Why Analyzing Guest Sentiment Matters for Park and Resort Managers
Analyzing guest sentiment is an important step in understanding your guests. You can track attendance. You can measure revenue. But if you’re not measuring how guests feel, you’re overlooking one of the most powerful drivers of loyalty and performance.
As Maya Angelou famously said—though she wasn’t a customer experience expert—
“People will forget what you did, but they’ll never forget how you made them feel.”
And James Clear, author of Atomic Habits, backs it up with a business-minded take:
“Emotions drive behavior. Every decision is an emotional decision at some level.”
If we, as managers, can learn to read those emotions—and respond—we can dramatically improve both the guest experience and operational outcomes. For theme parks, waterparks, and resorts, guest sentiment is a compass. It points you toward your strongest and weakest touchpoints. And in the high-velocity summer season, that compass is constantly shifting.
That’s why we created the High Road Summer Solutions Series to focus on more than operations—it helps managers translate guest feedback into fast, clear, people-centered action. We’re not just collecting comments—we’re building leadership confidence around what to do with them.
Analyzing Guest Sentiment? What Does That Mean?
Guest sentiment analysis is the process of interpreting emotional tone in guest comments and reviews—whether they come from surveys, social media, or service interactions. This helps you understand the deeper meanings behind their ratings and allows you an opportunity for enhanced insights.
For example:
- “The food took forever but the cashier was so sweet.” → Negative sentiment about operations, positive about staff
- “We loved it so much we came back two days in a row!” → Strong positive sentiment, potential loyalty driver
This analysis turns messy, unstructured feedback into organized insights that inform decisions about staffing, training, layout, and more.
Where Guest Sentiment Comes From
Managers should focus on gathering qualitative feedback from multiple sources, including:
1. Post-Visit Surveys
Surveys with open-ended questions help capture more nuance than numerical scores alone.
Sample questions:
- What did you enjoy most during your visit?
- Was there anything we could have done better?
- How would you describe your experience in one word?
Distribution tip: SMS surveys tend to have 2–3x higher response rates than email, especially for younger demographics.
2. Online Reviews
Look at patterns in reviews from Google, Yelp, Facebook, and TripAdvisor. Don’t just count stars—analyze the words guests are using.
3. Social Media Posts
Guests post stories, reels, and comments that reflect their emotional highs and lows. Hashtags and mentions of your brand offer unfiltered, time-stamped feedback. Figure out not only how guests are using your prescribed hashtags and handles as well as any alternatives that are being used. An example of this might be that “@IslandH2OLive” is the prescribed handle but maybe some guests accidentally use “@IslandH20Live” with a zero instead of the letter “o”. Be sure you’re checking out all potential alternatives and try to filter out any that aren’t actually meant for your park or property.
4. Chat Logs and Email Interactions
Use guest service transcripts to identify frustrations or praise trends that might not show up elsewhere. You can also train automated chat systems to flag key emotional phrases like:
- “Very upset”
- “So impressed”
- “Waited forever”
How to Analyze Guest Sentiment: A Step-by-Step Guide
How to Analyze Guest Sentiment Step 1: Aggregate the Feedback
You are going to be receiving quite a lot of feedback so you will want to be organized. Collect all your qualitative feedback in one centralized spreadsheet or tool.
Example: Google Sheet Columns
| Source | Date | Comment | Location | Category | Sentiment |
| Yelp | 6/10 | “Staff were great but lines too long.” | Main Entrance | Queue | Mixed |
Tools to help:
- Google Forms exports
- Typeform + Google Sheets integration
- ReviewTrackers or Sprout Social for aggregation
How to Analyze Guest Sentiment Step 2: Clean and Organize the Data
For all of this data, you’re going to get some comments and feedback that don’t actually help you. You are going to want to remove some of the nonsensical data to help keep things clean and organized. Filter out:
- Spam or bot comments
- One-word responses without emotional context
- Duplicate entries
- Generic praise like “cool” if it lacks depth
Ways to organize comments:
- By location or department (e.g., food service vs. rides)
- By time block (e.g., morning vs. late afternoon)
- By event or day (e.g., Saturday peak vs. weekday slow)
How to Analyze Guest Sentiment Step 3: Tag the Themes
To get even more organized and to be able to group feedback in different ways for different teams you’ll want to create tags for certain themes. Identify and tag the dominant themes in guest comments.
Common themes:
- Wait times
- Cleanliness
- Staff friendliness
- Ride quality
- Food and beverage
- Value for price
What not to tag:
- Comments that are off-topic (e.g., “I lost my keys”)
- Ambiguous phrases without emotional indicators (e.g., “It was different”)
Use consistent tagging language so you can sort, filter, and tally by theme later.
How to Analyze Guest Sentiment Step 4: Score the Sentiment
Assign each comment a score based on tone:
- Positive = +1
- Neutral = 0
- Negative = -1
- Mixed = +0.5 or -0.5 depending on weight
Examples:
- “The lines were long but totally worth it” → +0.5
- “Terrible food and rude cashier” → -1
- “Fine I guess” → 0 (but investigate tone in context)
Some tools can do this for you using natural language processing (see automation section below).
How to Analyze Guest Sentiment Step 5: Visualize the Insights
Use tools like Google Data Studio, Excel pivot charts, or Power BI to share what you’ve found with your team.
Examples of data stories you can tell:
- “83% of ride-related complaints came from one zone”
- “Positive sentiment about staff increased 25% after training week”
- “Top 3 most-used positive phrases: clean, friendly, worth it”
Turn these into action items during weekly huddles or midseason check-ins.
Analyzing Guest SEntiment: Real-World Examples
If You’re a Waterpark Manager…
You notice post-visit surveys repeatedly say:
“Loved the slides but there weren’t enough shaded areas.”
Rather than treat this as a facilities issue only, you recognize it as a comfort and retention problem. The heat could be driving families out early.
What to do:
- Set up temporary shade sails or tents
- Train staff to direct guests to cooler zones
- Use signage to promote shaded areas
You’ll likely see a direct improvement in both sentiment and length of stay metrics.
If You’re Managing an Amusement Park Entry Experience…
Guests keep commenting:
“The lines were brutal but the staff were so cheerful.”
This mixed sentiment is actually a huge opportunity. The emotional tone tells you guests are frustrated with process, but forgiving due to staff positivity.
What to do:
- Praise and spotlight those team members
- Add queue entertainment or fan systems
- Assign a “guest concierge” to walk the line and engage guests
This ties directly into the High Road Summer Solutions Series, particularly the June 18 session on staff training and midseason check-ins, where we teach how to use these comments in real-time coaching and team motivation.
If You’re Running a Resort with Multiple Amenities…
Guest chat logs include phrases like:
“Couldn’t figure out what was included or how to book anything.”
The problem isn’t the offerings—it’s the clarity of the guest journey.
What to do:
- Improve signage and digital confirmation instructions
- Add pre-arrival emails with clear amenity overviews
- Train concierge and front desk to walk guests through packages
Then track future sentiment for those same amenities and see if language like “confused” or “unclear” disappears.
Analyzing Guest Sentiment With Automation (Even on a Budget)
No full-time analyst? No problem.
You can automate major parts of this process using free or low-cost tools:
| Task | Tool | How It Helps |
| Collecting reviews | Zapier + Google Sheets | Pull in Google/Yelp reviews automatically |
| Analyzing sentiment | MonkeyLearn (free tier) | Auto-tag and score comments |
| Survey insights | Google Forms + ChatGPT | Paste open responses into GPT to summarize |
| Reporting | Google Data Studio | Turn Sheets into shareable dashboards |
Pro tip: In our August 6th “Strategic Close-Out” Summer Series workshop, we walk managers through how to set up a feedback loop and create a post-season report that actually informs next year’s planning.
Why This Belongs in Every Manager’s Toolkit
Data tells you what’s happening. Sentiment tells you why it’s happening.
By making qualitative analysis part of your leadership routine, you:
- Make faster operational decisions
- Catch problems early
- Coach staff with real examples
- Improve retention, reviews, and ROI
And if you’re not sure where to start—or want to build this into a culture of feedback—our High Road Summer Solutions Series gives you the systems and skills to do it confidently.
Want to Lead Smarter This Summer?
Guest sentiment is only powerful if you know what to do with it. That’s why the High Road Summer Solutions Series is designed to help managers turn insight into action—through stronger leadership, sharper team communication, and real-time strategy pivots.
In these seven, one-hour workshops, you’ll learn how to:
- Implement team-building activities that boost morale (June 26)
- Spot morale dips and lead quick recoveries (July 23)
- Close out the season with systems that make next year easier (July 30)
Whether you’re managing lifeguards, guest services, or an entire park, these sessions give you practical tools for leading high-performing teams in the middle of your busiest season.
All sessions are recorded. 50% off early bird pricing through June 10.
View the full series and register here
