Understanding Hotel Customer Satisfaction through Online Reviews of the 16 Best Hotels in Seoul

This study investigates hotel customer satisfaction by analyzing online reviews of 16 top-rated hotels in Seoul. In the highly competitive hospitality industry, understanding customer perceptions is essential for improving service quality and sustaining competitive advantage. A total of 45,432 online reviews were collected, of which 22,655 English-language reviews were analyzed using text mining techniques in R. Semantic network analysis, including CONCOR and centrality measures conducted with UCINET and NetDraw, was applied to identify structural relationships among key terms. The findings reveal four major dimensions of hotel customer satisfaction: tangible property, service quality, emotional satisfaction, and trip purpose. Tangible property reflects physical attributes such as rooms, facilities, and views, while service quality emphasizes staff behavior and service performance. Emotional satisfaction captures guests’ affective responses, and trip purpose relates to travel motivations such as business and leisure. The results indicate that both functional and emotional factors jointly shape customer evaluations of hotel experiences. This study contributes to hospitality research by proposing a multidimensional customer satisfaction framework derived from large-scale online review data using semantic network analysis. The findings provide valuable theoretical insights and practical implications for hotel managers seeking to enhance service quality, improve guest experiences, and strengthen competitive positioning.