Adult-only: When excluding children reveals a flaw in hospitality management approach

Abstract

This research note explores social servicescape in hospitality settings, considering recent regulatory debates questioning the exclusion of children. Although children are often positioned as either sovereign consumers or a marginalised group, their impact on guest satisfaction remains largely unexplored. Drawing on 90,045 TripAdvisor reviews from 72 international resorts, we applied advanced natural language processing techniques, including BERT-based sentiment analysis and child-reference classification using a local Large Language Model to examine whether references to children influence customer evaluations. By comparing satisfaction scores across reviews that mention or omit children, we explore whether these differences reflect broader managerial, academic, and policy-related challenges. This study contributes to ongoing debates on adult-only vs inclusive hospitality by highlighting how children’s presence is addressed in guest feedback, and by raising questions about the potential limitations in current hospitality management practices.

The authors' abstract, as published at the source. International Journal of Hospitality Management, 2026 · DOI ↗