Customer Satisfaction in Hotel Experiences: Case Study

Course Description

This course uses a real-world research study on hotel reviews in Beppu City, Japan, to introduce students to sentiment analysis, spatial analysis, and temporal analysis in tourism and hospitality research. Using multilingual online review data, the course explores how customer satisfaction varies across locations, cultures, and major disruptions such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Students will engage with applied data-driven methods to understand tourism experiences, service quality, and evidence-based decision-making in the hospitality industry.

What You’ll Gain from This Course

By the end of this course, participants will be able to:

1. Understand how online reviews shape customer decision-making in tourism and hospitality
2. Understand the principles of sentiment analysis and natural language processing (NLP)
3. Analyze differences in customer satisfaction across space, time, and cultural contexts
4. Interpret the impacts of external shocks (e.g., COVID-19) using interrupted time series analysis
5. Apply data-driven insights to tourism management and service improvement strategies