An Analysis of E-Comments on Hotels that Offer Service in the Field of Urban Tourism: The Case of Eskişehir Province

Abstract

Today, the tourists are more insightful and inquisitive, and they now chose to be more cautious on their preferences and they actively use social media. Online customer comments are one of the most important sources of information that have strong impact on tourists’ accommodation preferences. Not only the individual tourists use these online customer comments, but the travel agencies that prepare package tour programs also benefit from these sources of information when selecting hotels. In this study, we aimed to reveal the expectations of tourists involved in urban tourism activities regarding city hotels. For this purpose, 940 positive and negative TripAdvisor comments made between January-February 2019 for 10 city hotels in Eskişehir in various languages were reviewed, and the most common categories of these comments were determined. The data obtained were processed through content analysis and were then evaluated through seven main themes. At the end of this analysis, it was found that the comments mainly focused on personnel’s attitude in “human resources” theme, tastiness and quality of breakfast/food in “food & beverage” theme, and cleanliness of rooms in “housekeeping” theme, respectively.