New York City Bed Bug Crisis as Framed by Tourists on Tripadvisor

Abstract

In New York City (NYC), one of the world's top tourism destinations, bed bugs have reemerged as a challenge to the hospitality industry regardless of a hotel's star rating, location, ranking, or other. Given this growing tourism and hospitality management problem, the purpose of this study was to understand how the NYC bed bug crisis was framed on social media by travelers and how it impacted tourist experiences of NYC. Four general narrative frames and 14 subframes were identified in the analysis and the findings confirm that bed bugs have become a real and growing concern for tourists, and they are using social media to report their bed bug experiences. The significance and implications for hotel and destination management are discussed.