Comparing online travel review platforms as destination image information agents

Xinxin Guo (), Juho Pesonen () and Raija Komppula ()
Additional contact information
Xinxin Guo: University of Eastern Finland
Juho Pesonen: University of Eastern Finland
Raija Komppula: University of Eastern Finland

Information Technology & Tourism, 2021, vol. 23, issue 2, No 3, 159-187

Abstract: Abstract Online travel reviews have been extensively used as an important data source in tourism research. Typically, data for online travel review research is collected only from one platform. However, drawing definite conclusions based on single platform analyses may thus produce biases and lead to erroneous conclusions and decisions. Therefore, this research verifies whether or not there are discrepancies and commonalities between different travel review platforms. In this study, five native Chinese travel review platforms were selected: Ctrip; Qyer; Mafengwo; Tuniu; and Qunar. Using a mixed content analysis method, the destination image of Finland was extracted from 10,197 travel reviews in Simplified Chinese as the destination image is a popular topic in online review research. Results show Finland’s destination image representation varies between Chinese travel review platforms. This discrepancy is especially prominent in the dimension of functional and mixed functional-psychological destination attributes. Significant theoretical contributions and managerial implications for the analysis of online travel reviews and destination image research are discussed.

Keywords: Online travel reviews (OTRs); Content analysis; Destination image; Destination attributes; China (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://link.springer.com/10.1007/s40558-021-00201-w Abstract (text/html)
Access to the full text of the articles in this series is restricted.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:infott:v:23:y:2021:i:2:d:10.1007_s40558-021-00201-w

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... ystems/journal/40558

DOI: 10.1007/s40558-021-00201-w

Access Statistics for this article

Information Technology & Tourism is currently edited by Zheng Xiang

More articles in Information Technology & Tourism from Springer
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().