Abstract
This study explores two World Heritage Sites (WHS) as tourism destinations by applying several uncommon techniques in these settings: Smart Tourism Analytics, namely Text mining, Sentiment Analysis, and Market Basket Analysis, to highlight patterns according to attraction, nationality, and repeated visits. Salamanca (Spain) and Coimbra (Portugal) are analyzed and compared based on 8,638 online travel reviews (OTR), from TripAdvisor (2017–2018). Findings show that WHS reputation does not seem to be relevant to visitors-reviewers. Additionally, keyword extraction reveals that the reviews do not differ from language to language or from city to city, and it was also possible to identify several keywords related to history and heritage; in particular, architectural styles, names of kings, and places. The study identifies topics that could be used by destination management organizations to promote these cities, highlights the advantages of applying a data science approach, and confirms the rich information value of OTRs as a tool to (re)position the destination according to smart tourism design tenets.
Highlights
From the beginning of the Web 2.0 platforms, we have witnessed an increase in travelers’ and visitors’ active participation when reviewing their travels or visits on social media
This study explores two World Heritage Sites (WHS) as tourism destinations—Salamanca in Spain and Coimbra in Portugal—by applying Data Science techniques such as Text Mining, Sentiment Analysis, and Market Basket Analysis to highlight patterns according to attraction, nationality, and repeated visits
The 8638 reviews were written by 4695 users, which gives an average of 1.7 reviews per user, i.e., some single users posted more than one review
Summary
From the beginning of the Web 2.0 platforms, we have witnessed an increase in travelers’ and visitors’ active participation when reviewing their travels or visits on social media. From the perspective of demand, these technologies allow tourists to access more information and more knowledge and control many aspects of their trip [2,3]. One of the fundamental aspects of this involvement is the fact that tourists use new technologies to constantly share their experiences and impressions of the places they visit, competing with promotional materials and strongly influencing the decision-making process [5,6,7]. When we juxtapose cultural and heritage tourism and Web 2.0, there is still a lot of theoretically robust research to be developed [7]. One of the fundamental questions when carrying out tourist research on historical urban spaces is understanding what motivates individuals and families to visit heritage cities. Comparative studies, which go beyond circumscribed local contexts, are essential to confront and unveil the similarities of what is often “thought to be historical-cultural particularisms and the uniqueness of local heritage” [9]
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