A Study of Inbound Travelers Experience and Satisfaction at Quarantine Hotels in Indonesia during the COVID-19 Pandemic
Round 1
Reviewer 1 Report
The authors submit an interesting study for assessment. In any case, the text as such is quite inconsistent, the formal as well as the content part will require considerable reworking, so I recommend that authors should consider incorporating the following comments:
Title - In my opinion, it is not appropriate to compile a title in the form of a research question. I recommend compiling the title as a compilation of the topic, geographic localization, and processing methods.
Abstract- I recommend formulating the abstract in a structured form and in accordance with the recommended format and scope. Each part of the abstract should also be balanced in scope. This is not the case in the current version of the abstract.
In the introduction, I do not find parts that clearly describe the derivation of the research problem or research questions, nor do I find a more detailed description of the structure of the following text. As far as the citation form is concerned, I do not consider it appropriate to declare in two paragraphs the citation of most of the reference material and then to base the rest of the introduction on about three sources.
Theoretical overview - Chapter 2.1 bears the hallmarks of popular literature, as it is based on a uniform text, I recommend reworking it in the context of reference scientific studies, I do not agree with the statement that there are not many of them. For the last 2 years, academics have largely studied the effects of of COVID-19 on all areas of life, including (especially) in Asia.
Overall, I find the theoretical overview inconsistent, partly because the chapters presented are thematically inconsistent, and partly because the authors use different methods of citation. Combined with the dominantly outdated literature, the entire chapter acts as an attempted essay by a bachelor's degree student. It is certainly not possible to accept this as a theoretical overview for a scientific study. I encourage the authors to try to look at the accepted studies in the journal and to be inspired by the form and content of the text construction in it.
Methodological part - the standard structure is missing, it is necessary to clearly define the goal of the work, to decompose the research problem, questions, or hypotheses. Describe the object of research, define the methodological apparatus and time frame of the research.
Subsequently, describe the research file and justify the selection of the sample, last but not least, to describe how the data were processed.
The part describing the results - I get lost in the context of data and information, it would be good to clearly describe the idea thread in the direction of input-process-product, it is also possible to illustrate, then present the data and formulate findings according to this procedure.
Discussion and conclusion - I consider the connection of these parts to be highly non-standard, if I already recommend combining the results with the discussion part.
Subsequently, in the conclusion, I recommend to authors to clearly formulate the answers to the research questions, compare their own results with the reference studies ... This is currently not the case of the chapter.
Overall assessment - I do not claim that the submitted text lacks quality, the dataset is very interesting, which is also the reason why I choose the option to propose a major revision compared to the option to reject it for publication. However, the text as such is incoherent, the presentation chaotic, the theoretical overview dominantly out of date.
Anyhow, with a thorough overhaul, I see room for significant improvement.
Author Response
<Response to Reviewer 1 Comments>
The authors submit an interesting study for assessment. In any case, the text as such is quite inconsistent, the formal as well as the content part will require considerable reworking, so I recommend that authors should consider incorporating the following comments:
Response: First of all, thank you so much for your generous consideration and efforts to the improvement and completion of this manuscript. We do appreciate your help and support. We have made the following revisions in response to your suggestions.
- Title - In my opinion, it is not appropriate to compile a title in the form of a research question. I recommend compiling the title as a compilation of the topic, geographic localization, and processing methods.
Response : Please accept my sincere thanks for your suggestion, therefore we revised the title, which previously was “During the COVID-19 Pandemic, How Did Inbound Travelers Feel at the Quarantine Hotel in Indonesia?” to the new title, “A Study of Inbound Travelers Satisfaction with Quarantine Hotel in Indonesia during COVID-19 Pandemic.”
- Abstract- I recommend formulating the abstract in a structured form and in accordance with the recommended format and scope. Each part of the abstract should also be balanced in scope. This is not the case in the current version of the abstract.
Response : We would like to thank you for your comment, and apologize for the unbalanced manuscript in the scope of the research. In terms of corrections, we have added some new sentences “The tourism and hospitality sectors contribute significantly to the Indonesian economy. Meanwhile, COVID-19 affects these sectors. During the pandemic, Indonesian government has applied quarantine regulations at designated hotels to support its tourism industry. Since COVID-19 is becoming endemic and travel bans are being relaxed, hotel satisfaction becomes a crucial factor in quarantine hotels. In the event that guests have a positive experience while staying at these hotels, they are likely to return for a staycation or vacation in the near future.”. We have also included the implications at the end of the abstract “For the implication, results allow managers of quarantine hotels in Indonesia to focus more on improving tangible, assurance, frontline factors.”. Additionally, we have rewritten the abstract section to improve the background of the study and make it more balanced, with the hope that it would improve the readability of the abstract. The rewrite version can be found on line 12-26.
- In the introduction, I do not find parts that clearly describe the derivation of the research problem or research questions, nor do I find a more detailed description of the structure of the following text. As far as the citation form is concerned, I do not consider it appropriate to declare in two paragraphs the citation of most of the reference material and then to base the rest of the introduction on about three sources.
Response : We apology for the unclear description and the derivation of the research problem outlined in the Introduction section of the paper. This was our mistake resulting from our negligence. The Introduction section of this work has already been revised based on your recommendation, and there are two paragraphs at the end of the Introduction section which focus on the research question that can elaborate on this research in depth. As an example, we added the following statement: “Additionally, in this study, satisfaction is a key factor, as in the future, satisfied customers are likely to return to these hotels in the future when it has reverted to being an ordinary hotel. Following the end of the pandemic, hotels will resume normal operations [4]." The rewritten version can be found on line 84-102.
- Theoretical overview - Chapter 2.1 bears the hallmarks of popular literature, as it is based on a uniform text, I recommend reworking it in the context of reference scientific studies, I do not agree with the statement that there are not many of them. For the last 2 years, academics have largely studied the effects of COVID-19 on all areas of life, including (especially) in Asia.
Response : As per your advice we have already reworked and revised Chapter 2.1, consequently, we have separated it from Chapter 2 into the Introduction section since it is more suitable for the Introduction section. Chapter 2.1 has been rewritten into one paragraph and can be found in lines 48-61. As for the comment concerning the effect of COVID-19 on developing countries, we have already revised the sentences into: “As Indonesia is a developing country, some studies already examined the impact of COVID-19 in developing countries. The impact of COVID-19 has been examined in a number of studies, including one that examined the impact of COVID-19 on psychological disorders in Bangladesh [11]”. This paragraph can be found in the latest version on lines 76-83. We hope that by revising it, this will help to improve the readability of this research article.
- Overall, I find the theoretical overview inconsistent, partly because the chapters presented are thematically inconsistent, and partly because the authors use different methods of citation. Combined with the dominantly outdated literature, the entire chapter acts as an attempted essay by a bachelor's degree student. It is certainly not possible to accept this as a theoretical overview for a scientific study. I encourage the authors to try to look at the accepted studies in the journal and to be inspired by the form and content of the text construction in it.
Response: Please accept our apologies for the inconsistent citation styles. We have fixed the citations into one format per MDPI requirements. Based on your comment regarding outdated literature, it is unlikely that we do so. As we use SERVQUAL dimension to adopt in our CONCOR result, for example we are mention from Parasuraman et al. which dated in 1988 and 1985, but in second paragraph we mentioned. : “Recently, service quality has gained focus on hotels industry in the developing countries. For instance, research about Malaysian hotel satisfaction and dissatisfaction of using big data analysis by collect service quality related words to explain customer experience [17]. (line 112-121).” , which this study did in 2020. In addition, SERVQUAL was used in a recent study for developing countries, and this study focused on COVID-19. Certainly, we looked at research that mentions that topic and mostly published by 2020. Furthermore, we have added two new paragraphs to Chapter 2.2 which explain more about online review, it can be found in lines 157-177.
- Methodological part - the standard structure is missing, it is necessary to clearly define the goal of the work, to decompose the research problem, questions, or hypotheses. Describe the object of research, define the methodological apparatus and time frame of the research.
Response: Your comment is greatly appreciated. Considering that we are focusing on online reviews that affect customer satisfaction in quarantine hotels in Indonesia, we have already discussed it in line 200-205. Regarding the time frame to take the sample data and the object of the research, we already mentioned it in line 217-28 which mentions about the time frame to take the sample “The data collection period is from 2021 to 2022, due the inbound travelers quarantine at designated hotel regulation in Indonesia were started in 2021”. In addition mentioning the object of research “The hotel list were collected from quarantine hotel at Jakarta and nearby cities. The study collected reviews from hotel guests who stayed in 15 quarantine hotels," which can be found in lines 212-213.
- Subsequently, describe the research file and justify the selection of the sample, last but not least, to describe how the data were processed.
Response: The suggestion and comment for this part have been greatly appreciated. The data collection and processing part was already discussed in Chapter 3.1 Data Collection “The data collection was performed by SCTM 3.0 (Smart Crawling and Text Mining), which is a program for web crawling and data processing developed by Wellness & Tourism Big Data Institute of Kyungsung University. The data collection period is from 2021 to 2022, due the inbound travelers quarantine at designated hotel regulation in Indonesia were started in 2021. A total of 4856 reviews from 15 hotels in Jakarta and nearby cities were collected from Google reviews.” which can be found in line 213-219. In this section, we focused on sample collection and the rationale for collecting samples.
As for the data processing part, we have already mentioned it in Chapter 3.2 Data Analysis, line 226-243. In this section, we explained how the data were processed. In order to clarify the methodology part of the article, we added Figure 1 for research procedures in order to make this part more clear. This should help clarify the methodology part of the article.
- The part describing the results - I get lost in the context of data and information, it would be good to clearly describe the idea thread in the direction of input-process-product, it is also possible to illustrate, then present the data and formulate findings according to this procedure.
Response : It is our pleasure to respond to your suggestion and I appreciate your comments. There is no doubt in our mind that we have included all the information and data required for this research. In particular, we give a summary of overall satisfaction rating (in Table 2), descriptive analysis result (in Table 3), frequency of top keywords for Indonesia quarantine hotels (in Table 4) which explains the most searched terms from online reviews, especially in Indonesia quarantine hotel terms. Additionally, we made the following CONCOR visualization in Figure 2 to clearly illustrate the clustering of top keywords based on online reviews.
- Discussion and conclusion - I consider the connection of these parts to be highly non-standard, if I already recommend combining the results with the discussion part.
Response : It is our pleasure to respond to your suggestion. In fact, the conclusion part was already combined with the result part, as it was mentioned about the CONCOR result in line 422-428 “This study analyzed 70 words through semantic network analysis by using big data and mainly focused on the centrality analysis (Freeman's degree centrality and Eigenvector centrality), proximity analysis, and CONCOR analysis. This study also utilized UCINET 6.0 packaged with Netdraw for visualizing data. As mentioned before, the ranking of “hotel” as the word with the highest frequency is an unsurprising result. CONCOR analysis was performed to categorize the understanding and awareness of Internet users. This data helps clarify the implications for empirical application.”
In addition, we have included section 5.1 Main Findings of the Study in line 397-420 to make the conclusion part more clear. Hopefully, the conclusion and discussion sections have improved.
- Subsequently, in the conclusion, I recommend to authors to clearly formulate the answers to the research questions, compare their own results with the reference studies ... This is currently not the case of the chapter.
Response : Your comment and suggestion are very much appreciated. We have already revised the Theoretical Implications section of the paper at the last paragraph and included some previous studies which can find in line 441-442 “Accordingly, service quality is of utmost importance in the hospitality and tourism industries [17]. In a study of Ghanaian hotels, all aspects of SERVQUAL contributed to customer retention, but two dimension which are tangibles and reliability were the most crucial factors [17,45].” Then in line 448-449 “. Therefore, assurance is another important aspect of evaluating quarantine hotel services [4].” It is hoped that this will improve the Discussion and Conclusion sections of the paper.
- Overall assessment - I do not claim that the submitted text lacks quality, the dataset is very interesting, which is also the reason why I choose the option to propose a major revision compared to the option to reject it for publication. However, the text as such is incoherent, the presentation chaotic, the theoretical overview dominantly out of date.
Anyhow, with a thorough overhaul, I see room for significant improvement.
Response : Thanks for your generosity in suggesting and commenting on this manuscript. We appreciate your assistance with this. We would also like to apologize for any mistakes we made in our manuscript. Having reviewed your advice and concerns regarding the manuscript, we have attempted to add and revise several parts to improve the quality of the paper. It is our hope that this revision improved upon the newest version that we are currently sending.
Reviewer 2 Report
The paper investigates the guest experience at quarantine hotels in Indonesia, using semantic network analysis technics.
The paper is interesting and well-written. There are only two points that need to be addressed.
- In the literature review, the authors review and discuss many different topics such as Quarantine in Indonesia Context, Service quality, etc. I think it would be preferable to make different sections in the paper. For example. 2. Quarantine in Indonesia Context 3. Service quality and customer satisfaction in the hotel context and so on. The section 2.4 Semantic Network Analysis I think it would be integrated into the methodology section.
- Citations are not written consistently. E.G Armstrong and Kotler (2009) number is missing. Also, it is not found in the reference list, and many more.
Author Response
<Response to Reviewer 2 Comments>
- The paper is interesting and well-written. There are only two points that need to be addressed.
In the literature review, the authors review and discuss many different topics such as Quarantine in Indonesia Context, Service quality, etc. I think it would be preferable to make different sections in the paper. For example. 2. Quarantine in Indonesia Context 3. Service quality and customer satisfaction in the hotel context and so on. The section 2.4 Semantic Network Analysis I think it would be integrated into the methodology section.
Response 1: First of all, I would like to thank you for your thoughtful consideration and your contribution to the completion and improvement of this manuscript. Your help and support is greatly appreciated. We have made the following revisions in response to the reviewers' suggestions.
As a literature review is a written review of major writings and other sources on a selected topic, In our opinion, 'Semantic Network Analysis' would be more appropriate for a Literature Review, As well as describing the relationship of each source to the others, Additionally, each source is assessed according to its contribution to understanding the specific issue, area of research, or theory. We hope that you will be able to recognize our viewpoint. As per your advice we have already reworked and revised Chapter 2.1, consequently, we have separated it from Chapter 2 into the Introduction section since it is more suitable for the Introduction section.
- Citations are not written consistently. E.G Armstrong and Kotler (2009) number is missing. Also,
it is not found in the reference list, and many more.
Response 2: Please accept my sincere thanks for your suggestion. As per your advice we have already reworked and revised citation styles. We have fixed the citations into one format per MDPI requirements.
--Thanks for your generosity in suggesting and commenting on this manuscript. We appreciate your assistance with this. We would also like to apologize for any mistakes we made in our manuscript. Having reviewed your advice and concerns regarding the manuscript, we have attempted to add and revise several parts to improve the quality of the paper. It is our hope that this revision improved upon the newest version that we are currently sending.
Round 2
Reviewer 1 Report
Comments were incorporated to an acceptable extent.
