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Analytics in Smart Tourism Design pp 179–202Cite as

Online Travel Reviews: A Massive Paratextual Analysis

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Part of the book series: Tourism on the Verge ((TV))

Abstract

Within the context of the enormous growth of traveller-generated content (UGC), such as travel blogs, travelogues, and online travel reviews (OTRs), paratextual elements are of crucial importance for other users who can take advantage of the wealth of first-hand travel information available online. That is why a theoretical framework is proposed to treat, as a whole, OTRs and their surrounding paratextual productions as generated by the reviewer (UGC) and/or the webmaster (WGC). The framework is used to extract the image perceived by the traveller and transmitted by the webmaster through analysis of titles and other paratextual elements of a random sample of 300,000 OTRs of two tourist regions of the European Union. The findings in both regions are in agreement indicating that the most frequent keywords of UGC (good feelings) and WGC (destinations and attractions) are complementary.

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness [Grant id.: MOVETUR CSO2014-51785-R].

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Lleida, Catalonia, Spain

    Estela Marine-Roig

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  1. Estela Marine-Roig
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Correspondence to Estela Marine-Roig .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Hospitality and Tourism Management, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia, USA

    Zheng Xiang

  2. National Laboratory for Tourism & eCommerce Department of Tourism, Recreation and Sport Management, University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida, USA

    Daniel R. Fesenmaier

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Marine-Roig, E. (2017). Online Travel Reviews: A Massive Paratextual Analysis. In: Xiang, Z., Fesenmaier, D. (eds) Analytics in Smart Tourism Design. Tourism on the Verge. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-44263-1_11

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