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
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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
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