Abstract:

With an emphasis on guest review analysis, this study uses the Service Blueprint for Hospitality tool to investigate the customer journey in Portuguese hotels. 11,810 reviews from Portuguese and foreign visitors make up the dataset, which is arranged by hotel rating (3, 4, and 5 stars) and the guests' country of origin. The main goals are mapping the service experience, locating important touchpoints, and evaluating how guests view hotel quality.

By organizing the analysis into frontstage (guest encounters) and backstage (operational procedures) components, the methodological approach adheres to the service blueprint framework. The ten most recent reviews for each hotel were chosen from a sample of 1,181 Portuguese hotels. The majority of the evaluations were in Portuguese thus Deep Translator was used to translate them into English, so that sentiment analysis techniques would work better. In order to classify reviews into five sentiment categories—very negative, negative, neutral, positive, and very positive—the study used TextBlob for subjectivity evaluation and VADER (Valence Aware Dictionary and Sentiment Reasoner) for polarity score.

The results show that only 1% of reviews are categorized as negative or very negative, whereas 77% are very good, 17% are positive, and 6% are neutral. Higher-category hotels (5-star) received the highest positive ratings (78%), while 4-star and 3-star hotels followed closely with 77% and 75% very positive reviews, respectively.

A service blueprint viewpoint emphasizes important touchpoints that affect visitor experiences, especially those related to facilities, sanitation, food quality, and service. The most often mentioned positive aspect (8.82 impact score) was "breakfast," indicating its significance in terms of customer satisfaction. Positive evaluations commonly used adjectives like "friendly" and "sympathetic," indicating that staff interactions were also crucial.

This study offers insights into operational and customer-facing factors that impact hotel experiences by using blueprinting to outline the guest journey. In order to guarantee a smoother and fulfilling client experience in the hospitality sector, the results highlight the necessity of strategic enhancements in service interactions, cleanliness, and operational efficiency.