Staff-customer interaction plays a crucial role in shaping the hotel guest experience. The owners of small hotels are also involved in service provision and interaction with guests. Although the empirical literature on host–guest relationships in home-sharing services is comprehensive, the role of owner-guest interactions in small hotels remains unexplored. Our study aims to examine the influence of owners on the guest experience using a netnographic approach. The study design is based on content analysis of 828 online reviews for 22 small family-run hotels in Kamena Vourla (a resort town in Central Greece) retrieved from Booking.com. We complement standard content analysis procedures by quantifying the emotionality of reviews using the Lexical Suite software. Results of the study reveal that the owners make a significant contribution to the guest experience in several hotels. Interacting with the owner changes the way guests describe their experience: reviews that mention owners are more emotional and less often contain information about inconveniences during the stay.