Exploring the Hotel Experience in a Cultural City through a UGC Analysis

Abstract

A large amount of information is generated on social platforms linked to tourism activity. It is necessary to explore this information using analysis techniques based on Big Data since the result greatly values decision-making. This paper aims to evaluate the titles of the reviews published on Tripadvisor about 3 and 4-star hotels of a World Heritage City (Cáceres, Extremadura, Spain) to outline the attributes most valued by tourists. Content analysis was performed using the user-generated content (UGC) in Tripadvisor, together with techniques that facilitated the processing of the data to discover the most important characteristics assessed by clients during their stays. The analysis shows a positive evaluation of the hotels in the city of Cáceres, highlighting the hotel stay, location, service, and value for money as the most outstanding elements. Based on the results obtained, a recommendation for hotel managers is to focus their communication strategies on location, quality, and price factors. It is worth noting the importance that the implementation of Big Data techniques of analysis has for the sector, allowing for better knowledge of clients and helping to maintain a competitive position in the market.

1. Introduction

The tourism sector is a critical element in the economic development of different countries. In the case of Spain, the tourism industry is a key element of the economy due to its great weight in GDP and the number of jobs it represents. In addition, the expenditures from tourism demand cut across other sectors of the economy, causing a multiplier effect on consumption [1]. Spain is one of the countries that receives the most tourists in the world [2], so it is understood that the tourism sector is a strategic industry. Within this industry, the hotel sector is of great importance, as “hotel companies provide a basic service without which the development and expansion of tourist activities would not be possible” [3] (p. 2).

Sustainability helps to increase the differentiation of destinations and organisations, as well as to improve competitiveness, to create value-added and attract new tourism markets [4]. Sustainable tourism development must integrate social, cultural, economic, technological, and political dimensions. Within this approach, technology should be a support to enhance sustainability in tourism [5].

In this sense, tourism has undergone a remarkable transformation with the advent of the internet and new technologies, which have promoted tools such as social networks [6]. The current relationship between new technologies and tourism is irreversible; tourism cannot be conceived without these new means for its development, facilitating the exchange of experiences [7]. Thus, the internet, new technologies and social networks are indispensable for tourists, and it is necessary to broaden the knowledge of the functions, applications, and information these technologies can bring to businesses [8,9]. Tourists seek information at all stages of the journey, allowing them to gain knowledge of their online behaviour to understand better tourism services and new market trends [1].

Information and communication technologies (ICTs) help disseminate credible information to consumers beyond the information a company shares. They have meant that consumers share their opinions and can influence and be influenced [10]. Thus, digital information affects the expectations created and the service experience in tourism [11]. Hence, new technologies or the new uses made of them represent an innovation in the tourism sector, which is constantly changing and renewing its knowledge bases [12].

Tourism services such as booking accommodations or purchasing transport tickets are among the most searched information on the internet [13]. In the electronic word-of-mouth or eWOM, any consumer can be a sender or receiver, with the number of receivers being quite prominent in the online channel because the message reaches a more significant number of people [13]. With the rise of eWOM, the online exchange of opinions is developing, known as user-generated content (UGC) [14]. Thus, websites and social networks are being transformed, involving the user through UGC. They can exchange information with other users [15], emphasising that users are free to share what they want without restrictions [16]. The analysis of online reviews allows detection of the strengths and weaknesses of the reviewed service, as well as obtaining detailed information about its characteristics and discovering user motivations [17]. In the hotel sector, the application of new technologies is imperative, with the information gathered on the internet about hotels being a determining factor in tourists’ choice of establishment [18].

This study focuses on the hotel sector in Cáceres (Spain), as it has sufficient accommodation capacity, and the tourism sector is becoming increasingly important for the local economy [19]. In this context, it is necessary to know how tourists perceive the 3- and 4-star hotels in the city since, in Spain, there are a greater number of accommodations in these categories, and they correspond to a medium-high hotel level [20]. The 3- and 4-star hotel categories are the most widespread in Spain and correspond to a medium-high level. These hotel categories account for 66.74% of the hotel beds and 32.11% of the establishments at a national level [21,22]. Thus, knowing the characteristics evaluated by tourists staying in these establishments and introducing improvements can help to increase the average stay and hotel profitability. Furthermore, the managers of establishments and the destination will be able to adapt to tourists’ demands and expectations, improving their competitiveness compared with other destinations. This study considers the content generated by users in online media to be a highly relevant source of information and an innovative solution to obtain feedback from customers allowing a better understanding of the full tourist experience in a different way than traditional surveys, which assess fixed attributes and may not be sufficient to understand tourist behaviour [17]. Knowing the perceptions of tourists contributes to promoting planned and sustainable destinations.

A large amount of information is generated on these online social platforms, making it necessary to resort to information analysis techniques based on Big Data, as it has great potential when used for business decision-making, converting large volumes of data into meaningful knowledge [23].

The main objective of this study was focused on understanding guest satisfaction and learning which attributes are the most valued in 3- and 4-star hotels in the city of Cáceres through the information collected in the titles of online reviews left by users on the Tripadvisor platform. Thus, it will be possible to contribute to increasing the knowledge about the needs and desires of tourists staying in these accommodation categories and establish recommendations for better management of customer demands.

To address this objective, this study sought to answer the research question: How do online reviews reflect tourist satisfaction and the most valued attributes of 3- and 4-star hotels in a cultural destination?

The structure of the article is as follows. After the introduction and statement of the main objective, the second section presents the theoretical framework, defining the main issues considered for the research. The third section presents the methodology used, and the fourth section presents the main results. Finally, the fifth section presents the conclusions and theoretical and practical implications of the research, as well as the limitations and future lines of research.

2. Theoretical Framework

2.1. Tourism 2.0 and the Importance of eWOM

The way of travelling is changing; tourists are acquiring new habits, using the internet at all stages of the journey, thanks to the fact that access to information and the way of making reservations for accommodations, transport or restaurants has been facilitated [24]. The tourism sector is constantly changing, which has allowed it to be one of the sectors where the use of new technologies has been implemented with greater speed and efficiency, adapting them to the needs of the sector in its different processes, such as destination management [6]. Carrera and Vega [25] state that ICTs and the development of telecommunications have made it possible to improve efficiency and competitiveness in the tourism industry. Ortiz and González [6] mention that Web 2.0. has allowed companies in the tourism sector to maintain a much closer relationship with their clients, and that communication is much more natural and clearer. Nowadays, social networks are used before, during and after a trip. Thus, tourists use these social media to organise their trips and search for information about their destination. During the trip, they share photos and experiences, and after the trip, they are responsible for evaluating the services and resources that have been utilized to help other users [25].

The relationship between these technological tools and the hotel sector has been progressively consolidated. Thus, it is worth highlighting the importance of tourist 2.0 and communication 2.0, where the traveller becomes part of the information and shares it [26]. New technologies and the creation of virtual communities have changed the role of the tourist, who now becomes a protagonist in the creation of their trip, and, with the opinions they leave in these spaces, they will talk about their experience in the destination [27]. Knowing the tourist’s perceptions allows one to deepen the personalisation of tourist services [28].

The main benefits that social media bring to the hotel sector are increased visibility and presence, ease of access to information and the ability to improve interaction with their customers. With good management, social media help hotels maintain and increase their online reputation at a lower cost than other traditional media [29]. Furthermore, Ortiz and González [6] add that it allows them to transmit updated information about services to customers effectively. Word of mouth (WOM) is different from marketing communication activities developed by the company itself, as it is more credible for the consumer since it is information transmitted by other users and is not of a commercial nature [17]. Hennig-Thurau et al. [30] (p. 39) define electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM) as “any positive or negative statement made by former, current or potential customers about a product or company that is available to a multitude of people and institutions via the Internet”.

eWOM brings many benefits to consumers and companies, as consumers trust other users more than the company itself or the publicity it generates. It stands out as a tool that influences the purchasing decision. For companies, online reviews represent a valuable source of real-time information to get to know their customers better, since these reviews show whether the consumer is satisfied with the characteristics of their products or services and those of the competition [20,31]. The eWOM is the communication channel where users’ experiences with certain products and services are transmitted [32].

The new technological media have transformed the role of the user, who has gone from being a mere spectator and consumer of content to beginning to generate the content that is consumed [33]. The exchange of opinions online creates information that is considered useful and of great value for companies and other users [34]. This exchange of opinions is known as user-generated content (UGC) [14] and it allows one to know the main attributes of the destination that tourists highlight after their real experiences and that influence their attitudes and satisfaction [35].

2.2. User-Generated Content and the Hotel Industry

UGC is becoming increasingly important. It has several benefits for companies, as it helps to improve their positioning, to know the positive and negative aspects of their services during their customers’ stays, and motivates other tourists to book, which is relevant in the case of hotels [36,37,38]. Moreover, it is a way to capture the user’s emotional experience in real-time [39]. UGC contains a wealth of content because it allows the tourist freedom to respond by focusing on the emotions they have experienced, which is not so easily seen with structured techniques that focus on specific scales [40].

For the tourist, reading the opinions of other users generates greater confidence, thus reducing the risk caused by the intangibility of services [31,41]. For businesses, it allows for a better understanding of the tourist experience on different platforms, uncovering behavioural patterns [42].

These information-sharing tools allow tourists to form a pre-trip opinion based on the comments of other customers [17]. UGC plays an important role in creating the destination image, from the pre-trip stage to the post-trip stage, affecting destination loyalty [43]. Huertas and Marine-Roig [44] explain that UGC has greater credibility than official information about a destination because such content is perceived as not subject to any commercial interest but merely as real experiences of other users. Rodríguez-Rangel and Sánchez-Rivero [33] add that the higher the credibility of comments, the greater the degree of influence they exert on the process of selecting a destination.

In the process of purchasing services, searching for information about the service offered has always been present [33], with comments being highly valuable elements in the decision-making process of other travellers [25].

Customer reviews are not only useful for other users, but they are also a great source of information for the companies themselves, as they provide first-hand knowledge of the customer’s view of both positive and negative aspects [18]. Tavizón [14] points out that the importance of UGC and eWOM lies in the fact that they are instrumental for companies to understand customer behaviour, providing highly relevant information to define subjective issues such as needs, tastes or preferences.

Although it is becoming more and more common for users to share reviews on activities and restaurants, it is still more frequent in accommodation establishments. Cox et al. [45] noted in their study that the primary use of UGC for travellers was to find information about the destination and accommodations.

In the hotel sector, online reviews are critical because this activity depends to a large extent on the feelings and experiences that the customer has had at the establishment [29].

Therefore, knowing customers’ opinions in the hotel sector is fundamental in marketing and communication strategies. UGC through online reviews helps to gain a deeper understanding of tourists’ perceptions [28]. Feedback analysis must be present in organisational strategies since UGC gives tourism companies a unique opportunity to obtain information of great value for decision-making. This knowledge provided by the customers themselves makes it possible to specify the services that the customers want and to adapt the offer to the specific needs of the customers [9]. In the long term, these actions lead to increased customer satisfaction, a higher degree of customer loyalty and an improvement in the industry’s competitiveness. As Ríos et al. [18] point out, companies cannot forget to manage their online reputation, as it becomes an intangible business asset that can determine their success or failure. Godnov and Redek [46], in their analysis of Croatian hotels, concluded that UGC and text mining techniques allow identifying the key factors of the hotel and its services, as well as to create valuable information in the hospitality industry. This allows managers to understand the preferences of tourists in their establishments.

In this context, it is imperative to manage or respond to user-generated reviews, as San-Martín et al. [47] found in their research that hotels with a higher response rate had better ratings on Tripadvisor and found that most people who write reviews do so after a positive experience. It is vital to manage negative reviews well, as they are a way of interacting with the customer and demonstrating to potential users how the complaint has been resolved [41].

Tripadvisor is the world’s largest travel website, used by 463 million travellers every month, present in 43 countries and available in 22 languages. It has around 8.6 million products and services available to users, which make up a database of one billion comments and reviews [48]. It is a reference for travellers, and in the case of review analysis, it has aroused the interest of the academic world through several studies in the tourism sector, such as destination image [28,33,35,36,37,38,49,50], restaurants [51,52], experiences [40,42,53,54,55] and accommodations [18,20,29,46,56,57,58,59,60,61,62].

Reviews on this platform also contribute to overall consumer satisfaction, even allowing tourists to become brand ambassadors on Tripadvisor [51].

3. Methods

3.1. Research Scenario: Cáceres (Spain)

This study was carried out in the Spanish city of Cáceres, a culturally relevant city. It is one of the 15 World Heritage Cities of Spain declared by UNESCO and the Third Monumental Site of Europe selected by the Council of Europe since 1968.

In 2019, taken as the reference year before COVID-19, a total of 283,485 travellers were registered, of which 81% were Spanish, and 19% were foreigners [63]. Tourism in the city is characterised by a marked seasonality, with visitors and overnight stays varying throughout the different months of the year. Travellers visiting Cáceres are concentrated between April and September. Consequently, overnight stays are also centred on the same months of the year, with an average stay of 1.66 days [64].

Cáceres has great tourist value and is growing. For this reason, it is vital to apply study techniques that allow us to understand better the aspects that tourists who visit the city value and the most valued factors in 3- and 4-star hotels to improve their competitiveness.

For the sample, hotels in the 3- and 4-star categories were selected manually on Tripadvisor. The analysis of these categories, which are the most widespread in Spain and reflect a medium-high hotel level [20], depicts the average tourist arriving in Cáceres. They are also the hotels with the highest number of beds in the city, so they are more representative of the tourists arriving in the territory and, therefore, they are the ones that obtain the highest number of comments. Cáceres has 10 hotels in these categories, all on the platform, and these 10 hotels were selected for the analysis. For each hotel in the sample, all of the available titles of the reviews were collected.

The research framework involved two steps. The first step consisted of the collection of online reviews through the internet. The second step was the data analysis with the software.

3.2. Data Collection

In order to find out what users think of the 3- and 4-star hotel establishments in the city of Cáceres, a massive qualitative web content analysis was conducted. The study database was constructed using comments published by users on Tripadvisor. This platform was chosen for downloading comments, as it is one of the most widely used websites in the world for searching, comparing and booking hotel accommodations, restaurants and leisure activities [48].

Furthermore, Mariné-Roig [36,37] highlights this platform’s importance in analysing UGC based on popularity metrics. Thus, Mariné-Roig [65] applied a weighted ranking aggregation formula to choose the most suitable online platform to analyse travel reviews and blogs (TBRH), and Tripadvisor ranked first against other platforms.

The qualitative analysis of reviews had a low probability of error. Moreover, comments from UGC are reliable, according to several researchers [36].

In this paper, qualitative content analysis was based on word-frequency count and categorisation using the titles of reviews posted on Tripadvisor. The titles capture the key aspects the tourist highlights about their stay, thus providing the most valuable information. Thus, Tripadvisor ratings from 1 to 5 represent the overall rating of the experience but do not justify the rating, an explanation provided by the titles [66].

Establishments have many comments, and users often focus on the information contained in the title to read a greater number of ratings, as they consider it more important, with titles serving in a manner similar to newspaper headlines [66]. In addition, some users give a title and rate their experience but do not provide content for the review. The Tripadvisor platform suggests that users summarise their experience in the title when they write their review [36,66]. On the other hand, it is worth noting that titles have a more significant potential influence, as they have a higher HTML level and are, therefore, better recognised by search engines. Therefore, the results were based more on the titles than on the body of the review [67].

To carry out the data analysis, we resorted to using techniques based on Big Data, as they allow the collection of large volumes of data [23].

For data collection, the technique of web scraping was used. This technique is beneficial for extracting large amounts of data and better understanding users [68]. It allows unstructured data to be extracted and converted into structured data, allowing it to be understood for subsequent data analysis. Within web scraping, there are several techniques; in this study, we used web scraping software, which recognises the data structure of a web page and automatically collects its information, simulating the task of manual copy and paste [69].

The titles were downloaded on 16 April 2022 and were obtained from a total of 7414 comments in Spanish. After downloading, spelling and punctuation mistakes in the downloaded content were corrected to be appropriately captured by the software selected for data analysis.

Of the sample of 10 hotels, 60% were 3-star hotels and 40% were 4-star hotels. In addition, within the sample of 10 hotels, 60% were hotel chains and 40% were private hotels.

In Figure 1, we can see the temporal distribution of the reviews. The reviews were published during the period from 2006 until 16 April 2022. From 2014 to 2019, we observed an increase in the number of reviews for all hotels. The year 2018 was the year in which the most reviews were published, with 1184 reviews (16% of total), while the year with the fewest reviews was 2007, with 1 review.

Since 2018, there has been a decline in the number of reviews written by users, which was particularly pronounced in 2020, due to the pandemic.

The hotels representing the major part of the reviews were three 4-star hotels, as seen in Figure 2. In general, 4-star hotels accumulate more reviews than 3-star hotels. This could be due to 4-star hotels having a higher number of hotel beds and, therefore, a higher number of guests. Of the total number of hotel rooms, 71.85% were associated with 4-star hotels.

To analyse the qualitative data, a content analysis was used to identify the main themes and discover the frequency of themes and their relationships [70]. Data collection using software tends to increase the complexity of studies more frequently than if done manually. Content analysis has become an effective scientific method increasingly used in tourism [71].

Thus, we analysed the titles of the Spanish reviews of these establishments collected on the Tripadvisor platform. The software selected for the qualitative content analysis was NVIVO. This software has been used in other studies for the qualitative analysis of Tripadvisor reviews [54,60,72].

4. Results and Discussion

4.1. Analysis of the Results

A word frequency analysis was carried out to obtain a list of the 100 most frequently mentioned words in the titles of the reviews. Figure 3 depicts a word cloud, showing those words with a higher weight and, therefore, a higher frequency [73]. The figures were presented in Spanish because that was the language of the comments analysed. To build the word frequency ranking with words mentioned the most, a query was made with the 100 most used words after eliminating stop words such as prepositions or articles, among others that did not contribute meaning. Additionally, it was established that the selected words had a minimum length of three letters. This minimum length helped to purify the database and obtain words that contributed meaning to the research. Finally, a ranking was created with the 30 words most frequently mentioned in the comments’ titles, as seen in

Table 1. Ranking of the top 30 most mentioned words.

Ranking	Word	Frequency
1	hotels	1656
2	good	1294
3	excellent	772
4	Cáceres	557
5	location	531
6	well	444
7	perfect	342
8	stay	323
9	recommendable	262
10	central	248
11	price	240
12	quality	237
13	centre	207
14	better	207
15	situated	184
16	great	177
17	pleasantness	173
18	option	157
19	stars	154
20	to visit	153
21	comfortable	152
22	situation	152
23	stupendous	151
24	unbeatable	151
25	room	150
26	magnificent	140
27	to delight	138
28	fantastic	123
29	quiet	123
30	service	122

Source. Own elaboration.

.

In the word cloud (Figure 3), the terms “hotels”, “good”, “excellent”, “Cáceres” “location”, “perfect”, and “stay” stand out, showing a general satisfaction of customers with the hotel accommodation services in the city. The fact that the term “Cáceres” appears as one of the most mentioned terms shows that tourists associate the hotel with the destination when they travel; thus, the hotel experience contributes to the positive or negative image of the destination.

Table 1 represents the customer experience ordered according to the frequency of the words. The 30 words most repeated by users in their comments’ titles were selected to find out which topics are most frequently mentioned.

The ranking of the most mentioned words could be grouped into four categories:

1. Positive adjectives. Approximately half of the words were adjectives, such as “good”, “excellent”, “well”, “perfect”, “recommendable”, “best”, “stupendous”, “unbeatable”, “magnificent”, “fantastic”, among others.

2. Location. Among the aspects of the hotel that most tourists took into account when evaluating the hotel were the location of the hotel, with mentions such as “location”, “central”, “centre”, “situated”, and “situation”.

3. Hotel characteristics. The “quality”, the “price”, and the relationship between both, as well as the “stay”, are mentioned. Furthermore, of the characteristics of the hotel, users highlighted “comfortable”, “room”, “service”, “stars”, and “quiet”.

The “stars” refer to quality and price. It can be observed that it appeared positioned in the ranking because in these hotel categories, hotel chains frequently have a quality image among tourists.

4. Recommendation. The words “recommendable” and “option” indicated satisfaction on the client’s part with the choice made and could imply an intention to revisit and recommend to others.

Within the query of the 100 most mentioned words, we could find the top five negative keywords mentioned in the comments, as listed in

Table 2. Ranking of the top five negative keywords.

Ranking	Word	Frequency
51	Bad	75
90	Expensive	30
91	Disappointing	30
98	Lousy	28
99	Disappointed	27

Source: Own elaboration.

. Below, you can see what they were and where they ranked.

Four of the five most frequently mentioned negative keywords were at the bottom of the list, with a relatively low frequency, which suggests that this was related to a low number of comments.

Although the word “bad” was in the middle of the ranking, it need not be a negative description of the sector it represented.

Figure 4 shows the main themes tourists pay attention to and the relationships between the terms used. This map provides insight into the hierarchical structure of the topics, where a larger topic size determines which are the most mentioned within the set [33].

To construct the hierarchical map (Figure 4), the automatic coding option was used so that the software could identify the main themes and show the relationships between the different words mentioned. Subsequently, modifications were made to the codes manually by regrouping those that went together. Thus, the main themes were made up of nouns, and the sub-themes of each one were made up of the adjectives that qualified them.

There were 13 main themes with a relative weight in all of the review titles. Each of them was accompanied by several sub-themes that explained and characterized the central theme.

Thus, the most repeated theme was the description of the hotel. In the “hotel”, “stay” and “experience” sections, the evaluation of the overall experience appears, with adjectives such as “good”, “great”, “excellent”, “wonderful” or “perfect”.

Secondly, tourists took into account the location of the hotel with the terms “location”, “situation”, “centre”, or “place”. Visitors rated these elements as “perfect”, “unbeatable”, or “excellent”. Of the selected hotels, only three were further away from the old town of Cáceres, so the titles reflected the good location of most of the hotels. Even so, Cáceres is a medium-sized city, so, in general terms, no hotel was too far from the centre.

The next aspects to be considered were “quality”, “price”, and the relationship between the two. Price comments tended to be positive. However, quality was mentioned as “poor”. This would seem to show customers’ high expectations for staying in these hotel categories.

Some comments mentioned “city”, referring to the historical and cultural value of the old town. Additionally, “square” was the only tourist resource that was mentioned in the themes.

In the analysis as a whole, general satisfaction with the 3- and 4-star hotels in the city could be highlighted. The most relevant aspects that tourists took into account when evaluating their stay were the characteristics of the hotel, its location, the overall experience, the service offered and the value for money.

4.2. Discussion

UGC is an excellent tool for finding out what tourists think. Reviewing the opinions of other users has become the easiest way to determine a hotel’s online reputation. Therefore, customers should be encouraged to write reviews of the establishment since dissatisfied customers are more likely to write reviews than satisfied customers. Hotels need to create positive emotions in their customers, as these intensify the intention to repurchase [6]. Even tourists may express themselves differently, using general patterns based on their satisfaction or dissatisfaction with their stay to describe their experience [61].

In the hotels analysed, the evaluations were generally positive, highlighting the location, which seemed to suggest an added value for customers staying in this accommodation type due to the frequency of mentions in the titles. This is consistent with Kitsios et al. [74], who found that good location affected tourist satisfaction.

It is noteworthy that in the ranking of the 30 most mentioned words as a whole, breakfast or other specific services were not mentioned in the titles, so it seems that when customers try to remember their experience, summarise it and write the title, what they value most are attributes such as location, room, price, making positive and negative value judgements, inviting recommendation if it has met their expectations.

Rios et al. [60], in a sample of 25 5-star hotels in Spain on Tripadvisor, found that in luxury hotels, positive references to satisfaction were linked to the quality of services, and the staff was evaluated in the reviews. Kitsios et al. [74] also found that in 5-star hotels, staff contributed to customer satisfaction. In the specific case of the titles of reviews, Sánchez et al. [55] found that in gastronomic tourism experiences related to cheese, staff was one of the elements most mentioned in the titles of reviews. However, in this study, no significant references to staff were found.

In this study, even though hotels of different categories were evaluated, reference was also made to quality. However, in this study, staff did not appear in the ranking of frequently mentioned keywords. This may be because the titles of the reviews summarised the experience, focusing on the highlights for the guest, suggesting that staff was not one of the characteristics that the traveller remembered when writing a review in this category of hotels.

The term “quiet” was one of the most mentioned terms, which indicated that Cáceres is a destination that is not yet overcrowded, so tourists can enjoy a more relaxed stay in these hotels.

Three- and four-star hotels encourage visitors to visit and write reviews on platforms such as Tripadvisor from their own web portals. This is because these hotel categories are mostly chain hotels. On the other hand, Márquez-González and Caro-Herrero [26] analysed the online reputation of Spanish World Heritage Cities through data from each of their resources to identify which one was better positioned. It became evident that Cáceres should improve its positioning on different platforms, including Tripadvisor, encouraging users to interact and give their opinions.

Moreover, in the hotel sector, applying good management of online presence and content marketing can be very favourable for tourists and hotels, bearing in mind that the image of the hotels as a whole provides information about the rest of the destination.

5. Conclusions

In the current context, in which tourists become creators of their trip and want to share their experiences through opinions, social networks and platforms become necessary for users’ choice of establishment. User reviews are essential for hotel marketing, allowing hotels to know what guests think and to differentiate themselves from the competition through their services and facilities [62].

5.1. Theoretical and Managerial Implications

UGC allows businesses to adapt supply to demand and discover new markets and activities, making it possible to establish different marketing strategies according to customer profiles [40]. Thus, techniques based on Big Data are very useful for processing and analysing large amounts of information.

This study continued the research trend of analysing hotel reviews, providing, in this case, knowledge of the consumption trends of tourists in hotels of an inland cultural destination. One of the contributions is that it is one of the first works to show the results of an analysis of user-generated content in the hotel sector of one of Spain’s inland World Heritage Cities. Consumer experiences in these hotels are different from experiences in hotels in rural areas, or in sunny and beach destinations. Consequently, market segmentation strategies are needed [74].

The main contribution of this study is that it provides knowledge of the factors that are most valued when the consumer summarises their experience in the title of the review, knowing the tourist’s top assessment that could not be obtained through traditional surveys or interviews.

The analysis of reviews based on Big Data techniques is essential for tourism companies, as it provides valuable knowledge adapted to the customer’s needs. It is an innovative way of finding out what guests value most when staying in these categories of hotels. By knowing the elements that tourists consider most important, better services can be offered, and customers can be more satisfied. The overall result for the sample selected in the city of Cáceres in this study showed the satisfaction of the tourists who stayed there. Thus, it demonstrates the usefulness of UGC in learning about post-visit customer satisfaction. Accommodations and destinations should be aware of the evaluation of their reviews, as it allows them to increase their competitiveness, improving their experiential marketing strategies. The significant contribution of this study is in providing significant information for hotel managers, making UGC a reliable source of data for decision making. Adapting the hotels to the needs of tourists would allow the city of Cáceres to increase tourist demand. Hotels consider it a valuable source of information, as they encourage customers on their own websites to leave reviews.

The classification of reviews into the four categories “adjectives”, “location”, “hotel characteristics” and “recommendation” allows hotel managers to understand what tourists value most when they visit their hotels and write their reviews.

The findings of this study are meaningful because they revealed that hotel managers should focus their communication strategies on location, quality, and price factors.

It was shown that location is one of the most valued factors in the titles of the reviews analysed. Therefore, hotels should emphasise this in their communications with tourists. Hoteliers could provide on their websites maps with the distance in time and kilometres to the historic centre of the city. Hotels that are further away could offer information on how to get there by different means of transport.

Another important factor is value for money. Thus, hotels should focus on yield management policies that offer an attractive and efficient price to make the destination more competitive.

Furthermore, to increase the competitiveness and visibility of the destination, hotels need to further increase their presence on such online platforms and encourage guests to write some reviews. This is especially important for hotels that do not belong to hotel chains, as it is a way to obtain valuable information about their services.

5.2. Limitations and Future Research

This study has some limitations, as only the titles of the comments were analysed, and other paratextual or textual elements, such as the body text of the reviews, were not included. Secondly, by considering only 3- and 4-star hotels, the analysis was limited to the opinions of users of these hotel categories, excluding the opinions of other tourist profiles in the destination. Another limitation of the NVIVO 12 software was that the analysis was carried out using automatic coding, as the software may not have captured some words or themes adequately.

In future work, it would be of great interest to analyse the body of the comments, as they develop the information in the titles and may be useful to extend the results obtained. More extensive studies can be carried out on how similar products and services are evaluated in different countries, depending on whether they are inland or sun and beach destinations, finding out if there are differences between tourists visiting 3- and 4-star hotels in these destinations or if there are factors in common, as well as to incorporate sentiment analysis, which would provide new perspectives on the data. In this sense, the triangulation of methodologies is recommended, applying other techniques to validate the customer experience and increase knowledge about the perceptions that tourists have of the hotel sector thanks to the study of user-generated content in order to promote the development of the tourism sector.