The use of sentiment analysis to identify visitors’ perceptions of Central European capital cities

• Autor(a) principal: Santos, Ana Luiza Beck
• Data de Publicação: 2023
• Tipo de documento: Dissertação
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10071/30154
• topic: Central Europe; Turismo cultural -- Cultural tourism; Text mining; Análise de sentimentos -- Sentiment analysis; DMOs; Europa Central; Organizações de planejamento turístico

User-generated content can provide valuable insights into the tourism industry. This dissertation aims to address the tourist perceptions of cultural attractions in Central European capital cities. Despite the tourism relevance of destinations such as Prague, Berlin and Vienna, few studies focus on the tourism attractivity of the region. The research objectives include (i) identifying the perceptions of the top cultural attractions of the cities in the sample, (ii) underlining similarities and differences in the tourism experience in the different locations, and (iii) providing recommendations for tourism planning organizations. To achieve that, a netnographic methodology is applied. To do so, TripAdvisor online reviews were extracted from cultural attractions for the six Central European capital cities included in the sample – Berlin, Bratislava, Budapest, Prague, Vienna, and Warsaw. Following that, text and sentiment analyses were conducted with the use of the software Meaning Cloud. The results show the General and the Topic Sentiment analysis for each city, and a cluster Topic Sentiment Analysis, which highlights the main aspects of the tourism experience brought up in the comments. The results indicate an overall positive perception of all the cities in the sample. The cities with better performance were Budapest, Prague, and Vienna, with a focus on aspects such as city, tourism attractions, and locations. The topic “People” showed the worst performance, aligning with concerns about over-tourism in the main attractions. Berlin presented the lowest average polarity, indicating the need for a closer look at the city’s management as a cultural destination.