•Content analysis of TripAdvisor showed attributes of luxury hotel service quality.•Critical incident technique found antecedents and outcomes of guests’ experience.•Critical role of quality of rooms and interaction with employees was suggested. In order to understand the pivotal attributes of luxury hotel service in Malaysia, this study analyses big data in the form of online reviews, as available in TripAdvisor. The content analysis, which was performed using the word frequency analysis has revealed that the main themes of luxury hotel service quality include hotel-related attributes, room-related attributes, staff-related attributes, travel-related attributes, and possible outcomes. The critical incident technique has also been performed to examine the antecedents and outcomes of hotel guests’ satisfaction and dissatisfaction. In this study, quality of rooms and interaction with employees have been determined as major drivers of customers’ word of mouth and revisit intentions. This study contributes with an empirical analysis of particular features of textual context and discussion of the concept of luxury service in the developing countries has been largely neglected so far.