Luxury travel, fine dining, pampering services are among the most desired experiences of affluent tourists (Kim, 2018). Scholars debate on the difficult task of crafting a universally recognized definition of luxury due to the fluid, dynamic and evolutionary nature of social contexts (Mortelmans, 2005; Yeoman, 2011). Nevertheless, some common traits are identifiable among consumers seeking for luxury in services, e.g.: the search for positive emotions (Kapferer 2015). Luxury evokes exclusivity, high social status, personalized experience, and high levels of comfort and convenience (Kurtz 2004; Chen & Peng 2014). Tourists looking for luxury when travelling generally seek the most complete spectrum of services and best-quality products (Ikkos 2003; Yang & Mattila 2014, 2017). The concept of luxury in hospitality received relatively less attention compared to overall luxury goods consumption (Yang and Mattila 2017), and little is still known about the differences among cultures in their appreciation of luxury hotel stays.

This study uses user-generated content of luxury hotel guests to explore variation in ratings, language and sentiment across different cultures of origin (European, Asian and North American). Thus, the study offers a cross-culture comparative overview and explores the presence of culture-of-origin effect and its potential impact on guests’ online narratives of luxury. The study also examines hotel guests´ user-generated textual and visual content to identify the most recurring themes used in association with luxury tourism.

The study explores user-generated content from 22 luxury hotel brands. The dataset covers a timespan of ten years and refers to nine global hotel chains located across six European cities. This exploratory study combines automated text analysis, content analysis and visual analysis of user-generated content. Automated text analysis was used to examine the structure of the reviews, their language and sentiment. LIWC, Leximancer, NVivo and SPSS were used to analyse the textual part of the dataset (about 16.000 online reviews). Syntactic text analytics features (word count, sentiment polarity, analytical thinking and authentic content) were used on textual data to compare the three different groups. Visual content analysis of selected snapshot was also performed using interpretive categories for image coding.

The findings reveal that Asians guests are on average the less satisfied with their luxury property stay (4.41) while North Americans tend to better review their experience (4.52) and Europeans range in the middle (4.45). Text analysis shows that Asians are particularly analytical when reviewing online, thus reflecting a more formal, logical, and hierarchical thinking. North Americans show low level of sentiment descriptions and instead, Europeans embed more sentiments when posting a review. The three cultures examined also tend to associate luxury to different attributes. The Leximancer concept map shows the most common themes and concepts connected to the luxury “node” found in the textual data. The analysis reveals two recurrent themes associated with luxury across each group of reviewers: “hotel” and “room”. Differences occurs however with respect to the third attribute, indeed luxury results respectively associated with “service” for North Americans, “location” for Asians, and “stay” for Europeans. Finding from the exploratory visual content analysis support these recurring themes but also shed light on other aspects of luxury tourism. Content analysis also captured guests´ snippets from the textual data to support the findings.

The study identifies the most recurring hotel service areas discussed by guests in association with their concept of luxury, showing a general predominance of physical attributes regardless of guests´ origin. Differences regarding the intangible attributes of hotel service in association with luxury occur when moving across guests’ cultures. The findings from the visual analysis also show that guests may associate different themes to their luxury expectations. The study shows the relevance of user-generated content in understanding hotel guests’ seeking for luxury hotel experiences and contributes to the ongoing discussion of luxury perceptions as a driver affecting guests’ attitudes and behaviors.

The study explores luxury hotel reviews by considering guests’ culture of origin and determines how linguistic and cognitive elements embedded in the text move across the considered cultures, the results can be beneficial to scholars and practitioners for the design of tourism and hospitality luxury experiences. The study suffers from some limitations in that it uses only English user-generated content and broadly defines the culture of origin by using large macro aggregations, future studies should address these issues.

Chen, A., & Peng, N. (2014). Examining Chinese consumers’ luxury hotel staying behavior. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 39, 53-56.
Ikkos, A. (2003). Luxury tourism: a matter for all, not just hotels. JBR Hellas Ltd., October. Available at: http://www.gbrconsulting.gr/articles/Luxury%20Tourism.pdf.
Kapferer, J. N. (2015). Kapferer on luxury: How luxury brands can grow yet remain rare. Kogan Page Publishers.
Kim, Y. (2018). Power moderates the impact of desire for exclusivity on luxury experiential consumption. Psychology & Marketing, 35(4), 283-293.
Kurtz, R. (2004). Marketing travel to the affluent. The complete 21st century travel and hospitality marketing handbook, 525-536. Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall
Mortelmans, D. (2005). Sign values in processes of distinction: The concept of luxury. Semiotica, 2005(157), 497-520.
Yang, W., & Mattila, A. S. (2014). Do affluent customers care when luxury brands go mass?. International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management, 26(4), 526-543.
Yang, W., & Mattila, A. S. (2017). The impact of status seeking on consumers’ word of mouth and product preference—A comparison between luxury hospitality services and luxury goods. Journal of Hospitality & Tourism Research, 41(1), 3-22.
Yeoman, I. (2011). The changing behaviours of luxury consumption. Journal of Revenue and Pricing Management, 10(1), 47-50.