Customer Clustering and Marketing Optimization in Hospitality: A Hybrid Data Mining and Decision-Making Approach from an Emerging Economy

Round 1

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Overall, a very interesting article generally would be appealing to a wide readership audience. A novel study which may not have extensive publication / research conducted beforehand.

Minor recommendations for improvement:

(1) There are 63 references till 2020 except one dated in 2025. It would be appreciated to include more related literature / references between 2020 and 2025.

(2) Suggest that to proofread the work and be careful to avoid redundancies and improve the flow of the narrative. Do include the full-term of RMD (recency, monetary, duration) on line 45. Recheck punctuation such as line 45, a full-stop after epoch. Good to conduct a thorough check again for typography errors.

(3) Section 5, good to include a table to consolidate the demographic profile.

(4) Sections 6.1 and 6.2: There are recapping of the data findings but can expand the theoretical contribution since there was lots of discussion in Sections 1 and 2 on finding the apt model/framework and finally selected the hybrid approach. More discussion of practical implications would be appreciated. It could be clear who will benefit from these findings, such as the hotel managers from the service line or marketing managers and how to enhance their future customer engagement. Also, if there are any key literature that was in align or not with the practical and theoretical implications would be appreciated.

Author Response

(1) There are 63 references till 2020 except one dated in 2025. It would be appreciated to include more related literature / references between 2020 and 2025.
response: We have updated our references and added new references from 2020 to 2025.

(2) Suggest that to proofread the work and be careful to avoid redundancies and improve the flow of the narrative. Do include the full-term of RMD (recency, monetary, duration) on line 45. Recheck punctuation such as line 45, a full-stop after epoch. Good to conduct a thorough check again for typography errors.

response：Addressed the issue on line 45.

(3) Section 5, good to include a table to consolidate the demographic profile.

response：We have added a hotel customer’s demographic table on page 13 (Table 2)

(4) Sections 6.1 and 6.2: There are recapping of the data findings but can expand the theoretical contribution since there was lots of discussion in Sections 1 and 2 on finding the apt model/framework and finally selected the hybrid approach. More discussion of practical implications would be appreciated. It could be clear who will benefit from these findings, such as the hotel managers from the service line or marketing managers and how to enhance their future customer engagement. Also, if there are any key literature that was in align or not with the practical and theoretical implications would be appreciated.
response：We have added and reviewed the Practical Implication section to address this comment.

Reviewer 2 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

The article is well written and supported. You explain every step of your research which makes clear and easy to read. 
You have however, a few corrections to make: 
- the first time you refer to an abbreviation, you must define it (See line 54 and 169); - line 144 use a present tense and not a present perfect; - correct the author's name: Rezaei (line 284); - check line 303 (ABV?); - Do not just use abbreviations on the sections' titles. 

You refer the length of stay as an important factor to consider in hospitality, which is correct, as opposed to a frequent guest who stays one night each time, but they can stay 50 times in a year, so this should also be mentioned. 

Although this is a very valid paper in terms of methodology, the data set is somewhat limited in size and not very recent.  

Author Response

the first time you refer to an abbreviation, you must define it (See line 54 and 169); - line 144 use a present tense and not a present perfect; - correct the author's name: Rezaei (line 284); - check line 303 (ABV?); - Do not just use abbreviations on the sections' titles.

response：Abbreviations are now defined in line 54 and 169. Present tense is now being used in line 144.  Author’s name is corrected (Rezaei). Proper abbreviation is added to line 303. Abbreviations have been omitted from the sections’ titles.

You refer the length of stay as an important factor to consider in hospitality, which is correct, as opposed to a frequent guest who stays one night each time, but they can stay 50 times in a year, so this should also be mentioned. 

response：Using the frequency of stay as a variable is a valid point. Our response is that many of the times, the available data does not include a unique Guest ID (similar to our case), therefore, we cannot calculate the frequency of the guests’ stays. We have also mentioned this limitation in our conclusion section (lines475 and 476).

Although this is a very valid paper in terms of methodology, the data set is somewhat limited in size and not very recent.  

response：Again, a valid point regarding our data. We have addressed this issue in our conclusion section and called for an improvement for future studies.

 

 

Round 2

Reviewer 1 Report

Comments and Suggestions for Authors

Thank you for making the necessary adjustments and all items raised have been properly addressed. The table on the demographic profile is apt and the practical implications are constructive which would be valuable to hotel marketing managers. The report has been proofread and free from typography errors.