American Journal of Marketing Research Vol. 1, No. 4, 2015, pp. 208-214 http://www.aiscience.org/journal/ajmr * Corresponding author E-mail address: carol.hargreaves@nus.edu.sg Analysis of Hotel Guest Satisfaction Ratings and Reviews: An Application in Singapore Carol Anne Hargreaves * Institute of Systems Science, National University of Singapore, Singapore, Singapore Abstract The hotel industry in Singapore is an important part of the hospitality and tourism infrastructure and a strategic part of Singapore’s growth story. Hotels are primarily viewed as a service industry with intangible areas of guest experience and service levels. The research objective of this paper is to better understand the hotel guest satisfaction and the areas that hotel management can change, in order to get better results. For this purpose, an analysis of hotel guest satisfaction ratings based on attributes such as Location, Sleep quality, Rooms, Service quality, Value for money and Cleanliness was performed. Further, text analysis of customer reviews was also performed to better understand the positive and negative sentiments of hotel guests. We focused on identifying the attributes that differentiate one hotel from another, and then using these attribute insights to make recommendation to hotel management, on how they can improve their operations, guest satisfaction and generally differentiate themselves from their competition. Data from an online website, Trip Advisor, was used to analyse and compare customer ratings and reviews on five hotels. Statistical data analysis techniques were used to identify the key attributes that are most important in choosing hotels and are critical to focus on in order to ensure guest satisfaction expectations are met. Based on text analytics, the key results from this study indicated that hotel guests look for a good room and a hotel with a pool and good service. Based on the ratings analysis, the most important attributes for guest satisfaction turned out to be Rooms, Value for money and Location. Keywords Hotel Guest Satisfaction, Hotel Reviews, Hotel Industry, Service Quality, Hotel Ratings, Text Analytics, Singapore Received: July 7, 2015 / Accepted: September 8, 2015 / Published online: September 17, 2015 @ 2015 The Authors. Published by American Institute of Science. This Open Access article is under the CC BY-NC license. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ 1. Introduction With the easy access to technology and information, IT has enabled all aspects of the hotel industry with choice and identification of a hotel, hotel recommendations and booking of hotel accommodation using web and mobile based applications. Reviews, price comparisons and accelerated bookings have provided hotels with a potential rich source of guest data. Use of this data is providing deep consumer behavioural insights. Further, the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) (2014) reports statistics on a quarterly basis and helps promote the industry both domestically and more importantly in financial terms, internationally. According to the STB in Q4 2014, it supported 3.9 million visitors and S$1.366 million of accommodation Tourism Receipts with gazetted hotels registering S$800 million, an occupancy rate of 88% and a Rev PAR of S$228. In line with many industries, the market environment is challenging and continues to evolve at an increasing pace. Increased disposable income is rising and consumers are searching search for experiential leisure and therefore demand more quality and consistency in guest experience. In choosing hotels as a destination the management needs to ensure that both the tangible and intangible aspects of the properties meet and preferably exceed expectations of their