Sarcasm detection in hotel reviews: a multimodal deep learning approach

Purpose This study aims to detect consumer sarcasm through inconsistencies in sentiment features between text and images of hotel reviews. Design/methodology/approach This paper proposes a model for sarcasm detection based on multimodal deep learning using reviews of three hotel brands collected from two travel platforms, which can identify emotional inconsistencies within a modality and across modalities. Text-image interaction information is explored using graph neural networks (GNN) to detect essential clues in sarcasm sentiment. Findings The research results show that the multimodal deep learning model outperforms other baseline models, which can help to understand hotel service evaluation and provide hotel managers with decision-making opinions. Originality/value This research can help hoteliers in two ways: detecting service quality and formulating strategies. By selecting reference hotel brands, hoteliers can better assess their level of service quality (optimal resource allocation ensues); therefore, sarcasm detection research is not only beneficial for hotel managers seeking to improve service quality. The multimodal deep learning method introduced in the present study can be replicated in other industries to help travel platforms optimize their products and services.