Investigating the Drivers of Negative Online Reviews in the Hotel Industry during the COVID-19 Era Using Structural Topic Modelling

Service providers in the hospitality industry must understand the concerns shared by consumers, especially during unprecedented times like COVID-19, to spot areas that need improvement to achieve overall customer satisfaction. This work analyses 60,000 online hotel reviews over two periods (before and after the COVID-19 outbreak) using the structural topic modeling technique. The study aims to identify the issues that appear predominantly in negative reviews and how these topics differ between the two time periods. The study also analyses the variations in customer concerns across different hotel grades in the post-COVID-19-era. To the best of our knowledge, this study is the first of its kind to analyze the changes in consumer concerns and priorities, specifically after the outbreak of COVID-19, and is one of the few studies to employ the newly introduced structural topic modeling techniques in the hospitality sector to understand the concerns of the hotel customers