RESEARCH ARTICLE The impact of national culture on hotel guest evaluation – A big data approach Pei Zhang 1 | John H. Gerdes Jr 2 | Fang Meng 3 1 Department of Retailing and Tourism Management, College of Agriculture, Food and Environment, University of Kentucky, Lexington, KY 2 Department of Integrated Information Technology, College of Engineering and Computing, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC 3 School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management, College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management, University of South Carolina, Columbia, SC Correspondence Fang Meng, School of Hotel, Restaurant and Tourism Management, College of Hospitality, Retail and Sport Management, University of South Carolina, 1705 College Street, Close- Hipp #614, Columbia, SC 29208. Email: fmeng@hrsm.sc.edu Abstract The study utilized Hofstede's national cultural dimensions as the theoretical frame- work to examine the impact of national culture on guests' evaluation of hotel experi- ence. Unlike previous studies which investigate the role of nationality by merely identifying differences between nations, this study analyzed different dimensions of cultural distance between the destination country and a guest's home nation. Using a big data approach, 25,480 guests from five countries reviewed 1,533 Parisian hotels on value, room, location, cleanness, and service. The results revealed that cultural dis- tance dimension of masculinity, individualism, long-term orientation, indulgence, and uncertainty avoidance significantly influence different aspects of hotel ratings. KEYWORDS cultural distance, hierarchical linear modeling (HLM), Hofstede, hotel rating, national culture 1 | INTRODUCTION When investigating the effect of culture on service experience, hospi- tality researchers have considered nationality to be one of the key cul- ture indicators (e.g. Armstrong, Mok, Go, & Chan, 1997; Fan, Mattila, & Zhao, 2015; Hsieh & Tsai, 2009; S. Kim, Chung, & Suh, 2016; Mattila, 2000; McCleary, Choi, & Weaver, 1998). For instance, Armstrong et al. (1997) reported that customers' service quality expectations for hotels differ across cultures based on nation- ality. McCleary et al. (1998) noted significant differences exist between Korean and U.S. travelers on the perceived importance of hotel features. More recently, researchers found customers' complaint intentions exhibit different patterns between Chinese and American customers (Fan et al., 2015). Additionally, restaurant diners' post- consumption evaluative behaviors are significantly different between American and Korean customers (S. Kim et al., 2016). Culture influences many dimensions of human behavior, yet it was once considered as an elusive concept posing difficulties for cross-cultural research (e.g. Clark, 1990; Dawar, Parker, & Price, 1996). The success of using culture to explain human behavior depends on the ability to unpack it and define its components. Therefore, identifying unique dimensions of culture contributes to cross-cultural research (Soares, Farhangmehr, & Shoham, 2007). National culture is a concept that people of each nation have a dis- tinctive, enduring pattern of behavioral characteristics (De Mooij & Hofstede, 2011; Hofstede, 1980, 2001). Most of the existing tourism studies have examined the explanatory power of Hofstede's national cultural dimensions (referred to as “cultural dimensions” for the rest of the text) on tourists' pre-travel behaviors such as risk assessment (e.g. Kozak, Crotts, & Law, 2007; Reisinger & Mavondo, 2005), pre- travel purchases and information search behaviors (e.g. Litvin, Crotts, & Hefner, 2004; Money & Crotts, 2003; Quintal, Lee, & Soutar, 2010), and formation of destination images and choices (e.g. Correia, Kozak, & Ferradeira, 2011; Hashemi & Henser, 2018). However, less is known about how cultural dimensions influence tourist post-travel behaviors. Recently, both qualitative investigations and quantitative quests have shed light on the relationships between cultural dimensions and post-travel behaviors such as customer delight (Torres, Fu, & Lehto, 2014), customer complaint (Jahandideh, Golmohammadi, Meng, O'Gorman, & Taheri, 2014)), and customer satisfaction (S. S. Huang & Crotts, 2019). Using a large dataset of 25,480 online reviews of hotels with guests from 56 nations, we ana- lyze the influence of each cultural dimension on the relative impor- tance of different hotel features to their overall hotel stay experience. John H. Gerdes, Jr and Fang Meng contributed equally and are listed alphabetically. Received: 27 January 2019 Revised: 7 March 2020 Accepted: 12 March 2020 DOI: 10.1002/jtr.2357 Int J Tourism Res. 2020;1–11. wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/jtr © 2020 John Wiley & Sons Ltd 1