The impact of COVID-19 on tourism: Analysis of online reviews in the airlines sector

Abstract

This research aimed to understand how airline companies are addressing the crisis generated by the Covid-19 pandemic and handling issues like cancellations and customer (dis)satisfaction. A research on online reviews from the most popular tourism website, TripAdvisor, was conducted through the collection of review posts from the leading 10 worldwide airline groups by number of passengers. These reviews were extracted from the sector’s most impacted period during the pandemic – from the date where the first travel restrictions were imposed until the date where they began to be lifted again (from March to May, 2020), which consequently led to a greater number of reviews made. A total of 885 reviews were collected and analysed with the help of the Python-based sentiment analysis tool VADER. Results showed a very negative trend, which was mainly caused by issues related to refunds policies and process, confirming the reported pandemic impact on this sector. Low-cost airlines revealed a lower customer satisfaction rate when compared to traditional ones, while most of the posts were related to Loyalty/Competitiveness, which affected the brands’ overall equity. This study contributes to the existing knowledge as there are still few studies addressing the coronavirus impact on airlines. It focuses on the customers’ satisfaction aspect, which has no precedent studies made. It also has a clear practical application, as airlines can take advantage of the achieved findings, allowing them to understand the customers’ feedback in relation to their service vis-à-vis their competitors.