Qualidade dos meios de hospedagem cearenses: um estudo baseado nas avaliações do consumidor evidenciadas no site Tripadvisor

Abstract

Hotel search sites such as TripAdvisor and Booking.com have become a relevant source of information for travelers and service providers. There is evidence that travelers seeking information about lodging consider the reviews of other users more important than the material provided by the establishments themselves. In this context, the general goal of the present study is to analyze the influence of quality of service attributes (cost-benefit, location, sleep quality, rooms, cleanliness and service) evidenced by the TripAdvisor website, on overall consumer satisfaction. In addition, the following specific goal were developed: to characterize lodging facilities of the municipalities Ceará evaluated on TripAdvisor; compare satisfaction, perceived quality and the relationship between them, according to the type of trip in which the accommodation fits; determine which aspects contribute most to the guest rating the property with the highest rating and segment the hotels taking into account the (dis)similarities in the ratings received. Methodologically, the research is quantitative in nature using secondary data. The sample is made up of the lodging facilities arranged in the 43 municipalities of Ceará that appeared in the ranking of destinations most sought after by tourists in Ceará, disclosed by the TripAdvisor website, constituting a total of 2,293 establishments. Of this sample, only hotels and guesthouses with at least one review that had all attributes rated by a guest were considered, reducing the sample to 588 properties and 27,094 reviews between January 2010 and July 2019. TripAdvisor's web pages were captured by a crawler and then the ratings data was extracted using a parser. These two scripts were executed in Python language, version 3.7.2. The results suggest that investments in room structure, service and cleanliness could increase customer satisfaction, given that these attributes, respectively, are most likely to influence a customer to give the property the highest rating. Another finding shows that most of the establishments rated with the highest grade are located mainly on the coast, many of them in Jericoacoara. In this sense, there is evidence that accommodations located in larger and more populous municipalities are, on average, less likely to be evaluated with maximum scores of general satisfaction. In addition, guests tend to become more demanding over time, leading to lower overall satisfaction scores. Comparing the groups according to type of trip, it was found that the ratings given by guests traveling in couples or with friends are relatively higher compared to other types of travelers and those traveling for work tend to give a lower rating to overall satisfaction. In addition, those who travel with family or without a company are, respectively, 26.66% and 52.19% more likely to assign a maximum satisfaction score compared to guests traveling on business (base group). It was identified that there is a significant and positive relationship between the marks given to the lodging facilities and the general satisfaction of the customer and that this relationship is affected according to the type of trip. Finally, the educational level, the HDI and the per capita GDP of the municipalities where the hosting facilities are located were not significant to explain the overall satisfaction score.