Hitting the Sweet Spot: How Optimal Arousal Enhances Adventurous Experiences in Glamping

Glamping combines the wilderness of camping with the luxury of hospitality. This study explains customer satisfaction strategies in glamping using the concepts of sensory marketing and Optimal Arousal Theory. Travelers’ reviews were collected from Booking.com, which led to a total of 110,098 reviews from 25 countries. Structural topic modeling was performed to reveal important themes separately for satisfaction and dissatisfaction in glamping. The study highlights the impact of camp location, accommodation comfort, traveler experience, and staff behavior as determinants of satisfaction. Stay duration and traveler type act as moderators for glamping satisfaction. In addition, the results reveal a concave relationship between traveler emotions and customer satisfaction. Some important practical implications are key areas for managing traveler satisfaction as two categories: hard and soft aspects of glamping. While hard aspects are related to accommodation, they are highly capital intensive and difficult to change in a short duration. On the other hand, soft aspects are related to human factors that are relatively easier to modify. The originality of our study lies in the identification of dissatisfaction as not a mere lack of features but due to factors distinct from those of satisfaction.