Do Online Comments Affect Environmental Management? Identifying Factors Related to Environmental Management and Sustainability of Hotels

Abstract

The main aim of this study was to identify the key indicators related to environmental management and sustainability of hotels as perceived by travelers during their trips. The methodology used was a sentiment analysis with an algorithm developed in Python trained with data mining and machine learning, with the MonkeyLearn library in the hotel industry sector under the eWOM model (e-Word of Mouth). The results with negative, positive and neutral feelings were submitted to a textual analysis with the qualitative analysis software Nvivo Pro 12. The sample consisted of the 25 best hotels in Switzerland according to Traveler’s Choice from TripAdvisor ranking 2018 that draws from more than 500,000 reviews. For data extraction, we connected to the TripAdvisor API, obtaining a sample of n = 8331 reviews of the hotels that made up the ranking. The results of the study highlight the key factors related to environmental management detected by travelers during their stay in hotels and can be meaningfully used by managers or hotel managers to improve their services and enhance the value provided by their policies of sustainability and respect for the environment. The limitations of the present study relate to the size of the sample and the number of hotels included in the present analysis.