Which group do you want to travel with? A study of rating differences among groups in online travel reviews

- The data was gathered from Booking.com.
- We performed: -OLS to examine whether there is a statistically significant difference in ratings between groups.-paired t-test to overcome the self-selection bias that might occur in the regression analysis.-text mining to identify what type of different experiences exists between groups.

In this paper, we empirically investigate the effects of different traveling groups' experiences on travelers' satisfaction rating for hotels in which they stay. We analyze the rating data of 322 hotels located in New York City from Booking.com, a popular travel website, by using our web crawler. As a result, we find that satisfaction of traveler groups declines in order of couples, friends, family, solo, and business. Couple groups express the highest satisfaction with the hotel they choose while business groups show the lowest satisfaction. By conducting text analysis of 125,076 reviews, we find that such differences in satisfaction stem from travelers' preferences regarding features.