Abstract
In recent years, mobile phones and access points to free Wi-Fi services have been enhanced, which has made it easier for travellers to share their stories, pictures, and video clips online during a trip. At the same time, online travel review (OTR) websites have grown significantly, allowing users to post their travel experiences, opinions, comments, and ratings in a structured way. Moreover, Internet search engines play a crucial role in locating and presenting OTRs before and throughout a trip. This evolution of social media and information and communication technologies has upset the classic sources of information of the projected tourist destination image (TDI), allowing electronic word-of-mouth to occupy a prominent position. Hence, the aim of this paper is to propose a method based on big data technologies for analysing and measuring the perceived (and transmitted) TDI from OTRs as presented in search engines, emphasising the cognitive, spatial, temporal, evaluative, and affective TDI dimensions. To test this approach, a massive analysis of metadata processed by search engines was performed on 387,414 TripAdvisor OTRs on ‘Things to Do’ in Île de France, an outstanding smart tourist destination. The results obtained are consistent and allow for the extraction of insights and business intelligence.
Highlights
In the last decade, user-generated content (UGC) has grown dramatically, parallel to the rise of information and communication technologies (ICT) and social media
Internet search engines play a crucial role in locating and presenting online travel review (OTR) before and throughout a trip. This evolution of social media and information and communication technologies has upset the classic sources of information of the projected tourist destination image (TDI), allowing electronic word-of-mouth to occupy a prominent position
The method is reliable for several reasons: the quantitative content analysis of stored big data has little likelihood of error; the source of information (UGC data) is trustworthy according what the majority of researchers support; and the analysis of the appraisive component of the image has demonstrated the usefulness of its two dimensions to measure the TDI
Summary
User-generated content (UGC) has grown dramatically, parallel to the rise of information and communication technologies (ICT) and social media. In the field of hospitality and tourism, said growth in the use of social media has been especially noticed in vacation planning. In a survey of 30,105 respondents selected from different social and demographic groups in the European Union [1], the primary source of information used to plan a holiday was stated to be word-of-mouth (WOM), recommendations of relatives, friends and colleagues (51%), followed by electronic word-of-mouth (eWOM), websites collecting and presenting comments, reviews, and ratings from travellers (34%). UGC is unsolicited and unbiased first-hand information It is deemed reliable by other users. As an example of the growth of UGC, in January 2015, Booking claimed to have 43 million verified reviews from real guests, and TripAdvisor received over 200 million comments and opinions from travellers, and each received 123 and 500 million OTRs, respectively, in July 2017
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