An online review-based method for dealing with exogenous shocks in the hospitality industry

To provide hospitality managers with an effective way to respond to exogenous shocks, this study proposes a quantitative opportunity score algorithm based on the primary effect of psychology and the affect-as-information theory. The proposed algorithm can assist managers in prioritizing service improvements by calculating the importance and performance of restaurant service attributes. Specifically, using the COVID-19 pandemic as an example, this study explores shifts in the importance and performance of restaurant service attributes under different degrees of restrictions based on online reviews. The results of this study show that whether or not restaurants take measures to respond to the pandemic and the different degrees of restrictions have an impact on the importance and performance of service attributes, which means that managers develop eventual service improvement strategies differently. This study not only provides insights and management recommendations for hospitality managers to deal with the post-epidemic but also provides methodological support for hospitality managers to further respond to other exogenous shocks.