Exploring the Hotel Experience in a Cultural City through a UGC Analysis

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors

On a cursory look, the basic idea behind the study seems good. You try to evaluate the hotel experience through UGC. But, as I went deeper, there were a lot of issues. I have provided detailed comments and my concerns.

 1.     The title should be universal, not any city or country-specific to appeal to a global audience. Just a suggestion. The details can be provided in the abstract and methods.

 2. Abstract seems okay.  

3.     Introduction: The introduction should be in 2-4 paragraphs: background, rationale, RQs, and section plan. Please highlight your RQs in specified sentences preceded by rationales and novelty. Just a minor upgrade.

4.     LR: LR must be written completely based on the objectives or RQs. Please provide theoretical background first and a literature review after it into two separate sections. The theoretical background is normally based on major theories and LR must discuss existing similar studies and the gaps which forced you to undertake the study.

5.     Methods: seems okay so far a qualitative study is considered. However, it's always better to add an appendix or a web link that includes the details of: "The titles were downloaded on 16 April 2022, and the titles were obtained from a 259 total of 7,414 comments in Spanish."

Another thing: almost 70% of your method is justifying the methods. Focus on the details of the methods, not why you chose them. It shows a lack of confidence.

6.  Results: Not deep. You can combine it with other graphical tools or packages on R to have a detailed analysis. Mere UGC analysis is not enough, it should be combined with the reasons and logic, and future trends.

7.  The discussion seems okay but should be expanded along with the analysis. MUST

8.  Implications are missing. It is the most important component of any study.

9.  Future directions can be a separate section. (optional)

Proofreading is already done, it seems. Overall, a good study. It just needs a minor upgrade. All the best. Most of the comments are given to improve the current version, but not essential.

Thank you

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your suggestions. Please find attached the document in which we especify how we dealt with them trying to improve the final result of our manuscript.

Sincerely

The corresponding author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 2 Report

Dear authors, 

First of all, I consider that the introduction must contain a section in which it should be mentioned why the topic is important for a paper included in the journal Sustainability. 

After reading your paper referring to UCG analysis for hotel customer reviews, I suggest the followings: 

- To improve the part of the literature review, for instance, the main ideas in this section to be supported by more than one reference source

- If it is not your own observation, the idea “Tourism services such as booking accommodation or purchasing transport tickets are among the most searched information on the Internet.” would have more credibility if supported by other research. Also, for this „The 3 and 4-star hotel categories are the most widespread in Spain” – some percentage would help for a better understanding of the market

- Please explain why you have chosen to analyze only the information collected in the titles of the online reviews, and not include the content of the reviews. I noticed this in the methodology section: “Establishments have many comments, and users often focus on the information contained in the title to read a greater number of ratings, as they consider it more important, with titles acting in a similar way to newspaper headlines.” Are there researches to support the idea? If yes, some titles would be a good argument.

- As a suggestion, I think it would be helpful to talk also about the possible negative effects of bad reviews posted on social media. 

- Line 149 – the interval is unclear [34-25] 

- A comparison with other UCG analysis studies in the same field would improve the quality of the theoretical background 

- Please offer a reference source for this “In 2019, taken as the reference year before COVID-19, a total of 283,485 travellers were registered, of which 81% were Spanish, and 19% were foreigners.”

- The research methodology for qualitative research/content analysis/UCG analysis should be improved. Please mention also in the methodology section the number of hotels included in the study. 

-        Tabla 1. Ranking de las 30 palabras que más se mencionan – translation

- As I know, NVivo has the function to perform Sentiment analysis. I consider that it would be an interesting part to be included in the paper – of course, this is just a suggestion, the authors will decide on its relevance (https://alex-shermon.gitbook.io/rcs-nvivo/2-organising-nvivo/4.-sentiment-analysis)

- For me, it would be interesting to know also the top 5 (?) negative keywords mentioned in the comments, I think this will delineate to a better extent the complete image of the comments 

Some articles that would be maybe of interest: 

Kim, H.; Joun, H.J.; Choe, Y.; Schroeder, A. How Can a Destination Better Manage Its Offering to Visitors? Observing Visitor Experiences via Online Reviews. Sustainability 2019, 11, 4660. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/su11174660

Kitsios, F.; Kamariotou, M.; Karanikolas, P.; Grigoroudis, E. Digital Marketing Platforms and Customer Satisfaction: Identifying eWOM Using Big Data and Text Mining. Appl. Sci. 2021, 11, 8032. https://0-doi-org.brum.beds.ac.uk/10.3390/app11178032

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your suggestions. Please find attached the document in which we especify how we dealt with them trying to improve the final result of our manuscript.

Sincerely

The corresponding author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper is interesting, although the contribution is rather weak. A few improvements are needed to improve the quality:

-        As the paper is a submission to a special issue, in my opinion, it should have a clear justification of why it is suitable for it. For example, there is no mention of the word sustainability in the text of the paper or the title. The concept of innovation is not included neither. The introduction should discuss these.

-        The novelty and contribution of the research should be highlighted, there are many papers nowadays exploring online reviews in the hospitality industry. How is this publication different?

-        To make the paper more interesting, the authors can compare the online reviews on 1 and 2- star hotels against the 3 and 4-star ones. If the authors have that information, adding it to the paper would be valuable.

-        As for the methodology, the authors say that the reviews have been downloaded in April 2022, but more details should be provided: which was the time span of the reviews? How many reviews per year were published? Were there any prevalent accommodations representing a major part of the reviews? What % of the sample represented 3 star and 4-star establishments?

-        The managerial implications of the results should be extended, they are too brief and mixed with the discussion of the results.

-        The paper should be reviewed by a native speaker. While there are no major issues, it has many repetitions. For example: on page 2, the word “presents” is repeated 4 times in the same paragraph. This should be fixed. Also, the title of Table 1 is not in English.

Author Response

Dear Reviewer,

Thank you very much for your suggestions. Please find attached the document in which we especify how we dealt with them trying to improve the final result of our manuscript.

Sincerely

The corresponding author

Author Response File: Author Response.pdf

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Dear Authors

Thank you for accepting and executing my suggestions.

All the best.

Reviewer 2 Report

I consider the changes to be consistent and accept the manuscript in its current form.

Reviewer 3 Report

The paper has been improved.