On the Road Towards Identifying and Aggregating Experiences in Destinations via Secondary Online Data: The Case of Slovak Geoheritage at TripAdvisor in Relation to DMOs
摘要
The pilot study aims to demonstrate the results of several reproducible steps towards analyzing the possibilities of utilizing secondary online data related to points of interests for the purposes of identifying and measuring visitors’ experiences at destination level, and current limitations of data usability as a supplement to, or even replacement of primary survey data. The current case evolves around the narrative of Slovak geoheritage via two samples of data. One representing the expert views of geologists, the second indicating the opinions of visitors engaged with Slovakia’s offer at TripAdvisor. The former sample of significant geological sites was used to outline the volume of geoheritage within Slovak destinations. The latter sample was used to measure the polarity of visitors’ reviews through natural language processing and lexicon rule-based sentiment analysis. The taken approaches include identifying the relations of both layers to officially recognized destinations and selected protected areas. Furthermore, the approach takes into consideration the nomenclature of tourism resources’ classification, for easier aggregation of data. Among other, the pilot results indicate that most significant geological sites are outside of DMOs boundaries and are absent at TripAdvisor as Points of Interest. Secondly, while some attractions identifiable as geosites may be considered as carriers of mostly positive experiences, given the volume of recorded reviews in the context of actual number of visitors over time, one must be prudent. In conclusion simple steps are suggested for lowering or eliminating redundant processes in terms of data and destination management.