Research Luna De Bruyne

Abstract

Webcare, as a manifestation of digital reputation management, has become ubiquitous within the tourism industry. The significance of this online customer service communication, accessible to all, cannot be overstated. It demonstrates a commitment for guest satisfaction, thereby positively influencing the hotel's image. Consequently, it can sway prospective clients who, as bystanders, pursue this communication and subsequently opt for a specific hotel. Although recent studies suggest that guest reviews and hotel responses are influenced by cultural factors, cross-cultural analyses of hotel interactions remain limited and scarce in terms of the languages and cultures investigated. Therefore, the objective of this project is to conduct a cross-linguistic study of a multilingual corpus consisting of 80,000 hotel reviews and their corresponding responses in German, French, English (UK/US), Italian, Dutch, and Spanish (ES/MX). Specifically, this project aims to explore the cross-linguistic characteristics of hotel interactions in L1. It seeks to identify which of these characteristics are perceived as positive or negative by the bystander, who is ultimately the intended audience for these responses. The knowledge gained from this foundational research will inform the fields of pragmatics and marketing communication and present opportunities for the development of generative AI systems that can automatically craft responses tailored to the linguistic and cultural context.

Researcher(s)

• Promoter: De Bruyne Luna
• Co-promoter: Boone Griet
• Co-promoter: Raedts Mariet

Research team(s)

• Centre for Computational Linguistics, Psycholinguistics and Sociolinguistics (CLiPS)

Project type(s)

• Research Project