Data Mining for Hotel Firms: Use and Limitations (original) (raw)

DATA MINING: USAGE AND APPLICATIONS IN TOURISM INDUSTRY

Data mining method is used commonly to analyze huge amount of data and extract unforeseen results from that data. Data mining techniques are used in a wide variety of disciplines and fields such as customer relationship management in marketing, medical disease prediction and determination of effective treatment methods, financial and banking risk management, training planning, customer behaviour analysis in e-commerce, predicting and preventing possible criminal activities in criminal sciences etc. Customer relationship management is one of the most important points of service industry. A good client relation management requires to analyse and reveal all aspects of client profiles. Extraction of such client profiles from huge amount of customer data is possible by using integrated data mining and decision support systems. Tourism businesses may benefit from data mining techniques to create customer based business mind. By using data mining applications, businesses in tourism industry will be able to conduct detailed analysis to have a better understanding of customer profile and thus they may offer special personal promotions to customers or arrange seasonal campaigns. In addition, businesses may form behavioural grouping for their products and service types based on processed data. These groups may be analysed by clustering algorithms in data mining and it would be possible to prepare an action plan for products and service types based on natural grouping or patterns of customers. In this study, it is aimed to prove that data mining methods can be used effectively in tourism industry in order to increase service quality, meet customer demands and how to improve customer relations by giving examples.

Stripping customers' feedback on hotels through data mining: the case of Las Vegas Strip

This study presents a data mining approach for modeling TripAdvisor score using 504 reviews published in 2015 for the 21 hotels located in the Strip, Las Vegas. Nineteen quantitative features characterizing the reviews, hotels and the users were prepared and used for feeding a support vector machine for modeling the score. The results achieved reveal the model demonstrated adequate predictive performance. Therefore, a sensitivity analysis was applied over the model for extracting useful knowledge translated into features' relevance for the score. The findings unveiled user features related to TripAdvisor membership experience play a key role in influencing the scores granted, clearly surpassing hotel features. Also, both seasonality and the day of the week were found to influence scores. Such knowledge may be helpful in directing efforts to answer online reviews in alignment with hotel strategies, by profiling the reviews according to the member and review date.

Use of Data Mining in Enhancement of Tourism

Data Mining is the procedure of discovering new, raw and interesting patterns from the previously based data repositories. It is entitled as to determine useful information with the help of different algorithms. Data Mining is applicable to almost every field presently for example banking, hospital, market basket analysis, education, CRM, fraud detection, tourism etc. Tourism is the key element in the economy of any country. About 12% of the country's economy comes from the tourism. It is the sector, which is for people and from people. A number of experiments are going on in the field of data mining related to tourism but if we compare with other sectors, it is still at the early stage of development. Therefore, there is a need to focus more on the tourism sector from the research perspective. This paper elucidates the use and work of data mining in the tourism sector up to date more effectively.

Data analytics dilemma at Alpen Hotel

Journal of Information Technology Teaching Cases, 2019

Data analytics is currently the buzzword for the hospitality industry to stay ahead of their competitors. Service providers use data analytics to ensure their brand remains relevant for customers. Using data analytics in customer relationship management is a relatively novel initiative for the hospitality industry to enhance the efforts of customer relationship management. Obtaining customers’ data (i.e. customers’ hotel stay and preferences) provides both opportunity and challenges for the hospitality industry. Data analytics helps the hospitality industry to quickly, effectively, and efficiently pursue data-driven decision-making. At the same time, acquiring relevant customers’ data is a challenge, for example, data privacy and confidentiality. This case study is based on Alpen Hotel (pseudonym), a luxury hotel in Singapore with a good standing in the hospitality industry. This case is focused on the issues they experienced in implementing data analytics as part of the hotel’s cus...

Evaluating a guest satisfaction model through data mining

International Journal of Contemporary Hospitality Management

Purpose This paper aims to propose a data mining approach to evaluate a conceptual model in tourism, encompassing a large data set characterized by dimensions grounded on existing literature. Design/methodology/approach The approach is tested using a guest satisfaction model encompassing nine dimensions. A large data set of 84 k online reviews and 31 features was collected from TripAdvisor. The review score granted was considered a proxy of guest satisfaction and was defined as the target feature to model. A sequence of data understanding and preparation tasks led to a tuned set of 60k reviews and 29 input features which were used for training the data mining model. Finally, the data-based sensitivity analysis was adopted to understand which dimensions most influence guest satisfaction. Findings Previous user’s experience with the online platform, individual preferences, and hotel prestige were the most relevant dimensions concerning guests’ satisfaction. On the opposite, homogeneou...

The Selection of Optimal Data Mining Method for Small-Sized Hotels

Proceedings of the International Scientific Conference - Synthesis 2015, 2015

Small-sized hotels that prevail in the tourist destination of Serbia rarely use any kind of property management or intelligence systems. The issue that pervades throughout this paper is related to the ways in which they can benefit from data mining. This paper discusses data mining practical application of making predictions of future monthly in-house nights for small hotels. The selected data mining algorithms have been analyzed and compared in order to choose the optimal method for application of this case study. An empirical application of methods demonstrates that it can generate reasonably accurate forecasts and can be useful to managers in their evaluation of the future occupancy rate. Furthermore, it considers which of the four algorithms is best suited for other applications in the hospitality industry. Apstrakt: Mali hoteli, koji zauzimaju značajno mesto na tursitičkom tržištu Srbije, retko koriste neki vid savremenih sistema za upravljanje imovinom hotela ili inteligentne sisteme. Pitanje koje se prožima kroz ovaj rad tiče se načina na koji mali hoteli mogu imati koristi od tehnika dubinske analize podataka (data mining). U ovom radu se razmatra praktična primena algoritama za dubinsku analizu podataka u cilju predviđanja mesečne popunjenosti kapaciteta hotela. Izabrani algoritmi se analiziraju i upoređuju u cilju izbora optimalnih metoda za primenu ove studije slučaja. Empirijska primena metoda pokazuje da se generišu prilično tačne prognoze, što može biti od velike pomoći rukovodstvu u proceni budućih stopa popunjenosti hotelskih kapaciteta. Takođe se razmatraju i druge mogućnosti u okviru kojih se četiri izabrana algoritma za dubinsku analizu podataka mogu primeniti u hotelskoj industriji.

Using Customer Characteristics to Manage Marketing and Revenue Management Activities

TEM Journal

Understanding customer behaviour is an essential activity for hotel marketers and revenue managers. This article presents the statistical approach based on the data mining techniques focused on the extraction of valuable insight from big data. Using Two-Step Clustering, four major customers segments were identified, including their characteristics. Their description based on the booked room type, rate plan, booking window, net average room rate and length of stay can help the manager to plan better their activities.

Predicting Key Factors Impacting Online Hotel Ratings Using Data Mining Approach: A Case Study of the Makkah City of Saudi Arabia

International Transaction Journal of Engineering, Management, & Applied Sciences & Technologies, 2021

In the digital era, hotels' online reviews shape consumer behavior and satisfaction, consequently influencing hotel bookings and revenue stream. Previous research investigated the factors impacting hotels' online ratings in commercial cities; however, this study analyses the hotels' online ratings in Saudi Arabia's key religious city Makkah by data mining popular Booking.com website using classification approach. The present study employs consideration set theory as the theoretical lens and finds seven hotel attributes as the awareness set (in the priority order), viz. facilities, comfort, cleanliness, staff, location, value for money, and free WiFi. Except for value for money and free WiFi, the rest of the five hotel attributes constitute the consideration set. Hotel facilities being the most important factor, form the choice set. The study results indicate that value for money is less important in religious destinations than commercial destinations. Further, free WiFi is less critical to influence consumer ratings these days as almost all hotels provide it, and consumers have alternatives like mobile internet plans. As religious tourism is expected to drive future economic growth of nations, this study's findings would empower the hospitality and tourism industry (specifically hotels) in tourism destinations, especially Saudi Arabia, in line with its Vision 2030.

Application of Machine Learning in the Hotel Industry: A Critical Review

Journal of Association of Arab Universities for Tourism and Hospitality, 2020

Study purpose-The hotel industry like any other industry is witnessing a change due to information and communication technology. However, this change is quite slow. Many researchers in recent time have garnered interest in exploring and implementing the new technologies of artificial intelligence and machine learning in the hotel industry. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to give insights on the role of ML and its integrated technologies in the hotel industry. Design/Methodology/Approach-The study has critically reviewed articles published from 2010 to 2020. To achieve the research objective, the study seeks to answer three main research questions related to the existing literature; RQ1: Where does the hotel industry implement machine learning? RQ2: What are the machine learning techniques used in the hotel industry? RQ3: Which countries are using machine learning in the hotel industry? Findings-The study found that machine learning is helpful in demand forecasting, price forecasting, booking cancellation prediction, financial efficiency, and work efficiency. The machine learning algorithms outperform in the forecast accuracy against the statistical models. The countries at the forefront in machine learning technologies are China and USA. The other countries should take the cue from them and implement machine learning in their hotels Originality of the research-This research conducts exploratory analysis to identify the extent of scientific community knowledge and awareness on machine learning in the hotel industry. To the best of the authors' knowledge, no prior researcher has conducted a similar study specifically in the hotel industry.

Data Mining Applications in Tourism: A Keyword Analysis

The paper reviews applications of data mining in academic papers dealing with tourism industry, both from demand and supply side.. Web of science, SCOPUS, and in particular key tourism journals published in 1995-2013 period have been searched with the usage of appropriate keywords. Literature searches revealed 88 papers that present applications of data mining in tourism. Keyword and conceptual network analysis were conducted with the usage of Wordle and LaNet-vi tools. Papers from tourism related journals and ICT related journals were analysed separately. In order to detect historic trends, analysis was conducted separately for the two periods before 2005, and since 2006. The conclusion of the paper is that tourism steps on a path to evolve to being both people-driven and data-driven, thus utilizing data mining approach as leverage towards increased competitiveness and profitability.