Paper alert: What Travelers Say vs. What They Rate
- Ossi Mokryn
- May 4
- 1 min read
Ossi Mokryn is highlighting her new work in the Journal of Theoretical and Applied Electronic Commerce Research:
In this study, I explore the nuances of online hotel reviews—specifically, how a traveler’s trip type (solo, couple, business) affects what they care about and how they describe their stay.
With over 137,000 reviews analyzed, this paper contributes to both text analytics methods and our understanding of user behavior in e-commerce settings.
💡 The key message: Understanding who is writing the review is just as important as what they’re writing.
Here’s some details:
Travelers don’t always “say” what they “rate”—textual sentiment often diverges from star ratings, especially for solo travelers.
Using a graph-based clustering technique, I extracted hotel aspects (like food, room, location) directly from the review text, without pre-labeling.
Different traveler types mention different things: business travelers talk more about service and room, couples focus on location, and solo travelers complain more—but mention food the least.
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Fascinating work! I hadn’t really thought about how much a traveler’s purpose or context shapes what they notice and write about. The gap between ratings and written sentiment is especially striking - shows why reading the reviews themselves can be more revealing than just looking at stars.
Travelers don't always "say" what they "review", but when they review anonymously they will often be more honest!
This study gives us a deeper understanding of customer feedback and provides insightful information for researchers and the hospitality sector.
This study adds real depth to our understanding of consumer feedback and offers valuable insights for both researchers and the hospitality industry