The travel and tourism sector is one of the most impacted sectors during the COVID-19 pandemic. Existing limited studies often focused on assessing the flow of travellers and economic patterns. However, scant work evaluates customers’ perceptions and evaluation of the services offered during the COVID-19 pandemic. This study examines customers’ perceptions and emotions by evaluating their experiences shared through online reviews. The online reviews of the customers on the hotel (41,687 reviews) and airline (9,574 reviews) sectors were analysed via text mining and sentiment analysis techniques. The study results reveal that most customers exhibit a positive attitude towards the services in the hotel sector, while 50% of the airline reviews were negative. The results indicated that ‘anticipation’ and ‘trust’ are the customers’ most expressed emotions. This study provides important insights for restoring the hotel and airline sectors from the effect of COVID-19.
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