Mapping the Memorable Guest Experience in Luxury Hospitality: An Exploratory Study Combining CADS and AI

Abstract

In luxury hospitality, guest satisfaction increasingly depends on personalized, emotionally resonant, and contextually rich experiences. Informed by this trend, the present study examines the Memorable Guest Experience (MGE) at a resort of the Mangia’s group—an Italian luxury hospitality brand—by combining Corpus-Assisted Discourse Studies (CADS) and artificial intelligence (AI). Through the analysis of English- and Italian-language online reviews, the study explores the discursive construction of satisfaction and memorability while identifying key experiential themes. The CADS analysis reveals that both English- and Italian-speaking guests focus on core service elements—such as lodging, staff, and dining—but use different evaluative tones: the former tend to express satisfaction and memorability in more moderate and measured terms, while the latter rely on overtly positive appraisals, suggesting different standards of luxury. Furthermore, the AI-assisted classification of the English reviews, based on a seven-dimension MGE framework, indicates that contextual elements, social interaction, and emotional engagement are the most frequently referenced experiential dimensions. The findings confirm the importance of aesthetic environments, meaningful human encounters, and affective responses in luxury hospitality. By drawing on marketing and linguistic perspectives, the study offers insights for both academics and practitioners into how user-generated content (UGC) reflects evolving luxury expectations. This, in turn, underscores the value of UGC as a resource for strategic experience design, brand differentiation, and emotionally intelligent service delivery in the hospitality industry.