66 DESTINATION IMAGE ANALYTICS THROUGH TRAVELLER-GENERATED CONTENT – Contributions by Estela Marine-Roig

Since Kevin Lynch’s pioneering 1960 work on the image of the city, researchers have devoted significant attention to analysing tourist destination images (TDI) because they are a determining factor when choosing where to vacation. Most of the authors used the surveys as data sources to analyse the perceived TDI. Marine-Roig (2010) claimed travel blogs as objects of study for the perceived image of a destination. She developed this line of research during her doctorate (Marine-Roig, 2014b) by including travel blogs and online travel reviews (OTR) in the sources of user-generated content (UGC). Among the milestones of the research line, the following contributions stand out.

Theoretical. In addition to the PhD thesis (Marine-Roig, 2014b), a study (Marine-Roig, 2015a) highlighted the role of identity and authenticity in the construction of TDI and represented a holistic framework of TDI formation through a hermeneutical circle (Figure 1). Currently, she addresses as a data source traveller-generated content (TGC) defined as narratives, opinions, and ratings shared on social media and based on the visitor’s experiences of travelling, sightseeing, entertainment, shopping, lodging and dining in a tourist destination (Marine-Roig & Huertas, 2020). She has, in addition, introduced semiotic aspects of TDIs into the conceptual framework (Marine-Roig, 2021) as an element of discussion (Figure 2).

Methodological. (1) A first methodological article presented a webometric formula to select the most suitable online data source for a case study (Marine-Roig, 2014a). (2) Methods for selecting, downloading, arranging, and debugging tourist data from websites were presented (Marine-Roig & Anton Clavé, 2016a). (3) Methods for analysing multiscale TDIs through spatial coefficients (Marine-Roig & Anton Clavé, 2016d) were examined. (4) Methods for extracting information from OTR paratextual elements (Marine-Roig, 2017b) and HyperText Markup Language (HTML) meta-tags were described (Marine-Roig, 2017a). (5) Methods for analysing the content of OTRs were detailed (Marine-Roig, 2022).

Empirical. The main topics analysed through case studies and TGC were as follows: smart tourism (Marine-Roig & Anton Clavé, 2015); religious tourism (Marine-Roig, 2015b, 2016); sentiment analysis (Marine-Roig & Anton Clavé, 2016b); pull factors (Marine-Roig & Anton Clavé, 2016e); gap between projected and perceived TDIs (Marine-Roig & Anton Clavé, 2016c; Marine-Roig & Ferrer-Rosell, 2018); territorial tourist brands (Marine-Roig & Mariné Gallisà, 2018); social media events (Marine-Roig et al., 2017, 2020); sightseeing, lodging, and dining experiences (Marine-Roig, 2019); gastronomic image (Marine-Roig et al., 2019); personal safety (Marine-Roig & Huertas, 2020); and satisfaction and loyalty (Marine-Roig, 2021).

Experiential marketing. As a corresponding author (Lalicic et al., 2021; Lin et al., 2021), she applied her TDI framework (Marine-Roig, 2019, 2021) to address the co-design or co-creation of tourist experiences.

Acknowledgements

The author is grateful for the funding received from the Spanish Ministries through the projects LITORALTUR [Grant ID: SEJ2005-05677], INNOVATUR [Grant ID: CSO2008-01699], GLOBALTUR [Grant ID: CSO2011-23004], MOVETUR [Grant ID: CSO2014-51785-R], and TURCOLAB [Grant ID: ECO2017-88984-R].

Written by Estela Marine-Roig, University of Lleida (UdL) and Open University of Catalonia (UOC), Spain
Read Estela’s letter to future generations of tourism researchers

References

Lalicic, L., Marine-Roig, E., Ferrer-Rosell, B., & Martin-Fuentes, E. (2021). Destination image analytics for tourism design: An approach through Airbnb reviews. Annals of Tourism Research, 86, article 103100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.annals.2020.103100

Lin, M. P., Marine-Roig, E., & Llonch-Molina, N. (2021). Gastronomic experience (co)creation: evidence from Taiwan and Catalonia. Tourism Recreation Research. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1080/02508281.2021.1948718

Marine-Roig, E. (2010). Los “Travel Blogs” como objetos de estudio de la imagen percibida de un destino [Travel blogs as objects of study of the perceived destination image]. In A. J. Guevara Plaza, A. Aguayo Maldonado, & J. L. Caro Herrero (Eds.), Turismo y Tecnologías de la Información y las Comunicaciones (pp. 61–76). Facultad de Turismo.

Marine-Roig, E. (2014a). A webometric analysis of travel blogs and review hosting: The case of Catalonia. Journal of Travel & Tourism Marketing, 31(3), 381–396. https://doi.org/10.1080/10548408.2013.877413

Marine-Roig, E. (2014b). From the projected to the transmitted image: the 2.0 construction of tourist destination image and identity in Catalonia [Rovira i Virgili University]. https://hdl.handle.net/10803/135006

Marine-Roig, E. (2015a). Identity and authenticity in destination image construction. Anatolia: An International Journal of Tourism and Hospitality Research, 26(4), 574–587. https://doi.org/10.1080/13032917.2015.1040814

Marine-Roig, E. (2015b). Religious tourism versus secular pilgrimage : The basilica of La Sagrada Família. International Journal of Religious Tourism and Pilgrimage, 3(1), 25–37. https://doi.org/10.21427/D7KM6Z

Marine-Roig, E. (2016). The impact of the consecration of “La Sagrada Familia” basilica in Barcelona by Pope Benedict XVI. International Journal of Tourism Anthropology, 5(1–2), 95–115. https://doi.org/10.1504/IJTA.2016.076776

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Marine-Roig, E., & Anton Clavé, S. (2016b). Affective component of the destination image: A computerised analysis. In M. Kozak & N. Kozak (Eds.), Destination marketing: An international perspective (pp. 49–58). Routledge.

Marine-Roig, E., & Anton Clavé, S. (2016c). Destination image gaps between official tourism websites and user-generated content. In A. Inversini & R. Schegg (Eds.), Information and Communication Technologies in Tourism 2016 (pp. 253–265). Springer. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-28231-2_19

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Marine-Roig, E., & Anton Clavé, S. (2016e). Semi-automatic content analysis of trip diaries: pull factors to Catalonia. In M. Kozak & N. Kozak (Eds.), Tourist behaviour: an international perspective (pp. 46–55). CABI. https://doi.org/10.1079/9781780648125.0046

Marine-Roig, E., & Ferrer-Rosell, B. (2018). Measuring the gap between projected and perceived destination images of Catalonia using compositional analysis. Tourism Management, 68, 236–249. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tourman.2018.03.020

Marine-Roig, E., Ferrer-Rosell, B., Daries, N., & Cristobal-Fransi, E. (2019). Measuring gastronomic image online. International Journal of Environmental Research and Public Health, 16(23), article 4631. https://doi.org/10.3390/ijerph16234631

Marine-Roig, E., & Huertas, A. (2020). How safety affects destination image projected through online travel reviews. Journal of Destination Marketing & Management, 18, article 100469. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jdmm.2020.100469

Marine-Roig, E., & Mariné Gallisà, E. (2018). Imatge de Catalunya percebuda per turistes angloparlants i castellanoparlants [Image of Catalonia perceived by English-speaking and Spanish-speaking tourists]. Documents d’Anàlisi Geogràfica, 64(2), 219–245. https://doi.org/10.5565/rev/dag.429

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