Description
Accessibility in the hospitality industry is a crucial aspect for ensuring inclusivity and equal opportunities for all travelers (Martin-Fuentes et al., 2021; Singh et al., 2021). Quality of service and costumer satisfaction are related to hotel categories (Nunkoo et al., 2020) but there is a lack of information regarding service quality differences between chain and independet hotels, and how these factors can affect accessibility for people with disabilities. The aim of this study is to provide more knowledge about the accessibility features of hotels.
This research delves into the accessibility features of hotels, both chain and independent, USA, Canada and Europe, based on data from Booking.com. The analysis was conducted on 151,469 hotels, downloaded through the Octoparse scraping tool on December 2023, which provides information on which of the 8 accessibility features each hotel has implemented. We have classified the hotels into 4 groups based on the sum of accessibility features resulting for each hotel and the frequency distribution: hotels with no accessibility hotels with one accessibility, hotels from 2 to 4 features, and from 5 to 8 features, as shown in Table 1 (Accessibiliy features of chain and independent hotels).
On one hand, to determine if there is a significant relationship between the hotel typology (chain or independent) and the accessibility features, a Pearson's Chi-Square test is conducted using the SPSS program, along with its corresponding significance test, to determine if the two variables are related.
The result of the Pearson's Chi-Square test for EUR hotels is x²= 3,649.22 with a significance of <0.001; the result for USA and Canada hotels is x²= 6,076.08 with a significance of <0.001. This results indicate a dependency between the type of hotel and accessibility features, having chain hotels more accessibility features than independent hotels.
On the other hand, to observe the average between the hotel stars (from 1 to 5 stars) and accessibility of Europe and USA and Canada, and within chain and independent hotels, an ANOVA test is conducted. For Europe hotels, to check the equality of variances, i.e. homoscedasticity, Levene’s test was performed and the assumption of homogeneity was not met because (F (4, 85,556) = 358.010, p < 0.001], and for USA and Canada hotels [F(4, 39,017) = 128.360, p < 0.001). As the assumption of homogeneity of variance was not met for this data, we used the obtained Welch’s adjusted F ratio for Europe [F (4, 8,887.041) = 346.558, p < 0.001] and for USA and Canada [F(4, 1,864.045) = 156.324, p < 0.001]. We can conclude that at least three of the five hotel category groups in Europe and USA, differ significantly in their average of accessibility features.
Then, analyzing in-depth each hotel category determined by the hotel stars, the mean comparison was performed by an ANOVA test post hoc Games-Howell, and the results show that, for European hotels, the higher the category, the more accessibility features are. In contrast, for hotels in the USA and Canada, those with 3 stars have more accessible features than other categories. The result of these tests confirms that chain hotels from 3 to 5 stars better meet accessibility needs, but 4- and 5-star categories independent hotels also do so.
The available dataset provides disaggregated information by country in Europe and states in the USA, in addition to the identification of the hotel chain, review scores, and specific accessibility features of each hotel. A deeper analysis of this information will enable the identification of potential correlations between these variables and the level of accessibility of each hotel, both globally and in specific accessibility adaptations.
Bibliography:
Martin-Fuentes, E., Mostafa-Shaalan, S., & Mellinas, J. P. (2021). Accessibility in Inclusive Tourism? Hotels Distributed through Online Channels. Societies, 11(2), 34. https://doi.org/10.3390/soc11020034
Nunkoo, R., Teeroovengadum, V., Ringle, C. M., & Sunnassee, V. (2020). Service quality and customer satisfaction: The moderating effects of hotel star rating. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 91, 102414. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijhm.2019.102414
Singh, R., P.S, S., Yost, E., & singh, D. (2021). Tourism and disability: A bibliometric review. Tourism Recreation Research, 48. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2021.1959768
