Unveiling the spatial and temporal variation of customer sentiment in hotel experiences: a case study of Beppu City, Japan

This study examined the fluctuation of customer sentiment regarding hotel experiences in Beppu City, Japan, as reflected in TripAdvisor reviews. A total of 4004 reviews in English and Japanese, contributed by both international and domestic customers, were collected from 233 hotels in Beppu between April 1st, 2015, and March 31st, 2023, for sentiment analysis. The Google Cloud Natural Language Processing API was utilized for sentiment extraction. This study employed spatio-temporal analysis to investigate the variation of sentiment over time and across different areas, as well as to explore differences in sentiment between international and domestic customers. The research results underscore a notable regional disparity in hotel satisfaction, particularly in the Kitahama and Cyuou Area of Beppu, following the COVID-19 pandemic.