Purpose

This study aims to explore US hotel guests’ privacy concerns with a twofold aim as follows: to investigate the privacy categories, themes and attributes most commonly discussed by guests in their reviews and to examine the influence of cultural proximity on privacy concerns.

Design/methodology/approach

This study combined automated text analytics with content analysis. The database consisted of 68,000 hotel reviews written by US guests lodged in different types of hotels in five European cities. Linguistic Inquiry Word Count, Leximancer and SPSS software were used for data analysis. Automated text analytics and a validated privacy dictionary were used to investigate the reviews by exploring the categories, themes and attributes of privacy concerns. Content analysis was used to analyze the narratives and select representative snippets.

Findings

The findings revealed various categories, themes and concepts related to privacy concerns. The two most commonly discussed categories were privacy restriction and outcome state. The main themes discussed in association with privacy were “room,” “hotel,” “breakfast” and several concepts within each of these themes were identified. Furthermore, US guests showed the lowest levels of privacy concerns when staying at American hotel chains as opposed to non-American chains or independent hotels, highlighting the role of cultural proximity in privacy concerns.

Practical implications

Hotel managers can benefit from the results by improving their understanding of hotel and service attributes mostly associated with privacy concerns. Specific suggestions are provided to hoteliers on how to increase guests’ privacy and on how to manage issues related to cultural distance with guests.

Originality/value

This study contributes to the hospitality literature by investigating a neglected issue: on-site hotel guests’ privacy concerns. Using an unobtrusive method of data collection and text analytics, this study offers valuable insights into the categories of privacy, the most recurrent themes in hotel guests’ reviews and the potential relationship between cultural proximity and privacy concerns.

中文翻译：

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“大多数美国人喜欢他们的隐私。” 通过美国客人的评论探索隐私问题

目的

本研究旨在探讨美国酒店客人的隐私问题，其双重目的如下：调查客人在评论中最常讨论的隐私类别、主题和属性，并检查文化邻近性对隐私问题的影响。

设计/方法/方法

本研究将自动文本分析与内容分析相结合。该数据库由美国客人撰写的 68,000 条酒店评论组成，这些评论来自五个欧洲城市不同类型的酒店。语言查询词数统计、Leximancer和SPSS软件用于数据分析。通过探索隐私问题的类别、主题和属性，使用自动化文本分析和经过验证的隐私词典来调查评论。内容分析用于分析叙述并选择具有代表性的片段。

发现

调查结果揭示了与隐私问题相关的各种类别、主题和概念。最常讨论的两个类别是隐私限制和结果状态。与隐私相关的主要主题是“房间”、“酒店”、“早餐”，并且确定了每个主题中的几个概念。此外，与非美国连锁酒店或独立酒店相比，美国客人入住美国连锁酒店时对隐私的担忧程度最低，这凸显了文化亲近性在隐私问题中的作用。

实际影响

酒店经理可以通过提高他们对主要与隐私问题相关的酒店和服务属性的理解来从结果中受益。向酒店经营者提供了关于如何增加客人的隐私以及如何管理与客人的文化距离相关问题的具体建议。

原创性/价值

这项研究通过调查一个被忽视的问题为酒店文献做出了贡献：现场酒店客人的隐私问题。本研究使用不显眼的数据收集和文本分析方法，为隐私类别、酒店客人评论中最常出现的主题以及文化接近度与隐私问题之间的潜在关系提供了宝贵的见解。