Understanding Customer Satisfaction in Thailand’s Wellness Hotels Post-COVID-19: A Big Data Analytics Approach

This study aims to explore the key factors influencing customer satisfaction in Thailand’s wellness hotels in the post-pandemic era, supporting industry recovery and enhancing competitiveness. As a leading global wellness tourism destination, Thailand attracts a large number of visitors with its traditional therapies, natural landscapes, and cultural heritage. However, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a significant impact on the tourism industry, creating an urgent need for recovery. This study takes advantage of a mixed-method approach to explore key factors influencing customer satisfaction in Thailand's wellness hotels. A dataset of 11,251 reviews from 25 wellness hotels was collected through OutScraper, and text mining was performed using KH Coder, followed by exploratory factor analysis (EFA) and linear regression in SPSS 26.0. The results show that service quality, spa experiences, and fresh food significantly enhance customer satisfaction, whereas family-friendly amenities, price, front desk efficiency, and room comfort negatively impact perceptions. The significance of this study lies in the need for wellness hotels to prioritize the optimization of core wellness services while addressing sources of dissatisfaction to better align with post-pandemic travelers' growing demand for physical and mental wellbeing. The findings contribute to theory by enhancing understanding of wellness hotel attributes and guest satisfaction while offering practical insights for operators to refine strategies and maintain Thailand’s global competitiveness.