Text Mining for the Hotel Industry

With the availability of huge volumes of text-based information freely available on the Internet, text mining can be used by hoteliers to develop competitive and strategic intelligence. Although the software needed to analyze online text files remains comparatively expensive, the cost will inevitably fall. A demonstration of text mining compiled information about Hong Kong hotels and about would-be travelers. Such relatively invariant information as statistics on competitors’ facilities is fairly easy to assemble, but variant information, such as room rates, can be elusive. Customers’ demographics and attitudes can be mined with reasonable accuracy from newsgroup postings and the like.