivery service of takeaway during the pandemic. Online reviews amid-pandemic also contain words related to pandemic prevention and control measures, such as guest traffic and body temperature. Suggestions on operations and management are provided for hotel practitioners to improve their services during the critical period.