Effect of service quality assessment on perception of TOP hotels in terms of sentiment polarity in the Visegrad group countries

Research background: In the developed countries, the services sector, which also includes the accommodation services, is a significant source of the gross national product. Tourism can be perceived as an important determinant of countries' economies, so attention paid to the needs of clients is at least necessary and beneficial. Purpose of the article: The aim of the study is to assess the quality of services provided and the perception of the hotel from the point of view of the accommodated clients. This objective was fulfilled by determining the effect of selected indicators of perception of the quality of provided services (location, personnel evaluation, cleanliness, equipment, comfort, price/quality ratio of provided services, free Wi-Fi connection) on the indicator determining the perception of the hotel (polarity of sentiment). Methods: In the analysis of the above, 22,000 text-reviews of 117 five-star hotels of the Visegrad Group countries were evaluated. The hotel reviews were obtained from Tripadvisor.com and indicator rankings from Booking.com. The analysis made use of the regression analysis methods - influence (regulatory models - Ridge, Lasso, Elastic net, and multiple linear regression - OLS). Findings & Value added: It has been found out that hotel equipment and cleanliness have the greatest effect on the polarity of sentiment. As could be expected, the trend has an upward tendency - that is, as quality increases, so does the sentiment polarity - the perception of hotel facilities. Overall, the analysed sentiment variables can be considered positive, as was confirmed by the positive coefficients of the coherence analysis (Spearman-ρ; Pearson-r), as well as the upward trend in the predictions under the regression analysis. Hotels should be strategically customer-oriented and, as the analyses show, pay the greatest attention to equipment and cleanliness. The services of accommodation facilities are dominant in terms of satisfaction with the destination in general, so in the long run, they should be given due attention. These findings are particularly beneficial for hotel services provided in the Visegrad Group countries, as no research studies have yet been carried out on customer evaluation of the quality of accommodation facilities using the presented methods.