How hotel stars affecting customers' sentiment in Astana

Hotel stars are key indicators for assessing locations, facilities, and other attributes. Although the World Tourism Organization has long advocated for such systems, no consensus has been reached on standardizing them. Italy and Spain use their own systems. Kazakhstan has no system. Since visitors rate hotels, Web 2.0 implementations have started using their rating systems. Hotels in countries without a standard system would be negatively affected and would be vulnerable to manipulation by Web 2.0. Topic modeling and sentiment analysis are implemented to explore how hotel stars converge or diverge regarding hotel attributes mentioned by visitors. TripAdvisor’s 5,894 online reviews of Astana’s hotels in Kazakhstan between 2006 and 2023 are used. The study pinpoints the same attributes as remaining issues, even though hotels differ in stars. Customers’ sentiments about derived hotel attributes mostly converge for hotels rated 2, 3, and 4 stars; however, they diverge in 5-star hotels. Specifically, even though hotels with 2, 3, or 4 stars differ, they share similar issues. Thus, official rating systems should be adopted in Kazakhstan soon. Kazakhstan’s hotels can directly adopt an official rating system to enhance attribute qualities.