RT Journal Article T1 A study on the effect of imbalanced data in tourism recommendation models T2 Estudio sobre el efecto de los datos desequilibrados en los modelos de recomendación turística A1 Fernández Muñoz, Juan José A1 Moguerza, Javier A1 Martín Duque, Clara A1 Gómez Bruna, Diana AB AbstractPurpose – This paper aims to study the effect of imbalanced data in tourism quality models. It is demonstrated that this imbalance strongly affects the accuracy of tourism prediction models for hotel recommendation.Design/methodology/approach – A questionnaire was used to survey 83,740 clients from hotels between five and two or less stars using a binary logistic model. The data correspond to a sample of 87 hotels from all around the world (120 countries fromAmerica, Africa, Asia, Europe and Australia).Findings – The results of the study suggest that the imbalance in the data affects the prediction accuracy of the models used, especially to the prediction provided by unsatisfied clients, tending to consider them as satisfied customers.Practical implications – In this sense, special attention should be given to unsatisfied clients or, at least, some safeguards to prevent the effect of the imbalance of data should be included in the models. Social implications – In the tourism industry, the strong imbalance between satisfied and unsatisfied customers produces misleading prediction results. This fact could have effects on the quality policy of hoteliers.Originality/value – In this work, focusing on tourism data, it is shown that this imbalance strongly affects the prediction accuracy of the models used, especially to the prediction of the recommendation provided by unsatisfied customers, tending to consider them as satisfied customers; a methodological approach based on the balance of the data set used to build the models is proposed to improve the accuracy of the prediction for unsatisfied customers provided by traditional services quality models. SN 1756-669X YR 2019 FD 2019 LK https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/99796 UL https://hdl.handle.net/20.500.14352/99796 LA eng NO Fernández-Muñoz JJ, M. Moguerza J, Martin Duque C, Gomez Bruna D. A study on the effect of imbalanced data in tourism recommendation models. International Journal of Quality and Service Sciences. 2019;11(3):346-56. DS Docta Complutense RD 18 abr 2025